There is a phrase: paradigm shift. It means a transformation of values. My purpose is, ultimately, a single one — to break the values Japan has held until now, the values the Japanese people have believed in until now. To bring about a paradigm shift in Japan.

To that end, we must first change the values of the real estate and architecture industries. The essential message of this book lies in that single point.

“The newest thing is the best thing.” That has been the prevailing value in Japanese real estate and architecture. We must change this decisively mistaken value, and root “the authentic” in this country. I mean this in earnest — because I believe it is what will save Japan’s culture, and save its economy.

Real estate is the stage on which people’s lives and businesses unfold. It is the infrastructure of all human activity. And yet, since the Meiji era, the Japanese have destroyed this most precious infrastructure all too easily — repeating the foolish act of building and demolishing. Why? Because “the newest thing is the best.” When something grows old, tear it down and build anew. That has been Japan’s value.

As a result, an immense amount of value has been lost in the Japanese property market. Compare the cumulative sum of housing investment made to date with the current value of housing assets, and the gap is roughly 500 trillion yen. The asset value that has accumulated falls short of the investment by 500 trillion yen. In other words, build as we might, it never became an asset; only the losses kept swelling.

Whose loss is it? It is the loss of ordinary people, who paid out what little money they had to build a home or a building. The ones who profit are the general contractors, the developers, the banks that lend the money, and the state. Each cycle of building and demolishing sends money to the builders and financiers, and taxes to the state. But in the people’s hands, nothing remains.

Told that “real estate becomes an asset,” people built their homes — only for the market value to approach zero within twenty years, leaving demolition the only option. A dwelling like that could never become an asset.

In short, the structure of Japanese real estate has been little more than a mechanism for extracting money from ordinary people. Had that money remained with them, people could have raised the cultural value of “dwelling” — renovating their homes as they pleased, hanging paintings on the walls. Had their homes truly become assets and generated economic value, people could have lived richer lives by them. And that would have connected directly to the wealth of the nation.

The average lifespan of a Japanese home is said to be around 30 years. Even when it remains physically habitable, its market value vanished long ago, so no one spends money to renovate. Left to decay, it eventually houses no one. Behind the vacant-house problem now growing severe across the country lies exactly this.

For over a hundred years, the Japanese have watched with their own eyes that a dwelling does not become an asset. So they have poured more money into land — which, at least, does not automatically lose value with the passing of time. Yet the notion that a property’s value is determined not by the building but by the land itself is, in fact, a peculiarity found only in Japan.

In many countries abroad, land and the building upon it are not treated as separate assets. Rather, the very notion of “appraising the land” barely exists — because the value of a property is determined by the value of the building that stands on it.

Real estate that is otherwise — which is to say, nearly all real estate in Japan — is not an asset but a durable consumer good. A durable consumer good is something whose value is highest at the moment it is made and bought, declining thereafter until, in the end, it reaches zero.

I have long felt a profound sense of crisis at this state of Japanese real estate — because such a structure is precisely what robs the Japanese of their “happiness” and their “prosperity.” People want to be happy. They want to be prosperous. And yet there is a structure that prevents it. If so, there is no choice but to change that structure.

A house or a condominium is said to be the purchase of a lifetime. Real estate is, almost certainly, the most expensive purchase a person ever makes.

And yet, compared with other countries, Japanese real estate is by no means expensive. One might even call it unreasonably cheap. Against New York, London or Paris, the value of Tokyo property is, as things stand, extremely low.

In New York, for instance, apartments priced above a billion yen for a single unit are everywhere — and among them, properties over a century old are nothing unusual. Of course, New York also has many lavish, relatively new buildings like Trump Tower; but in terms of property value, they inevitably fall short of the fine old ones. Compare the value of the Dakota (completed 1884), where John Lennon lived and which Yoko Ono still owns, with that of a unit in Trump Tower, and it is plain at a glance. That gap will never close — for the Dakota’s value will, in all likelihood, only keep rising.

If we could build something whose value does not fall even after a hundred years — that rises, rather, with the passing years — Japan’s real estate culture would be transformed entirely. Is that a fantasy? It is not. To build, in Tokyo, a residence that could sell for ten billion yen a unit is by no means impossible. That is what I wish to set out in this book — and that it is the path to making the nation of Japan truly prosperous.

I hold an overwhelming conviction that it can be done. To smash the malign structure of Japan’s real estate business, to make Japanese property a true asset, to let the value it generates enrich the nation, and to root a new culture that cherishes “the authentic” — I have an unshakable confidence that this is by no means impossible.

What is needed is a powerful image. An image of success. The human mind is said to have two kinds of consciousness — the subconscious and the conscious. The dominant one is the subconscious that never surfaces, and nine-tenths of human awareness is said to be subconscious. However much one says “I can” in words, if deep in the heart lies the thought “it’s probably impossible,” that thought will rule the mind. So I never, ever think “it’s impossible.” There is not a single fragment of such a thought in me to begin with.

People imagine the future by following the past. With past experience behind them, they think, “Because it was so until now, so it will be in the future too.” They forever seek the cause of the future in the past.

We must change that way of thinking. What is needed is the power to first envision the future, and to picture vividly the self who has achieved it there. The power to imagine oneself standing on an entirely new stage.

Here is an entirely new idea. If that idea looks absurd, it is because one is captive to the past — because one measures by the past. Judged against the future, there is no such thing as an absurd idea. What is needed is a future-orientation in the truest sense.

The condition of a transformer, an innovator, is said to be holding a dream that others point at and laugh. By that measure, I am second to none — not to Elon Musk, not to Sergey Brin, not to Steve Jobs.

Japan is, without question, in decline. The population shrinks, GDP falls, the sum of national strength wanes. Some take this as inevitable, and think only of how to maintain a contracting state. Others, dreaming of the bubble once more, believe a miraculous reversal will come.

Both, I can declare, are mistaken. To halt Japan’s decline, there is no way but to change, from the very foundations, the mechanisms and the culture of real estate — the infrastructure of all life and all industry. It is precisely this real estate innovation that will save Japan.

Many will call this “declaration” an absurd dream. But if you read this book to its end, you will see that it is by no means a fantasy. That is what I believe.

New York, Manhattan. The building stands just south of Madison Square Park — the Flatiron Building, rising on the triangular plot where Fifth Avenue and Broadway cross. Eighty-seven metres tall, twenty-two storeys; standing before it, I found myself unable to move for a while.

The singular triangular form. A façade set with stone panels carved in fine relief. Beautiful curves. I had seen it many times in photographs, but to look up at it with my own eyes, up close, was simply to be overwhelmed by its force and its beauty.

The building was raised in 1902 by an architect named Daniel Burnham. A building put up more than a century ago still stands, unchanged, on prime Manhattan land. That alone is astonishing — but more astonishing still is the fact that it was built in a mere ten months.

This teaches us two things. One: a truly beautiful building, even after a hundred years, is never torn down — it endures. The other: realising such beauty in our own age is by no means impossible.

In central Paris, for instance, stand the magnificent stone buildings known as “Haussmann architecture” — structures that have survived the weathering of history itself. To reproduce such buildings today would be, if not impossible, then extremely difficult. For they were all built over long stretches of time by powerful aristocrats and privileged citizens, the bourgeoisie.

The Flatiron, by contrast, was built by framing it in steel and fitting panelised stone onto that frame. In other words, it was made by the methods of modern architecture we know well — and in an exceedingly short span of time.

To build, by modern methods, a beautiful building that does not lose its value over a hundred years — that gains value, rather, in the flow of time. This is nothing other than what I, who hold the great ambition of innovating Japan’s real estate and living culture from within the industry, am aiming for. Standing before the Flatiron, I felt this from the bottom of my heart.

