I Remember ~ Original Haiku
They go up and down so quickly here...
I remember when
they built it
Buildings never seem to last as long in Japan as they do in the States. All my childhood and young adult life in the US, I rarely saw a house knocked down. Usually they are passed to kids and then kept or sold. Eventually one of the owners will renovate and then they will keep going. Sometimes the neighborhood takes a bad turn, and in that case the houses may end up abandoned, and that is usually when they will eventually be bulldozed. Commercial buildings are knocked down more often, but still not all that much. Usually if one business fails, the building will just stay there empty until the next business decides to try the location.
But in Japan? Commercial buildings are being knocked down constantly, and residential houses only a little less often. Usually as soon as a couple dies, rather than the house being taken up by the next generation or sold, it is knocked down and the lot is sold to have a new house built on.
On one hand, it always seems a bit wasteful to me, but there are some benefits to this system. The earthquake code is updated fairly often, from what I understand, so new buildings benefit from that as well as any new anti-earthquake technology.
But regardless of if it's good or bad, it is. An interesting thing about this is after you have been here long enough, you start to see the neighborhood and city change before your eyes. Just in my neighborhood, I've witnessed several houses being knocked down, new houses built on the lot, then those knocked down too. There was one place, the couple living there died and the house was knocked down. The lot was sold to a couple in their 60s. They were building their dream house for their retirement years. Unlike most houses that are thrown up within a few weeks, this one was built from quality parts and took several months to be built. It was really very very nice when it finished. Just a few years later though, it was knocked down. Seems like the man died, the woman went to live with her son, and her son decided he couldn't afford to keep their house so he had it knocked down. Such a shame...
One of my foreign friends has lived here 40 years. He's in his 80s now. He tells me that his hometown in America still looks almost exactly the same as it did when he was a kid, while our adopted city in Japan looks completely different.
Anyway, I was taking a walk a few days ago with my boys when I noticed a house being knocked down. I remembered when the previous house on that lot was knocked down and when this one was built, and now it too was being knocked down. Amazing how fast they go up and amazing how fast they go down.
No kigo (season word) here. Only traditional haiku require them and many modern haiku no longer use them. I'm sure if I looked carefully in my saijiki (kigo encyclopedia) I'm sure I could find something echoing the idea of the passage of time, however. Evoking the feeling of the passage of time, highlighting the briefness of life, these things are very very common in haiku.
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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
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Beautiful...
Thanks 😃
Hehehehehehe talk about the cycle of life😂
I enjoyed reading this and now I know a little about the Japanese people.
But come to think of it doesn’t it look nice when all these houses are knocked down and built again?
😂
It doesn't look so nice when it is knocking down, but it does look nice when it's a clear lot for awhile. And of course the newly built house always looks nice too.
It’s an interesting tradition though, really fascinating.
A very strange norm that they have. You could say that in Japan you don't own land, it's more like a loan.
A very beautiful Haiku in its lines contains all this norm of houses in Japan.
Thanks for sharing.
Good day.
That's not a bad way of looking at it. I'm sure the upper class in this country holds on to land for a long time, same as anywhere else, but for the middle class and lower, their ownership is a very limited time.
I love this one! So simple, yet it carries quite a lot of weight, is heavy.
The years pass. Some of us might read this with regret. I do. I would mourn the loss of any familiar house. My hometown in the US looks exactly the same as it did when I left it at age 18. Now I am back, nearly 50 years later, and nothing has changed. I live in a house built in 1900, and the previous owners were my aunt and uncle. I can't understand knocking homes down! Is there a fear of ghosts, a need for a fresh energy in a home?
The reasoning I am always given is that houses are built using very inexpensive materials and aren't expected to last more than 30 years, so they either need to be renovated, a process that companies charge almost as much as a new house to do, or destroyed. My reply is that houses in America are often built cheaply too and usually given a lifetime of about 40-50 years, and problems usually crop up long before that, but we usually fix things as we go and keep pushing the life of the house as long as possible. To that I am often told the earthquake code reason haha.
I think it's more likely that it's just been this way since the war, so many Japanese people think this is how it is, and as a result the idea of living in a used house seems strange and no one wants to do it. I do think this idea is slowly changing. Building a house is becoming more and more and more expensive, as inflation is hitting here very hard. Many people find they can't afford to build a house anymore, so a secondary market is starting to pop up. It may be another generation before used houses become more common, but the change is starting to happen.
