The foundation has been laid for the Washington building products industry to move into the Japanese market in a big way. Now it’s up to builders, cabinet- and door-makers and others to define that market and capture it.
“It is our biggest opportunity to move beyond lumber and raw logs,” said Mike Fitzgerald, director of the Washington Department of Trade and Economic Development.
There is a huge interest in American housing and related building products in Japan. But that doesn’t mean American styles of housing are going to be accepted automatically.
“U.S. industry must adjust its products to the Japanese environment so Japanese people can use them with confidence,” Gov. Toshitami Kaihara of Hyogo Prefecture said.
Both men spoke at a Japan Imported Housing and Building Materials Symposium held recently in Tacoma. The symposium was sponsored by Tacoma’s Evergreen Partnership and the state to help people understand the complexities of doing business in Japan.
Kaihara said other strong factors fueling Japanese interest in U.S.-style homes are their durability and lower cost.
A traditional Japanese house, using post-and-beam construction methods, costs more than twice as much as an American-style house, built with 2-by-4 construction methods, he said.
Nearly a quarter of existing Japanese housing, about 10 million homes, was built quickly in the 1950s to meet the needs of people who left rural areas to work in cities during a booming industrial expansion.
These houses aren’t lasting, Kaihara said. The houses have a life span of about one generation. That places the “large burden” of housing construction costs on each generation of Japanese, he said. U.S. houses can last 50 to 60 years and longer, he said.
The houses also are too small for today’s Japanese family, he said.
The basis for Japanese interest in American-built housing was the construction of Washington Village near Kobe, Japan. The project started in 1991.
Kaihara and then-Gov. Booth Gardner, in a meeting at Kobe in 1987, pioneered the idea for Washington Village to showcase American-style housing, Fitzgerald said.
So far, 55 of the planned 171 houses have been built, according to the Evergreen Partnership, a building and forest products trade association based in Tacoma.
Kobe, an international port city more than twice the size of Seattle, is within Hyogo Prefecture in the central part of Honshu, the Japanese main island.
Kaihara said another Washington Village-type housing project is being planned between Kobe and Osaka.
But Japanese people only will accept U.S.-style housing if the homes are adapted and closely connected to Japanese culture in design, structure and in fixtures, he said.
There will be an estimated 1.3 million new housing starts in Japan this year, said Shiro Suzuki, chairman of Mitsui Bussan International Housing. However, there were only about 52,000 American-style houses built there in 1992, he said.