There is a saying: “When clothing and food are sufficient, one comes to know propriety.” It means that when one is satisfied in dress and in food, one can keep a human courtesy and measure.

The Japanese are sometimes called the most stylish people in the world. We have world-class fashion designers — Kansai Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo. And Japanese food has won countless admirers around the globe. Personally, I think it no exaggeration to call washoku one of the finest cuisines in the world.

In “clothing” and “food,” Japan has a culture it can be proud of before the world. But what of “dwelling”?

Even those with a fair amount of money, for instance, often live in a tower block indistinguishable from any other, or in a luxury condominium chosen solely for the brand of its district, or in a ready-built house. Such people are not few.

For someone on an ordinary income, what matters when building or buying a home is little more than price, floor area and layout, plus the distance to the nearest station and the workplace. In recent years more people have come to mind specs like earthquake resistance and insulation, but these are all merely data easily reduced to numbers. In most cases, surely, people check only such data before buying a flat, or leave the building of their house entirely to a housing maker.

As long as one can live there for now, it’s fine. When it gets old, move, or tear it down and rebuild. There’s no need to seek a dwelling that is truly one’s own. That is the sensibility of many Japanese. Naturally, a living culture worth sending out to the world could never develop from it.

But consider. “Dwelling” is the base of life for oneself and one’s family, the place where one sleeps and eats each day, the space where a head and body wearied and stirred by work are rested and the vitality to live is restored. The place where one lives ought to be the happiest place of all. Such a precious place has no business being a flavourless one decided by price and specs alone. That is not fitting the home to one’s own sense of beauty and values, but merely fitting the home to circumstances — money problems first among them.

Can a rich life be led in such a makeshift dwelling? Only when “dwelling” is fulfilled can a person come to know “propriety” and realise a rich life. Not “clothing” and “food” alone — it is “dwelling” that must be valued far, far more. So I believe.

We need not confine “dwelling” to the place of daily life alone. Whether an office building, a commercial facility, or a school, museum or gallery — so long as there is human activity there, it must be a comfortable place, a space that makes people happy.

Standing before the Flatiron, I thought how wonderful it would be if my company’s New York office were inside this very building. To come here each day, to work out business plans, to talk with my staff, to negotiate with clients. Just picturing such a scene set my heart racing.

But what, in the Flatiron, drew me so? In that answer, surely, lies hidden the secret of “the value of real estate.”

What moved me to catch my breath before the Flatiron was that my heart was seized by this building’s “appearance” — the “beauty” of its very bearing.

In this book I wish to speak plainly about “beauty” — the value, for real estate of every kind, from condominiums and detached houses to office buildings and commercial facilities.

The price, area, location and performance I mentioned earlier are absolutes that can be expressed in numbers. “Beauty,” on the other hand, is taken to be relative and conceptual. The objections I expect to my view that “the most important thing for real estate is beauty” run, for instance, like this:

“How on earth do you define beauty?”
“Beauty comes in all sorts of kinds, doesn’t it?”
“Does beauty generate profit?”
“Beauty and a property’s durability have nothing to do with each other, surely.”

I have a clear answer to each of these questions. To explain those answers carefully, and through them to set out a vision for Japan’s culture of dwelling, of architecture, and of real estate — that is the purpose of this book. It will, of course, also mean speaking of our own vision as one player in the real estate business.

As I touched on in the introduction, the “lifespan” of a Japanese property is said to be about thirty years. Wooden houses in particular are, in many cases, torn down after thirty years regardless of their condition. Tell this to people living in Paris or New York and every one of them stares wide-eyed in astonishment. At the very least, the people I told this fact to spoke the words “unbelievable” a hundred percent of the time.

The reason for their astonishment is clear. In Paris as in New York, buildings over a century old are beyond counting, and it is precisely such old properties that are held to have value.

Indeed, the rents on such properties are very high, and to buy one requires an enormous sum. Even so, many people, money permitting, would wish to live in such a place. The older they grow, the more the value of “time” increases, so naturally they are also excellent as objects of investment.

It was people in Paris and New York whom I actually visited and heard from, but it would be the same in Rome, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, or in Los Angeles or Ottawa. It is in old things that value lies — when it comes to dwelling, that way of thinking is the Western standard.

The statistics bear it out: the average number of years from a house being built to its demolition (what is called “loss”) is 66 in America and 80 in Britain — incomparably longer than in Japan.

Of course, merely being old is not enough. It must have been built on the premise of being loved and used for a long time, and it goes without saying that proper maintenance is required. Nor need the Western standard be Japan’s standard as it is; the climate and the land differ, and so does the way of thinking about the home.

And yet, for a dwelling built with so much money and effort to be torn down in a mere thirty years is, however one looks at it, absurd. Not merely “wasteful” — the value of a building that cost twenty or thirty million yen falls to zero in thirty years, so in economic terms too this is a great loss.

From an environmental standpoint, moreover, it is beyond dispute an act that runs entirely counter to the times. Demolishing what is still usable, felling fresh trees, building with materials manufactured amid diligent carbon emissions, only to raise yet another house that will be torn down in thirty years — it is plainly a hugely wasteful, “anti-ecological” act.

Why has such a system become the norm in Japan?

After losing the Pacific War in 1945, Japan fell into a severe housing shortage. Not only had homes been burned in the air raids, but Japanese were returning in waves from the battlefronts and the colonies. As of 1945, the shortfall of housing units against the number of households is said to have reached 4.2 million.

Then, a few years after the defeat, a baby boom arrived and Japan’s population began to surge. The government made the promotion of new housing one pillar of policy, encouraging the building of detached and collective housing across the country.

But naturally, if one keeps building houses, saturation comes at some point. In 1968, the total number of dwellings nationwide exceeded the number of households. At that moment, the postwar housing shortage had been resolved.

And yet the policy of promoting new housing did not change. Building a new home was held up as one of life’s goals, and new dwellings kept going up one after another. Since the number of dwellings already exceeded the number of households, the old, surplus homes came to be torn down. This flow continues to this day.

Properly, once the shortage was resolved, building should have been restrained and the course set clearly toward maintaining and raising the quality of the housing already built. In fact, around 1975 there was talk of moving “from securing quantity to improving quality,” but the flow did not change. As a result, surplus dwellings — that is, vacant houses — numbered, as of 2013, a staggering 8.2 million.

The greatest reason the promotion of new housing never stopped is that the model of endlessly building new was convenient for the construction and real estate businesses, for the financial institutions, and for the state alike.

For the construction and real estate businesses, fewer new builds means lower sales of new products, so naturally it is better for new housing to be built endlessly. Lately, in the face of falling housing starts, more firms have taken up renovation work, but new-build remains an overwhelmingly more efficient business than renovation, which demands case-by-case handling. If they can, they want new-build at the core. That is the true feeling of the construction and real estate trades.

For financial institutions, the home loan — with its low risk of default — is an especially tasty product among the various kinds of lending. “My home” is a family’s precious property and the base of daily life, so even when the household budget tightens, people rarely fall into loan bankruptcy. With new builds in particular, the loan amount is large, and the appraisal of the collateral often simply equals the purchase price, making it far simpler than a loan on a used home. It therefore requires no advanced appraisal skill — another attractive feature for the lenders.

