Will They Buy? -- Washington Village Plants First American-Style Homes In Japan

SANDA CITY, Japan - This nation's cars conquered America. In return, will Japanese homebuyers fall in love with American-style homes that have the practicality of a minivan and an Issaquah look as jarringly foreign as the Yugo is on Interstate 5?

Eight Japanese construction companies are joining with U.S. counterparts to bet their homebuyers will do just that. They are building 170 homes in a development called ``Washington Village,'' in this Kobe-Osaka suburb about 270 miles south of Tokyo.

American homes have a number of practical advantages, and in a nation experimenting with North American designs ranging from Canadian log cabins to New England colonials, Washington Village could prove to be a hot seller.

``If I ask my Japanese students the one thing they want, it's an American-style house,'' said Denise Incoronato, administrator of the U.S. International University in Osaka.

But a Northwest home demands of its occupants a cultural leap. When the Japanese sell cars in America, they move the steering wheel from right to left. Although American home designers have made some similar modifications, the assumption at Washington Village is that when it comes to housing, the Japanese are ready to drive down a different side of the road.

Incoronato was one of 200 or so Americans and Japanese on hand for the elaborate June 1 ribbon cutting for the first demonstration home in an enclave called Flower Town. It coincided with the first big presentation by eight Washington state companies at a Japanese home show in Kobe, a Seattle sister city.

The sometimes comic pomp and ceremony of the muddy ribbon cutting underlined both the importance of this venture to both countries and the clash and fusion of East and West.

Dignitaries included U.S. Ambassador Michael Armacost, Hyoga Gov. Toshitami Kaihara and Jean Gardner, wife of Washington's governor. Standing on red carpet on a newly sodded lawn in a rain shower, they gave a mix of English and Japanese speeches to the incongruous accompaniment of a Japanese drill team with flags and white cowboy boots and a Japanese band that played the theme to the ``Mickey Mouse Club'' and the Beatles' tune, ``Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.''

If the trappings seemed a bit odd, the ceremony was still a visible mark of progress in a 20-year-old campaign to get the Japanese to give U.S. construction methods a fair chance here.

``Finally we can show them something concrete,'' said Gardner. ``This is the beginning of a strong awareness (of what Washington lumber mills can offer) that hasn't been there before.'' Under an awning the visitors munched on Northwest salmon and Japanese shrimp and sipped Asahi and Olympia beer. The foyer of the American house was crammed with dozens of pairs of muddy shoes as the curious of both nations left them behind to pad through the American design.

Washington state's stake in the success of this venture is high. Japan has only half the population of the U.S. but, because it is poorly housed by American and European standards, last year Japan had 1.6 million housing starts, 400,000 more than in America.

However, only 55,000 of those homes were built with the two-by-four construction method that best uses the lumber milled in the Northwest. Two thirds were concrete-and-steel apartments and most single-family homes were built with larger post-and-beam timbers milled in Japan from raw logs shipped from overseas forests, such as those in Washington state.

Although a handful of Northwest lumber mills cut to Japanese standards, most have not investedin switching over.

If Americans can persuade the Japanese to buy our style of housing, however, the U.S. could, in theory, sell our sizes of lumber to Japan, providing more mill manufacturing jobs in Washington and lessening any job losses resulting from preservation of old-growth forests.

But isn't there some cultural arrogance here? Don't the Japanese design their products to fit Western tastes, not try to convert us to Nippon sensibilities? ``It's not like we're trying to force our system on them,'' said Brian Loveland, marketing manager for the Tacoma-based Evergreen Partnership, a group of 83 Washington and Oregon companies trying to sell finished wood products to Japan. ``But our system makes it inexpensive to build a house.''

James Nunn, director of the Tokyo office of Washington's Department of Trade and Economic Development, said, in theory, U.S. methods could cut the cost of construction in half from the labor-intensive Japanese method.

