Preserving Kyoto 'machiya' grows urgent as redevelopment spreads

NEW YORK (Kyodo) Ways to preserve Kyoto's traditional "machiya" town houses that are disappearing fast under urban redevelopment were discussed Tuesday in New York by 13 architectural experts from Japan and the United States.

"It is important to preserve historical buildings, but their interiors need to be renovated to accommodate a changing lifestyle," said Takahiko Otani, professor of architecture at Mukogawa Women's University in Hyogo Prefecture and one of eight experts from Japan who attended the meeting.

"Machiya preservation should be backed, first of all, by the will of the people who live there," Otani said.

Kyoto is one of the few Japanese cities that escaped World War II bombing, but its machiya — traditional wooden town houses, many with stores on the first floor and mostly dating from 100 years ago — are disappearing fast due to a lack of awareness among the public for the need to preserve them and major redevelopment in the area amid soaring land prices and high inheritance taxes.

The eight Japanese experts are in New York to learn about an initiative to raise consciousness and funding for preservation of cultural buildings by the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based nonprofit entity dedicated to the preservation of endangered architectural and cultural sites around the world.

Michael Alderstein, executive director of the U.N. Capital Master Plan, said preservation of historical buildings in the United States has gained momentum following an era of extensive urban development in the 1960s that destroyed many landmarks, notably New York's Pennsylvania Station.

"The money issue is very important," he said, citing an example of financial incentives introduced in the U.S. in the 1970s to promote the preservation of historical buildings.

"In the United States, we have a tax break which allows preservation movements to tap into enormous funds to rehabilitate historical buildings. It's been very successful . . . tens of thousands of buildings have been saved," he said.

Frank Sanchis, senior vice president of the Municipal Art Society of New York, said a preservation movement during the 1960s by people living in brownstone buildings raised public awareness of their architectural beauty by circulating newsletters.

"This is an example that people living in the machiya can get together and start disseminating information (about) why preservation is an important thing," he said.

Susumu Satomi, head of Kyoto's city planning bureau, said machiya preservation faces a different set of problems from historical buildings in the U.S. or Europe because of the frequent earthquakes Japan experiences.

"When owners want to renovate their machiya, it's often easier for them to comply with earthquake resistance regulations if they destroy the machiya and rebuild them from scratch," he said. "This is an example of how a legislative system affects preservation," he said.

Many participants voiced concern over the loss of the machiya townscape, saying a loss of historical buildings would lead to a loss of the social fabric embedded in them.

"In the United States, we have a tendency to preserve individual houses as museums, which means that they die," said Adele Chatfield-Taylor, president of American Academy in Rome.

"They don't have the lessons of daily life to impart, such as teaching kids how to change the house for different seasons . . . the fabric of the settlement is just as important as a single structure," she said.