For the state, a broad-based new-build market that draws in businesses across many fields, kept buoyant, means more tax revenue. After the consumption tax was introduced, a further sweetness arose: from new housing, both consumption tax and fixed-asset tax can be collected twice over. Incidentally, since consumption tax applies when a business supplies goods or services, buying a used home directly from an ordinary person carries no consumption tax on the price. Thus the interests of the three parties — businesses, lenders and the state — converged, and the structure of new-build promotion became fixed. That is the new-build real estate market of today.

Germany, a defeated nation like Japan, also pursued the promotion of new housing in response to its postwar shortage. But around 2000, Germany made a clear shift “from new-build to used.” It cut subsidies for new construction entirely and attached large subsidies to the renovation of existing homes. As a result, the total stock of dwellings and the total number of households are said to have stabilised at roughly the same level. From a flow model of housing to a stock model, Germany is steadily being reborn.

As is well known, real estate carries a legally prescribed notion of “useful life.” From the acquisition price, depreciation is taken year by year until, at last, the value reaches zero. For residential use, reinforced concrete (RC) is fixed at 47 years, heavy-steel buildings at 34, and wooden houses at 22. This means that within twenty to just under fifty years, a property’s value — in the eyes of the tax law at least — vanishes. A wooden house of twenty-five years, for instance, is worth next to nothing as real estate. Small wonder, then, that the thought arises: better to tear it down.

It may surprise you, but Japan is about the only country that sets a useful life so broadly across buildings in general. The statutory useful life is a concept needed to compute a corporation’s profit or the capital-gains tax on a sale, but it is something entirely apart from the “usable limit” that expresses whether the building can in fact still be used.

A survey by Professor Yukio Komatsu’s laboratory at Waseda University, for instance, found that in terms of actual average lifespan there is no great difference by structural material. And yet useful lives are fixed — so many years for RC, so many for wood — and once passed, the thing is declared worthless. One can only call it utter nonsense.

In America, incidentally, the “used home” does not exist. There is no “Used House,” only the “Existing House.” “Used” is a word for consumer goods that deteriorate over time; a home, with proper management and remodelling, can hold its value in perpetuity. And so what Japan calls a used home is, in America, generally called an existing home.

In America, new builds account for a little over 20 percent of all housing transactions — meaning existing homes make up nearly 80 percent. In Japan, by contrast, the figure does not even reach 20 percent. The transaction share of existing homes is a little over 60 percent in France and, in Britain, an astonishing near-90 percent — which shows how singular Japan’s situation is among the advanced nations of the world.

What, in the first place, is the value of a property?

Mr. Hakuo Kato, a precious partner of our company, president of a construction firm and author of the book Japan’s Home-building, Full of Mistakes, says that a thing has three lifespans: a “physical lifespan,” a “functional lifespan,” and a “psychological lifespan.”

The “physical lifespan” is the end that comes when physical durability runs out and a thing can no longer hold its form — as when a garment, worn and worn, grows thin, tears a hole, and can no longer be worn. With a house, it is a pillar snapping, or the building itself simply collapsing.

The “functional lifespan” is the end that comes when the form remains but a functional problem makes a thing unusable — as when the fabric is not ruined, but one’s body has changed, the size no longer fits, and the garment can no longer be worn. With a house, it is when the family grows or shrinks and the number of people no longer matches the number of rooms.

And the lifespan whose cause is the owner’s heart drifting away — tiring of the design and no longer wearing the garment — is the “psychological lifespan.”

Of those three, Mr. Kato says, it is the “psychological lifespan” that truly decides the life of a thing. With a house, physical and functional problems can be dealt with to a degree by maintenance, renovation and remodelling. But once the feeling of “I want to live here” is gone from that house or room, no one will be moved to spend money renovating or remodelling it.

I should like to recast Mr. Kato’s thinking, in my own terms, as “structural value,” “functional value,” and “aesthetic value.”

“Structural value” is the value that expresses a home’s basic performance, such as earthquake resistance. “Functional value” is the added value of heat resistance, of layout and number of rooms, or of plumbing and auto-locks; in collective housing, the presence or absence of an elevator falls here too.

“Aesthetic value,” on the other hand, is precisely the value that makes one want to go on living in that home forever, to tend it and make it last, to buy the property at once should one come upon it on the resale market. It is that value I felt, as I touched on in the introduction, before Manhattan’s Flatiron Building.

Just as Mr. Kato holds the “psychological lifespan” to be the essence, I too consider this “aesthetic value” to be the essential value of real estate.

Some say Japanese buildings last only thirty years because earthquakes are frequent. But even in earthquake-prone Japan, quakes severe enough to topple houses do not occur so very often. True, the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake collapsed many homes, but shaking on that scale and of that duration is rather rare; in the Great East Japan Earthquake, for instance, the damage to homes from the quake itself was far outweighed by the damage from tsunami and fire.

Or some say that because Japanese homes are wooden, they lack the durability of the stone buildings of the West. But as I noted earlier, it is known that the difference in lifespan by structure is slight. Many American homes, too, are wooden — and yet cases of their being used for over a century are not few.

Furthermore, Hōryū-ji, the world’s oldest wooden building, was raised fully 1,400 years ago. That a structure from an age without structural calculation or ground-improvement technology still stands, having survived countless natural and man-made disasters, is a fact we ought to take to heart.

Seen another way, one could say this: precisely because Japan is earthquake-prone and wood is the norm, its building technology has developed, and in structural performance at least it stands among the world’s very best. And as for housing, thoroughgoing legal control already reaches everywhere; to tighten the system further would likely be impossible. In other words, “structural value” has already been amply realised, and there is no point in competing any further over earthquake or fire resistance.

And what of “functional value”?

To functions like layout and number of rooms there is, in the first place, no single answer. The optimal solution shifts with a family’s lifestyle and life stage. As the family grows, rooms are needed; as children grow up and leave, fewer rooms suffice. Each time, the functions required change.

What, on the other hand, of equipment-based functions like insulation, plumbing and auto-locks? Home equipment advances by leaps and bounds. Lately, more households are installing solar panels on the roof, or adopting the latest technology like HEMS (Home Energy Management Systems), which centrally manages household energy use to maximise savings.

The IoT (Internet of Things), in which product connects to product over a network, will also greatly enhance a home’s functionality. It will not be long before lives become common in which one orders the bath drawn from a smartphone before getting home, or the door unlocks automatically as a pre-registered face approaches.

Further ahead, new mechanisms using AI (artificial intelligence) such as household robots, and perhaps services using VR (virtual reality) technology, may become usable within the home.

But such functions can be added on later. New technologies and products are developed one after another; if needed, one simply introduces them into the home. To enrich the functions of a house or office is merely to update the building as technology and products evolve — to “fit in,” as it were, new functions. The essential value of a property does not, therefore, lie in function itself.

What is more, the act of “fitting in” new functions requires no creativity. It requires only a conversation with cost. Judge that there is value beyond the cost, and add it; judge otherwise, and stop. A home packed with new functions is no doubt convenient, but I do not think it differs essentially in value as a dwelling.

Structural and functional value are prized in the Japanese property market precisely because no essential difference arises in them. Catch up with revisions to law and system and with advances in technology, and the structural and functional requirements are met, so anyone who does it can produce a value of sorts. Which is to say — how ironic — that they are prized precisely because they generate no added value. I repeat: there is no creativity in them.

Against this, what of “aesthetic value”?

Aesthetic value is the value that makes a person earnestly think, I want to live in this house, I want to make my life in this building, I want this property — the value that makes them wish, if they could, to go on living here for all eternity.

Aesthetic value is, further, the value that makes one strongly wish not to destroy the building itself, to keep it forever. Not the owner or the resident alone — it is the value that makes those who live in that community, and the officials of the administration, feel the same.