But because the construction methods are still foreign to Japanese carpenters and the model house at Flower Town is lavish and large to impress buyers, it wound up costing $400,000 for the house (without land), or $40,000 more than the smaller Japanese model next door.

With land, the 2,700-square-foot U.S. house on a tight 5,000-square-foot lot an hour or two from work - which would cost perhaps $200,000 in Seattle - would cost about $740,000 in Japan. It would be financed with a 50- to 100-year mortgage from as many as seven different lending sources comprising family, employer and banks.

U.S. builders are hoping that price tag will come down. While Washington Village is clearly a luxury development by Japanese standards, many of the houses will be smaller than the model to make them more affordable. It is scheduled for completion in 1992.

As Loveland noted, Americans are bringing to Japan the kind of suburban look Japanese development companies have brought to the Seattle area in new towns such as Mill Creek.

But one Japanese woman touring the model home confessed she liked the exquisitely crafted Japanese model home next door better. America's air-gun-nailed efficiency faces some cultural gaps.

For example, in the sales office, the wall display for the American home pointed to its ``two-car garage,'' an innovation almost unknown in Japan, and potentially appealing to a nation of gleaming autos, lovingly cleaned.

The Japanese home display, in contrast, pointed to its home's ``stairwell with a sweet scent of wood'' and its ``snow-watching paper sliding doors.'' The American-style home has a fireplace in a country with little firewood, a deck in a country unaccustomed to backyard barbecues, a sizable lawn in a country with few lawn mowers, and copious storage space in a country crammed with people who traditionally are more sparing in design and accumulation of possessions.

Still, the Northwest-styled house designed by architect Roger Williams of Seattle clearly intrigued the Japanese, who gravitated toward the open kitchen-family room area, pointed to the clothes dryer (a rarity in Japanese homes), openly admired the West German appliances that appeal to Yuppies everywhere, and looked curiously at the garage.

``I think the whole program got started because of American movies,'' said Ron Incoronato, a one-time U.S. builder who instructed the Japanese carpenters.

``They show what our suburbs looked like. There's a switch in Japan to a lifestyle that is more cosmopolitan and international,'' said Williams.

The American house is arguably more livable. It has double-pane windows, wall and ceiling insulation double and triple that of the Japanese model, easy-care wall-to-wall carpeting, a big efficient kitchen, and baths more sensibly linked to bedrooms. The incorporated garage looks better than the frequent Japanese suburban approach: no garage, but instead an open pad subsequently roofed with an ugly fiberglass cover that becomes a disconcerting eyesore.

By Seattle standards, the finish of the Northwest model home is excellent.

But the traditional Japanese home next to it is, to a Westerner's eyes, simply stunning: as exquisitely crafted as a jewelry box and, to most Americans, just about as uncomfortable.

The tatami floor mats and exposed wood give it a smell more pleasantly earthy and alive than the plastic synthetic odors of a new American home. A museum-like display of exposed wood was knotless and the joinery was flawless. Plaster was installed instead of drywall.

The tile roof and stucco exterior blended with surrounding homes in a way the Northwest asphalt shingles and wood siding did not. It had a faucet and cabinet for the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, and followed Japanese tradition in putting toilet and bath in separate rooms.

``Vertical grain douglas fir,'' said Wendall Walker at the Japanese entry. ``The kind that spotted owls love to live in.'' The Washington state home had its wood moldings installed by American carpenters to ensure completion on time. Even under the molding's paint, hammer marks showed.

No such tool marks could be seen on the Japanese house.

But the Japanese kitchen was tiny, its narrow deck more decorative than useful, its layout was awkward, and it had less insulation and a poorer heating and cooling system.

Williams said it was the Japanese, not the Americans, who insisted the appearance of the American home be strongly Northwestern to catch Japanese eyes, including a big front porch.

The American bathroom is an L-shape, which keeps the toilet out of sight of the bathtub in a bow to Japanese sensibilities, though the American model toilet did not match the electronic Japanese version that washes and dries its occupant in strategic places at the push of several buttons.

