"One of the members of the residents association once told me that we shouldn't talk to journalists, but I have nothing to lose now."

Helmut Rudolph was sitting on a low couch, surveying the interior of his tiny, 20-sq.-meter apartment. It seemed as though the lanky self-described German-New Zealander could reach out and touch the walls on all sides.

Despite these modest circumstances — and that warning about members of the fourth estate — Rudolph had invited The Japan Times to view his abode because it is in the last remaining example of a series of residential buildings that were once the pride of Japan's architectural fraternity: the Dojunkai apartments.