Is there anyone who could slash a truly beautiful painting with a knife? Anyone who could smash a beautiful, finely made watch to pieces with a hammer? Anyone who would wish to scrap a fine classic car of beautiful form and performance? Anyone who could trample a beautiful flower underfoot, without hesitation, without a qualm?

And yet Japanese homes and buildings are easily destroyed with excavators and hammers. Though it means reducing to nothing the irreplaceable time a family lived there for years, and the whole history of the many who, coming and going, dwelt in and loved that space, a thirty-year-old dwelling is, in the blink of an eye, demolished without a trace.

Why does such a thing happen? Because that dwelling has no aesthetic value. Because no one feels it to be beautiful. If the building had true beauty, the owner would feel attachment and pride, and those around would treat with respect an owner who poured love and money into that old, beautiful building. Then no one could easily destroy a building possessed of aesthetic value.

When I went to Paris and New York, met people living in old homes, and asked, “Why do you choose to live in a property over a hundred years old?,” what they said with one voice was: “Because I was drawn to the beauty of this building, this room,” and “Because it has history, and so the property has a story.”

Because it is structurally superior, because it is rich in function — not one person answered so. Even if the insulation is poor and heating costs run a little high, even if the shower’s flow is a little weak, even if the elevator is so narrow it holds but one person, there is a value that outweighs all this, and so they choose to live in a prime-located Paris or New York property at a rent that, in all likelihood, makes the eyes pop. That value is precisely “beauty.”

But speak of such things, and there will always be someone who asks: Then what is the “beauty” of aesthetic value? What is “beauty”?

Beauty is not something that can be expressed in specs. Nor is there a standard that can clearly divide what is beautiful from what is not. In that sense, beauty is always relative.

Is it impossible, then, to define beauty? It is not. To name what beauty is — that is possible.

Certainly, no one can know whether what is held beautiful now, in 2016, will be held just as beautiful a hundred or two hundred years hence. But conversely — what if something made a hundred or two hundred years ago is still beautiful now? Therein lies the greatest hint to beauty in real estate.

Manhattan’s Flatiron was built more than a century ago. When it was first raised, surely everyone thought, “What a beautiful building.” That beauty, a hundred years on, has not changed in the least.

What is the reason? To put it a touch paradoxically: because that building was, from the very start, “old.”

Suppose the Flatiron had been a cutting-edge building incorporating the fashionable designs of its day. As that fashion faded, the building’s appeal would surely have faded with it. But the Flatiron, while cutting-edge in technique with its steel frame, was in design a traditional style that used stone to powerful effect.

The designer, Daniel Burnham, was a Chicago-based architect known for taking up comprehensive urban development early on. The “Plan of Chicago,” unveiled in 1909, was drawn up to make the city — burned to the ground in the great fire of 1871 — one the world could admire, and is regarded as the first urban-development plan in America. His plan still breathes here and there through the city called “a city within a park,” and one is struck by the loftiness of his ambition and vision.

What Burnham used for the Flatiron was one of the classical styles known as Beaux-Arts. Look at the stone clad on the outer walls and you see weighty ornament. Moreover, the lower, middle and upper sections each use stone of a different design, and by that effect the building is made to look taller, and weightier, than its actual size.

Rather than build a building of novel design (which sometimes invites the worst result — standing out badly), Burnham’s mind was clearly turned toward creating a building that fits the city and maximises its beauty. It is precisely because of such traditional, unaffected design that it has kept its beauty for a hundred years. That is the essence of the Flatiron. Its beauty should not change even after another hundred years.

Not art created by a single genius, nor a passing movement, but a style winnowed and honed over long stretches of time. Classic, traditional… there are many ways to put it, but such beauty, proven through the accumulation of history, is beauty in real estate — the element tied directly to the psychological lifespan. So I believe.

The “hundred-year homes” I saw in Paris and New York, still undiminished in value, were without a single exception properties whose design everyone feels to be “classic” and “traditional,” and which had thereby become “vintage.”

If I were a genius, with the power to create a truly universal beauty, I might build, by wholly original conception, something that would be called beautiful a hundred or two hundred years on. But sadly I have no such talent. Nor, in all likelihood, do most in the construction and real estate trades. And yet, even without such special ability, a beauty proven by history is something we might just be able to create.

A design that anyone — young or old, man or woman — can feel to be beautiful, that appeals to those who lived in ages past, to those who live now, and to those who will live a hundred years hence. It is such classic, traditional, timeless design that leads to universal beauty, and it is real estate possessed of such beauty that holds true value.

Consider the watch, for instance. Movements that keep precise time, materials and structures resistant to shock and water, novel designs — its evolution knows no bounds. On the other hand, if the only aim is to tell the time and measure it, a single smartphone suffices, and more young people forgo wearing a watch at all.

In that world of watches, what wins the ardent regard of many enthusiasts, unchanging in every age, is the antique. In 2014, a pocket watch made in the 1930s by the Swiss luxury brand Patek Philippe went to auction at Sotheby’s and sold for a sum well above two billion yen. This is a somewhat special case, but the more watch lovers master their craft, the more they tend to return to the classic.

Of course, the designs that should be called classic or traditional are not uniform. Think of cars. Say “classic car” and a Bentley and a Ford Model T point in entirely different directions. Even among sports cars, an Aston Martin and a Ferrari differ in concept from the outset.

With homes, too, there is the elegant style that calls to mind a Paris apartment, and the Californian style of the American West Coast. There is the style that evokes Brooklyn, New York, and the natural-vintage style that uses brick lavishly within. Say “classic” or “traditional,” and there are many styles within.

It is not that one is good and another bad; what is asked of us as a real estate business is to hold as many “drawers” as possible, so as to suit the surrounding environment and the owner’s taste and lifestyle. To answer the taste and needs of the client or tenant, and to present the optimal solution from among many drawers — therein, I believe, lies the key to creating a home that outlives time.

Even a building of classic design will, of course, grow old as the years pass. What turns that “age” into “character” is the material.

An outer wall of mortar or siding, for instance, simply grows old and dirty as time passes. Repaint it and it is briefly clean, but deterioration begins again right after. That Japan’s renovation market thrives is, conversely, a sign that so many homes were built with materials prone to marked aging. Brick, solid timber and plaster, by contrast, are materials whose aging one can enjoy not as “deterioration” but as “change” — for with the years, the change becomes “character” itself.

The interior is the same. Veneer flooring, with a thin slice of timber laid only on the surface, looks merely deteriorated once the surface is scratched and the plywood beneath peeks through; but with solid flooring, even scratches and the colour-shift of age can be enjoyed as character.

Vinyl-cloth wallpaper is at its finest the day it is hung, and after that only the sun-faded colour and the dust grow more bothersome by the day; but a wall plastered or tiled in natural materials shows, as time passes, an expression of ever-deepening depth.

What can be said in sum is that petrochemical building materials grow uglier with the years, while fine natural materials turn that same time into a force that nurtures a deep, rich aesthetic value. Ideally, then, one would use traditional materials of the kind used a hundred years ago. Such materials must sometimes be imported from abroad, but it is by bearing that cost in the making that a dwelling whose aesthetic value endures comes to be.

That said, the added cost of insisting on materials is not so great. In my experience so far, the cost rises by at most about 20 percent. Build a thirty-million-yen house, and it becomes thirty-six million. For that much, the quality of the property changes entirely.

It may seem a great difference at first, but if one lives there for decades with deep satisfaction and attachment, and as a result the aesthetic value is not lost even after forty or fifty years, it is by no means an expensive purchase.