American room layout has evolved to fit a lifestyle still foreign to many Japanese. Long work hours mean many Japanese businesspeople frequently do not eat dinner with their families, while small living spaces and difficult transportation mean most entertaining is done after work outside the home, in restaurants or bars.

Americans are hoping, however, that the kitchen-family room complex will answer opinion polls that show Japanese are anxious for more family and leisure time.

The American-style homes should also be faster to erect, use poorer-grade wood and less of it, and thus be cheaper.

Obstacles remain, however. The Japanese have been reluctant to grant work visas to American carpenters to teach U.S. methods in Japan. The infrastructure that American efficiency depends on - big lumberyards with large inventories of construction materials - doesn't exist in Japan.

Instead, 17,000 small sawmills cut imported logs into hundreds of different dimensions at the direction of each individual builder. Loveland said that while Americans grade lumber by function - in other words, how strong a piece of wood is - Japanese grade by vision, or how it looks.

Ron Incoronato said the Japanese carpenters he directed were skilled and grasped new ideas quickly. But, he said, ``In the times an American would pull out a power saw, the Japanese would go for a hand saw.'' They are accustomed, he said, to spending twice as long as Americans on the carpentry of a house.

Nunn said that sometimes the Japanese, not believing American two-by-four methods were adequate to hold up the house, would add additional framing. ``Turn our back and people would put more wood into the wall,'' he said, inadvertently driving up the cost that ultimately is the biggest U.S. advantage.

Sometimes the American effort at penetrating this potentially vast market also seems half-hearted. John Schaecher of Seattle's Henry Bacon lumber said his company already sells $500,000 to $600,000 of finished products a month to Japan, but said it can take up to a year to woo a Japanese customer with social and business visits that can be dauntingly expensive to small Northwest companies.

Establishing product-name recognition is vital, he said, but neglected by many American companies. His company replaced a well-known skylight line with a superior but new model and, ``the Japanese won't touch it'' because they've never heard of it.

American businesspeople are frequently quizzed about how long their companies have been in business because of the insistence on follow-up service for defective products.

Northwest companies decided not to set up a display similar to that of Kobe at the Tokyo home show because of the expense, even though the cost was in the thousands and the market has a potential of billions.

In fact, although this year's Northwest selling campaign is the most ambitious yet, it still seems fairly rudimentary, with no standing pool of translators, few Japanese-language materials and instructional tapes, and arguably inadequate follow-through.

The lack of a metric measurement system hurts U.S. products. The Japanese at the home show were impressed with American plumbing fixtures but frustrated that adapters aren't readily available to fit them to Japanese dimension plumbing.

At Washington Village, the architects didn't try to substitute American lights and electronics for their superior Japanese counterparts.

``The state government seems reluctant to invest in this and I don't think it's something many vendors believe is going to happen,'' said Schaecher, head of Bacon's international sales division, in explaining why Washington state companies don't try harder in Japan.

Still, this is a joint venture with eight Japanese companies believing as firmly as the Americans that U.S. building methods can help bring affordable housing to their crowded country.

And Phillips said the products will continue to be made in the U.S. because Japanese mills lack the land for the standardized mass production of lumber that makes U.S. goods affordable.

``The market is so ripe,'' said Nunn. ``Japanese people are looking for alternatives. The Japanese businessman complains, to me at least, as much about the obstacles put up to trade by the Japanese government as Americans do.'' If Washington Village can deliver on its promise of more livable homes at a better price, Nunn believes, the Japanese market could prove explosive for Northwest companies.

But, he added , ``The companies have got to do their homework. This is the toughest market in the world.''

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A joint

venture

Eight Japanese construction companies are joining with U.S. counterparts to bet the Japanese homebuyers will buy American. The project includes:

-- 170 homes in a development called ``Washington Village.''

-- Model house at Flower Town is 2,700 sq. ft.

-- Total cost to build: $400,000 with land. Similar house in Seattle:

$200,000.