Although Yoshihiro Takishita spent 18 months looking for land on which to place a house, he had his reward. The site he found is superlative, on a Kamakura hilltop surrounded by countryside and overlooking an expanse of sea. The unusual part is that he had already bought the house, “one with big columns and curved beams, a peaceful and honest dwelling, atmospheric with the lingering smell of an old farmhouse,” had it dismantled and stored, and was impatient to reassemble it. The story of the house is the first chapter in the saga of The House of Antiques.
Takishita was a boy in Gifu Prefecture. His village deep in the mountains gave him a birthright feeling for the old and the genuine. He said, “I remember running around the village, playing around the rice paddies and along the riverbanks. The mountains were covered by snow in the winter, and were beautiful. Today, gosh, it’s terrible, with highways and new houses and no native style left.”
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