The elements that express the essence of things are three: the true, the good, and the beautiful. The true is “rightness,” the good is “goodness,” and the beautiful is, literally, “beauty.”

Apply this to property, and the true is a property finished to a “right” structure in compliance with laws and systems. The good is a convenient property amply equipped with “good” functions. And the beautiful is a property of “beautiful” design that makes one wish to live there forever and never to destroy it.

The earnest Japanese have, in property, prized only the true and the good. They have pursued only rightness and goodness. But as a result, the country has become a forest of properties whose value tumbles from the moment they are built and which are torn down after thirty years.

I repeat it again and again: most Japanese believe that “the new-build property holds the best and highest value.” But this is plainly a fixed idea — and a mistaken one. Seen globally, not in real estate alone, it is the thing whose value rises with time that is truly valuable. That is the truth common to all things of truly high value. If value falls with time, then it had only a low value in essence — it was a “fake.”

Seen thus, the “new-build myth” is a kind of deception, a value singular and alien when viewed against the world. It is a warped value deliberately manufactured by postwar governments and developers. In a Japan where vacant homes already exceed eight million, such a value cannot — and must not — go on holding sway.

From here, Japan will enter a super-aged society ahead of the nations of the world. The population will keep falling and the market will keep shrinking. We will come to live in a society utterly different from before. Naturally, all of society’s mechanisms, and the mechanisms of making and selling things, will change too.

Amid such change, I think many people will come, once again, to ask “what is the authentic?” The “authentic” that, possessed of high quality and beauty, does not lose its value and goes on making people happy.

In cars, watches and clothes, in film, music and literature, in cuisine, drink and sweets — only the players who can make and offer the “authentic” will survive in the Japan to come. So I believe. And that an “authentic” property is one built by pouring every effort into the realisation of “beauty” — and that this “beauty” generates economic value as well.

In the next chapter, I should like to set out in detail the structure by which aesthetic value generates “economic value.”

Whether for rent or for sale, the figure indispensable to a property listing is the “building age.” The newer it is, the higher the rent or price; the older it grows, the cheaper it becomes. That is the common sense of Japanese real estate.

But this, in fact, is a story almost peculiar to Japan. In the West, building age is rarely treated as important in a listing — it is rare even to see it stated. If it is stressed, it is when the property is very old, and valuable precisely for that. In Japan “newly built” is trumpeted in a listing; in the West, conversely, “a hundred years old” is held up as premium information.

Among the stone apartments of Paris, for instance, properties over two hundred years old are not rare; so long as they are properly cared for, those enchanted by a beauty that deepens with time — wishing to buy, wishing to live there — never cease, and so the value may rise, but it almost never falls.

As I said in Chapter 1, I consider the Japanese faith in “new build” — or in the new in general — to be highly peculiar. When buying a home, most people weigh new build against used, and if the budget allows, buy new. That is the stance of many.

But the right answer to the question “which house should I choose?” ought not to lie within the binary of “new or used” at all.

Even among new builds there are properties that do not suit one’s taste, and naturally properties of poor quality as a home; there are, of course, splendid new builds too. Just so, among used homes there are good and bad, those that suit one’s taste and those that do not. In the end, whether a property is good or bad, liked or disliked, for the buyer has nothing to do with whether it is new or used.

And yet many people fall into thinking “new, therefore a good property.” This is true not only of housing but of cars, clothes and the like. There are those who absolutely refuse a used car or will never buy second-hand clothes. They do not stop to consider “quality” or their own “taste.” Simply, “new is good.”

The housing market is a world deeply captive to this “myth of the new.” A property’s value is highest at the moment of completion, and thereafter it only falls.

Take a newly built studio flat renting at 100,000 yen. How long may it claim to be “new build”? The answer: less than a year from completion, and only “until the first tenant moves in.” Even if that first tenant leaves after a month, once a turnover has occurred the property is no longer “new build.” At that point the rent falls to 95,000 or 90,000 yen, because the “new-build premium” is gone.

It is no different for a detached house. Let someone live in a gleaming new house for even a single day and it becomes a used home. Try to sell it and the price drops sharply, and the very rate of closing falls — that is common knowledge. In other words, one falls into a state where one cannot sell even if one wishes to.

This is, in a sense, a systemic problem of the industry, but the notion that “a property that is not new build is a deteriorated property” also lives in renters and buyers. The relation between supplier and purchaser/tenant is a “chicken and egg,” but the “myth” formed there is so firm in part because there is an undeniable fact behind it: that a property which is not new build has indeed deteriorated.

Developers build homes on the notion that “as long as it looks good when new, that is enough,” and so homes do in fact grow old at once. The outer walls dirty, the materials deteriorate, the design dates. No wonder the value falls.

Financial institutions, too, are captive to the new-build myth. They lend amply for building a new home or acquiring a new-build property, but the loan for acquiring a used property is extremely small. For a new condominium or ready-built house the purchase price is often taken as the collateral value, whereas for a used home there is a wide gap between the two, and it is not unusual for the collateral value to fall, in a mere two or three years, to about two-thirds of its new-build value.

Value is greatest when new, and after that only falls. The world that feels the negative impact of this industry structure most strongly is that of real estate investment.

Lately, real estate investment — in which an ordinary salaried worker buys a studio flat and makes a profit from its rent — has flourished. It is a genre taking hold as a means of earning side income and designing a later life not dependent on a pension; but succeeding at real estate investment is, in fact, far from easy.

With a rental property, for instance, there is no problem if a tenant is found at once and tenancy is continuously secured. But should the tenancy break, the profit is of course zero — worse, the deficit keeps mounting with management fees, repair reserves, fixed-asset tax and other costs. Lower the rent to avoid this, and the yield worsens and the investment’s effect diminishes. As a result, the time to recoup the investment far exceeds the original estimate, and one may end up never turning a profit at all.

Acquire a studio flat for twenty million yen, say, and rent it at 100,000 yen, and by simple arithmetic it takes nearly seventeen years to recover the principal. But if the property’s value falls and the rent must be lowered to 80,000 yen, that time stretches to over twenty years. In other words, only after more than twenty years from purchase can the buying capital be recovered.

So long as 100,000 or 80,000 yen comes in month after month, one comes to feel, for the time being, that the investment is a success. Here, in fact, lies the great trap of real estate investment. The degree of an investment’s success is measured by how much one earns from the point at which the buying capital is recovered — but by that point the property is already twenty years old. After that the rent will fall, and naturally maintenance costs will mount.

And so one concludes that there is no point holding it any longer and decides to sell. But a twenty-year-old studio will not necessarily find a buyer at the hoped-for price. Even if a buyer is found, one will have no choice but to sell well below the original acquisition price.

To recover one’s twenty million yen over twenty years and then sell it for a pittance — can this truly be called a successful investment?

This assumes the original twenty million was paid in cash; take out a loan, and naturally the burden of interest weighs heavily. In the worst case, it is not impossible for the sale price to fall below the outstanding loan balance.

Success is no easier when one owns a whole apartment building rather than a single unit. The scale of the investment changes by an order of magnitude, so while a large return can be hoped for, the risk too is greater than with a single unit.

The building owner’s risks are two: that vacancies increase, and that the rent on each unit falls. Japan’s population will surely keep declining, so vacancies in buildings in unpopular areas should keep rising. A vacancy is a loss, so to avoid it one lowers the rent to draw tenants; if they still do not come, one lowers it further. Fall into such a vicious spiral and one no longer knows what the investment was even for.