@owasco @dbooster I think it has to do with a number of factors, but a big one definitely has to do with the fact that only the land retains its value and the value of buildings goes down to zero after 15 or 20 years. So if you want to buy a 25 year old house on a piece of property that costs $100,000 or more, and it needs new siding and a new roof, which would cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 here depending on the size of the house and the quality of the materials, it makes more sense to just buy a new house for not that much more money.
Plus, the cheapest new houses are built by massive companies that buy land and build all across the country. They operate on such a large scale that they can offer new houses for a price comparable to renovating an old house.
Add to that a culture that doesn’t think I’ll just do it myself, and narrow properties that require scaffolding to give you access to the building, and it’s really difficult to maintain and renovate on your own.
Good explanation. It's easier, and cheaper, to knock down a house and build a new one than it is to fix a slightly older one up. Very wasteful! A?nd frustrating I would imagine. What happens if you still live in the house and it's in need of serious repair? Do people have to sell and buy a new house?
I don’t know. But I’ve seen some pretty dilapidated houses here that are still occupied, so I suppose a lot of it depends on your financial or familial situation.
A lot of elderly people still move in with their children, or offer to help pay for a new house that they can live in with their children. Other times, seriously damaged houses are just left to rot. I don’t know much about it, but I’ve been told that the taxes on vacant lots without a building on them are higher than lots that have a building in them, even if the building is uninhabitable. On top of that, property tax is very low here compared to the US, and I don’t think there are serious repercussions if you decide to not pay your property tax in a situation where you’ve abandoned a property and you don’t have the money to pay.
Yeah, exactly, on the tax thing. Which is why there are so many abandoned houses here.
Good points all. I remember a year or two ago, a buddy inherited his in-law's house. He was complaining to me that every renovation company he talked with wanted more money to fix the house up than it would cost to knock it down and build a new house. Complete madness.
@owasco
Edit: Come to think of it, @dmilliz was or is in a very similar situation. Am I remembering that right @dmilliz?
That is correct. The thing is while building a new house with these big companies is good and may be cheaper than fixing an old one, the new houses are usually made from cheap material and end up costing in the long run. We recently found a carpenter that could renovate the house for around 10M Yen, so that seems to be the way to go. As the renovation companies add on to every material in the quotation and that really ups the price.
Another reason a lot of these houses are knocked down I think is sometimes the loans can't be paid off and the banks take it over and sell it to the same big companies who intern knock it down and build new cheap homes. Japan loves new.
That would make a lot of sense. A cycle where the banks and the building companies feed each other business.
Yup and if Japan ever raises the interest rate by drastic amount many homes would be in that position as most loans are floating.
Yeah, it’s crazy to think of how devastating an interest rate raise would be to so many people here.
I just talked to someone about residing my house and they quoted me almost ¥8,000,000. I couldn’t believe it.
The fire codes here force people to use this concrete based siding that prevents fires, but absorbs rain if not maintained well, which leads to termites and other structural problems too.
Lovely!
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In Canada, we have houses that are centuries old. It really is like stepping into another era. Excellent haiku and discussion!
Parts of America are the same. Completely different from Japan.
It's very interesting. Part of me can't fathom knocking down a perfectly good house. Where I live, even houses built in the 1980s are sometimes designated as heritage houses, and one cannot knock them down or make major alterations.
On the other hand, I think that building a new house is a great way to update the technology used in construction materials and building methods. It's also more personalized.
I was reading recently that there are about a million empty (as in not used, not infrequently used holiday homes) houses in Japan, though mostly in rural areas.
however, I guess they are in areas where it is not desirable to rebuild or sell to developers.
Not just in rural areas. Plenty of the abandoned houses are in the city as well. It is cheaper to leave the house abandoned than it is to knock it down, so many people simply leave them abandoned until they can find a buyer for the lot, only then do they pay to knock the house down. Unfortunately many make no effort to find a buyer, so the house just sits abandoned for years.
Oh..., this haiku is very deep. I totally feel it. It reminds me of my old memory as well. I don't like to see the moment. Witnessing the moment of destroying houses is too sad and quick. I felt like my heart was also torn apart when I had to watch my house being destroyed by the government project. This is deep nice haiku! Additionally, I don't like to witness trees being cut down for the same reason.
I'm glad you like it. Thank you 😃
Yea, I agree with you. I also don't like to see houses knocked down. It's sad to think of all the memories that happened in that house, and now the house will be gone. I always wish Japan would preserve their houses on a secondary market like the US and Canada does, rather than knock them down. I also don't like watching trees cut down either.