Moreover, the risk at the time of letting the property go also dogs the building owner. No one will eagerly buy a property full of vacancies with a low occupancy rate. Rather, tearing down the building, clearing the lot and selling the land alone may even raise the sale price. But while even one or two tenants remain, one cannot tear it down at once. That means eviction negotiations, which do not proceed easily, and if one hurries, one’s weakness is read and a high eviction fee demanded. And all the while, one must run the building on rental income far below the monthly loan repayment. Can that be called proper building management?

Incidentally, go to the regions and there are not a few properties that never aimed at sound management at all. It is often normal for talks to proceed, from the planning stage, on the premise of around a 30 percent vacancy rate. That is because the aim is not building management but inheritance-tax avoidance.

Inherit land as land and a high inheritance tax arises, but build a rental property on it and the taxable valuation is greatly compressed. For the land beneath a rental building, the taxable valuation of the portion within 200 square metres is reduced by 50 percent from that of vacant land. Furthermore, a rental building’s own valuation is lower than for owner-occupied use, and any borrowings such as loans are also subtracted from the estate’s value.

And so it does not matter if the building itself makes no money. But is that really acceptable? Even if the inheritance tax is reduced as intended, full occupancy can scarcely be expected. The result: the children or grandchildren who inherit are left a “negative legacy” — a loss-making property full of vacancies and a heavy loan burden. Even should they wish to sell, few would deliberately buy a property full of vacancies; and even if someone does, being beaten down on price is inevitable, leaving only the debt. Such back-to-front inheritance-tax schemes — which do nothing but make children and grandchildren suffer — are carried out even now, all over Japan.

The worst of these inheritance-tax schemes is that they cause a “secondary damage”: the slapdash mass production of poor-quality, cheaply built apartment buildings. This can only be called a tragedy.

Whether a property is for investment or for inheritance-tax avoidance, the essence of the problem is the same: the absence of the “end-user’s view” of those who actually live there. The properties investors acquire are, in most cases, a kind of standardised product prepared by developers. Such properties, in most cases, do not truly consider the person who buys or rents the unit. As for apartment buildings built for the sake of inheritance-tax avoidance — it goes without saying.

In what spirit the resident lives, what lifestyle they wish to cherish — such thinking, if not zero, is extremely scarce. What is prized is only the business’s own convenience: how fast and how cheaply to build, and how fast to turn a profit after completion.

In ordinary product development, it is unthinkable not to consider the user’s view. Products are developed on the assumption of what kind of user will use them and how. Even Japan’s manufacturing industry, which once believed “make a good thing and it will sell,” has shifted greatly toward customer-focused management that discerns where consumer needs lie. And yet in the real estate market, often even that “good thing” is not properly pursued.

Seen thus, vacancies are only natural. The cheap regional apartment that never aimed at 100 percent occupancy is full of vacancies as a matter of course; but even an urban building, because it does not truly consider the buyer, the renter, the resident, ends up ignored by users in the end.

In that it needlessly lowers a property’s value, this is a structure that makes neither the user nor the real estate investor happy at all. Properly, if the property had appeal and the number wishing to live there grew, no vacancy would arise and no rent need be lowered. The result should be a structure in which the property’s value is preserved and investment efficiency maximised.

But is it truly possible to create such a structure?

It becomes possible by raising a property’s total “lifetime value.” That is my answer.

In ordinary marketing parlance, lifetime value means “the money a single consumer pays over a lifetime.” With a car, for instance, if a person from 30 to 70 spends 2.5 million yen replacing the car every ten years and 500,000 yen a year to maintain it, the lifetime spend is 32.5 million yen, so “that car user’s lifetime value is 32.5 million yen.” The car-related industries maximise profit by maximising the lifetime value of each individual.

The term lifetime value as I use it to express a property’s value is a little different. A property, like a single person, has a “lifetime” beginning at the point of new build. By maximising that value, one can maximise the happiness of those who live there and of the investor. That is the property’s lifetime value as I conceive it.

What real estate investment prizes is income gain — the monthly rental income. It is the idea of profiting through yield, but as I have said, recovering the initial outlay by this alone takes a long time, and in some cases one may never recover the principal.

To make a real estate investment succeed, therefore, one must keep in view the profit obtained by ultimately selling the property — the capital gain. Or, even where the sale price falls below the initial investment, one must keep that difference — the capital loss — small. In other words, one needs not only a day-to-day “operating strategy” but an “exit strategy” for when one lets go.

Income gain and capital gain combined is the lifetime value of real estate as I conceive it. In other investments, considering both income gain (dividends for stocks, interest for bonds) and capital gain (gain on transfer) is utterly ordinary; but in real estate investment, the capital gain corresponding to the exit strategy is, in fact, often not even contemplated.

What is needed to secure income gain stably is, as I have touched on, “producing no vacancies” and “not lowering the rent.” Buy a whole building for 200 million yen, for instance, and if one can secure a 5 percent real yield (after accounting for management fees, fixed-asset tax and other costs) stably and continuously, one earns a profit equal to the principal in twenty years.

To maximise capital gain, or minimise capital loss, what is needed is not to let the asset value erode. If, after twenty years, one can sell the building for the same 200 million yen as the acquisition price, the capital gain (loss) is zero. The 200 million of income gain and the 200 million of sale price — 400 million in all — remain in hand. This is the property’s lifetime value, and the asset has doubled over twenty years.

In reality there are taxes and fees, loan interest if one has borrowed, and maintenance costs, so it is not quite so simple; but the basic idea of maximising lifetime value is just this.

So how, then, can one firmly secure income gain and maximise capital gain (minimise capital loss)?

By thoroughly pursuing a property’s “aesthetic value,” and thereby prolonging its psychological lifespan. There is no other answer.

“No vacancies” and “no falling rent” mean there is always someone willing to pay a certain sum to live there. That is to say, users support the property, and the market acknowledges its value.

So what is the element that makes a person willing to pay a certain sum to live there? As I said in Chapter 1, in “structure” such as earthquake resistance, there is by now scarcely any great difference among Japanese properties. The “functionality” of layout and the like varies infinitely by need, and the “functionality” of equipment is updated by the day — so this too is not the essence of value.

Where the most decisive difference emerges is in the emotional value of “I want to live in this room,” “I want to make my life in this room forever.” What evokes that emotion is design, material, and concept — that is, “beauty” in the broad sense.

The thrill of owning a high-maintenance classic car, the joy of wearing an antique watch far too expensive merely for telling the time — these can be sought nowhere but in feeling. The thing’s own background, and the sensibility and ardour of the many who have been involved with it, become an aesthetic value not reducible to numbers, and seize the heart of the beholder. So long as that aesthetic value is not lost, the market price will, in principle, not fall however much time passes.

Real estate ought, fundamentally, to be no different. The emotion of one who chose a room drawn by its beauty is not brought about by structure or functionality, so as long as the aesthetic value does not fall, neither does the emotional value.

When selling, too, if the aesthetic value is preserved, the price does not fall. Not only the person buying to live there, but even an investment buyer, if convinced that “this property will win user support” and “this property stirs users’ emotions,” will pay a price commensurate with that estimation to acquire it.

As I have said, beauty is relative. What is beautiful and what is not — there is no established measure, and people feel it variously.

But there is also a beauty that is not so — beauty proven through the accumulation of history. A traditional, classic beauty, supported from the past to the present across ages and countries. One might call it “a beauty that reliably generates profit.”

There is a class of properties called “designer condominiums.” By rights, as the name suggests, the term means a “stylish” building an architect designed with conviction, incorporating cutting-edge design; but since there is no fixed definition, there is lately a tendency for anything with exposed-concrete walls or a somewhat distinctive design to become a “designer” condominium. Claim “designer” and it grows more popular than an ordinary property, so developers love to say “designer.”

But even if such a designer condominium is “stylish” at present, there is no guarantee whatever that it will be just as stylish in fifty or a hundred years. There is no guarantee that a designer condominium that stirs the emotions of today’s users will stir those of users a hundred years hence in the same way. Indeed, the odds are higher that it will not. For a “new design” in the present is nothing other than an “old design” in the future. The new inevitably grows old. What rode a fashion ceases to be “stylish” once that fashion passes. That is the truth of things.

A beauty unconnected to fashion, by contrast, never grows old. For it is “old” from the start, and the steadiness and universality that come of that oldness are the very essence of such beauty. If a property is endowed with such aesthetic value, it does not grow old — which is to say, its economic value, too, does not fall.

Of course, a home too is a “thing,” and not free of physical change with age. But a design using materials that make such change not “deterioration” but “character” is precisely traditional, classic design in the true sense. Only when design and material come as a set is timeless design achieved.

Insist thoroughly on design and material and the construction cost rises above an ordinary property’s. Concept-making before breaking ground takes time, and materials must sometimes be brought in from abroad. It is, one might say, a method at the opposite pole from the real estate business that has pursued “speed” and “cheapness.”

But which is the wiser way — to make, for a modest increase in cost, a property whose value does not fall, or to chase only speed and cheapness and make a property whose value is zero in thirty years? Which can be called culturally mature? The answer goes without saying.

No doubt some will say: surely it is not “beauty” alone that preserves a property’s value. The age is shifting “from things to experiences.” Is not the method of raising a property’s value by enriching the soft elements, rather than the hard element of the building, more effective?

Indeed, attempts to differentiate from other properties by enriching the soft side are not few. For instance, on the premise of several people living together, placing a luxurious living room at the heart of small private rooms and providing a spacious dining kitchen. This is a property proposing the lately fashionable new lifestyle of “sharing,” and that “proposal” is the soft element. With the influence of TV programmes themed on young people’s flat-sharing, this may indeed be a “proposal that lands” — at present, at least.

Or there is the method of building sport-and-entertainment facilities into the building — a golf range, a gym, billiards, karaoke. This is the idea of combining “dwelling” with “exercise” and “play” and thereby raising the sale price or rent. One can think up endless such elements: a spa, a beauty salon, free-internet space, a bar, a lounge. The methods of raising a property’s added value on the soft side might be called infinite.

But the greatest problem with soft elements is that their cycle of rise and fall is very fast. Flat-sharing may be a relatively new proposal now, but in ten years it will likely have dated. The same goes for fashions in sport and entertainment.

In fact, the theatre rooms once noted as a new shared facility are now, not rarely, entirely unused. To enjoy a film, one would rather watch relaxed at home after all, and if one wants a big screen, one goes to the cinema. Like the functions of home equipment, soft elements must be constantly updated.

And even if one prizes “experiences,” in the case of property what ultimately supports them is the hard element — the “thing.” Naturally, constant maintenance is needed. A gym’s machines must be inspected and periodically replaced; a large communal bath incurs heavy costs for cleaning and pump maintenance.

In short, both ideas and equipment must be updated, and “it takes effort, yet each experience does not last” is the greatest drawback of value-making through soft elements.

I do not mean to deny the value of soft elements in real estate, but soft elements — constantly renewed as the times change — must be considered entirely apart from the hard itself. Value-making through soft elements cannot be a wise choice for preserving a property’s value over a hundred years.

What, then, of the concept of the “eco house”? Excellent in airtightness and insulation, high in thermal efficiency, able to generate energy at home with solar panels, and so earthquake-resistant that one can go on living there long — such is the usual sales pitch of the eco house.

But however high the energy savings and good the cost performance, plainly put, an “unstylish eco house” never lasts. Lose value in the resident’s emotions — that is, be tired of — and no one will live there, and the resale market too will ignore it. Sooner or later the house will be torn down, and there, once more, a new home will be built with great quantities of materials. Where, in such a way of being, is the “eco”?

Environmental technology evolves fast to begin with, so even cutting-edge technology dates in no time. And precisely because performance is quantified, the gap between a few years ago and now is stark, with the result, conversely, that the oldness stands out. In other words, the cost performance of the so-called energy-saving house is excellent only at first.

The true eco house is one that, using universal design and authentic materials that gain character with age, keeps its aesthetic value forever and is therefore never torn down. It is a house one can go on living in for fifty or a hundred years, caring for it lovingly. In other words, the property excellent in aesthetic value is the eco house in the true sense; and if one wants the latest energy-saving performance, one need only update the equipment.

I repeat: Japan’s population will keep declining and society will mature. Land is limited to begin with. The conservation of the satoyama countryside, too, must henceforth be considered in earnest.

What that new age requires is the eco house in the true sense — one that can be lived in long and lovingly — and what supports it is aesthetic value. Beauty and eco not only coexist; through beauty, eco is realised. That is the way of real estate to come, and in the advanced nations of the West it is already realised as a matter of course.

To go on living long in a house once built; or to sell above the acquisition price and move to a higher-value home matching the family’s circumstances and lifestyle of the moment. Should such a style spread, we would be freed from the — when one thinks about it — utterly absurd economic life of taking out a mortgage with each rebuild and paying off debt for a lifetime.

To be freed from debt means that much more disposable income. More disposable income is synonymous with a higher salary — for the money one can freely spend to enrich one’s life increases. Then domestic consumption too will rise, and the economy will feel a good influence.

Rather than increasing public works as economic stimulus or urging companies to raise wages, extending the lifespan of housing, reducing people’s debt and increasing disposable income generates a far surer economic effect. So I believe.

Nor is that all. With more disposable income, one can spend on renovation, interiors and decoration, so attachment to the home one lives in grows further. The home itself is of high quality, and those who live there “raise” it, as it were. A collective of such appealing properties will, in time, become an appealing town.

That an appealing town generates tourism income I should like to discuss again later, but if the town itself can possess appeal, it can keep generating revenue over hundreds of years. Like Paris, like Rome, like Venice, like London, like Amsterdam. Seen thus, might not the revolution in real estate be the true economic policy?

We must put an end to the present warped structure in which buying real estate makes one poorer. Turn housing from a durable consumer good into an asset in the true sense, and through housing let the individual’s life, the economy, and the nation grow rich. Japan, a mature nation, surely has the latent power to realise it.

The sale price and rent of real estate are largely set by the market rate. That rate is determined by composite factors — area, distance from the station, a property’s specs.

I have always thought it a great problem that the real estate business is swayed too much by that rate. Do business along the rate, and one arrives only at the rate’s price, and a property’s value too erodes along the rate.

To “prize the market rate” is to “do the same as other firms,” to “follow the industry’s conventions.” But that cannot create a truly valuable property. By contrast, pursue thoroughly the aesthetic value the industry has not prized, and one can offer to the world a property whose value transcends the rate.

To make a property that pursues aesthetic value is, in other words, to bring innovation to real estate. Doing the same as others, as other companies, innovation will never occur. It is said that those who bring innovation are, in every age, the “young one,” the “outsider,” and the “fool.”

I can no longer call myself a “young one,” nor, being versed in the real estate industry, am I an “outsider”; but I can deliberately drive myself into the position of the “fool,” and challenge thoroughly the things people around me call “impossible,” “unthinkable,” “absurd.” Without that much spirit, one could never bring about innovation.

Everyone who first took up a business, product or service that had never before existed was laughed at by “sensible” people. Elon Musk, CEO of the American private space company SpaceX, holds up a plan to make Mars habitable for humanity in the near future. Not a few say he is given to delusion, or is spinning tall tales to reassure investors.

But this is the man who founded the electronic-payment service PayPal and the electric-car maker Tesla Motors, so I think he will surely realise migration to Mars someday too. That innovation begins from the destruction of existing technologies and concepts is a fact unchanged in every age.

To bring innovation to real estate is also to bring innovation to Japan’s living culture. Forever chased by a loan for a dwelling that loses its value in thirty years; unable to make the dwelling an asset to pass to one’s children and grandchildren; doing neither maintenance nor renovation because it will be torn down someday anyway; and as a result living while neglecting “dwelling,” which ought to be the most precious thing in a human life. Such a culture must not be allowed to continue.

I believe that the base of a mature society is living culture, and that what supports it is a new real estate business. Now, from here, a great transformation of values around real estate begins. When, twenty or thirty years hence, people look back on 2017, everyone will come to think that there was the beginning of the paradigm shift. Of this I am convinced.

The most important value in real estate is “beauty.” I came to hold this idea because, as one engaged in the real estate business, I wanted above all to work on “cool” properties. I also thought that by selling “cool” properties one could establish a real estate business unswayed by the economy. A property’s “coolness” and its profitability are two sides of the same coin. That was the hypothesis I had held since my twenties.

Among the properties handled by ordinary Japanese real estate firms, frankly, not a few could not by any flattery be called “cool.” Such properties sell when the economy is good, but the moment it sours they stop selling. Like stocks, real estate prices rise and fall with the movements of the economy. Once they stop selling, one must lower the price. However cheaply one managed to acquire it, if the sale price falls, the margin naturally shrinks. I have seen such scenes many times with my own eyes.

To establish a stable real estate business, therefore, one must produce properties whose value is preserved whether the economy is good or bad. Such a property is, in other words, a “cool” property, and that coolness must be backed by a universal beauty. Through the work I have done so far, I have come to acquire that conviction.

The “value of a property” here includes two kinds of value: “present value” and “future value.” As for “present value,” one may say it is proven by the fact that the properties we handle find buyers at prices far above the market rate.

And what of “future value”? This cannot be proven without the fact that the properties we have handled have not dropped in price even after twenty or thirty years. In other words, one cannot know until the future actually arrives, and until then it remains, strictly, a hypothesis.

But I believed there was one way to make that hypothesis more than a hypothesis: to see with my own eyes, in America and Europe, properties that had not dropped in value twenty or thirty — even fifty or a hundred — years after being built, to digest their aesthetic value in our own way, and to create it anew, in our own form, on Japanese soil. If that could be achieved, the rightness of our approach would be proven. So I thought.

And so, in the spring of 2016, I set out on a tour of Paris and New York. What I gained from this journey was precisely the felt conviction that “our hypothesis is not mistaken.”

In Paris, I walked through districts like the Marais, lined with mansions built in the 17th and 18th centuries, met people from local real estate firms, and heard the stories of families living in century-old properties they had renovated themselves. I was also able to meet the director of an organisation working to preserve Paris’s historic buildings.

In New York, I walked mainly through central Manhattan. Besides ultra-luxury properties — the Ansonia, often used for film shoots; the Dakota, where John Lennon lived; the San Remo, now home to Steven Spielberg and once to Bruce Willis and Demi Moore — I also inspected slightly more affordable but jewel-like historic properties, and heard from their managers and owners. I went to Brooklyn too, and interviewed a young woman living alone in a century-old property.

What I wanted to ask the real estate professionals and residents of Paris and New York was, ultimately, just one thing. Why do people want to live in a property over a century old — or, why do you live in one?

I put that question to more than ten people over a week-long tour, and the answers were almost exactly as I had expected.

Plate II パリでの取材。古い住まいに暮らす人々や、つくり手に話を聞いた。

The ways of putting it differed from person to person, but in Paris and New York alike, the answers of those I spoke with were common in roughly this content. Not one answered “because it is close to the station,” or “because the insulation is excellent,” or “because the barrier-free design is convenient.” In other words, they place no priority on the value of function or structure, or on high specs.

Of course, if it is highly functional and conveniently located, so much the better. But such elements do not have value enough to trade for beauty; what is truly sought is, after all, aesthetic value, and the richness of heart and quality of life it brings.

There is an episode that symbolises it. It was when I asked a real estate agent who handles many Ansonia properties about the structure of a room he had shown me. Surprisingly, he — a real estate professional, an agent of proven track record — could not answer the question. And he showed not the slightest embarrassment. “No one cares about the structure. The people who buy properties here have no interest in such things,” he said, casually, as if it were nothing.

At the Ansonia I also met a Japanese man in his forties who had once worked at a major trading company, and a Japanese woman who had already lived in the apartment for thirty years. The man had deliberately moved into this building from a new condominium. “In New York,” he told me, “more and more Japanese are deliberately moving into old properties, drawn by the aesthetic value of the buildings.”

Long postings abroad and life there notwithstanding, I was encouraged by the fact that even among Japanese there are people who seek old, beautiful homes.

I also learned that even among the high-earning younger generation, not a few think choosing an ostentatious skyscraper condominium is “inelegant.” A young woman working on Wall Street, living alone in a century-old Brooklyn property, said this:

“Plumbing troubles are constant, and maintenance costs money, but the faults of the fixtures don’t bother me much — because I think this building has a value that more than makes up for them.”

An Arab man in his thirties who had moved from a high-rise condominium to an old property in SoHo was of the same opinion.

“The fixtures are inferior, but in fulfilment the room I’m in now is overwhelmingly better. Above all, it’s calming, and that’s what I like.”

The Tipos, a couple living in the Marais, had moved into a century-old apartment out of a determination to live in a Haussmann-style building. The ceilings are high, the plank floor dates from the time of construction, and the carved walls and ceiling mouldings are beautiful. By such a room they had been wholeheartedly enchanted. The interior, largely the wife’s work, fused a modern-style kitchen onto a traditional base — the very air of people enjoying their own lifestyle. I was made keenly aware of how high the awareness and aesthetic sense of perfectly ordinary people can be toward their homes.

Plate III パリ・マレ地区。築100年のオスマン様式アパルトマンに暮らすご家族を訪ねて。

Among those who live in Paris especially, there seems to be a strong feeling of cherishing not only one’s own home but the oldness and beauty of the city itself. The male director of a building-preservation organisation spoke of the Paris streetscape as “my very life.”

“I truly cherish the beauty of the stone-grounded Paris streetscape. Whatever happens, I want to protect this beautiful scenery. So I feel.”

Plate IV パリの街を望んで。歴史ある景観を守り、愛する人々と。

A universal beauty that has withstood history raises a property’s value. That my view was not mistaken, I thus became convinced through the journey to Paris and New York.

There was, on the other hand, a new discovery too: that many who live in Paris and New York place great importance on “spaciousness.” That said, both are cities where people the world over compete to seek homes and make them objects of investment, so not everyone can live in a large home. In central Paris especially, there are many apartments that, though elegant, are small even by Japanese standards.

Where, then, do they seek spaciousness? In an insistence on ceiling height, for one. When the ceiling is high, even a not-very-large room feels very spacious, and a margin of ease arises in the heart. I heard people say this with one voice.

In Japan, interest in ceiling height is still not very high. That is likely why websites and advertisements write only of “floor area” and never touch on “volume.” It is a strange thing, given that architectural space is three-dimensional. Raise the ceiling a little, or contrive the spatial design to expand the “volume,” and satisfaction with the home rises markedly. This too was a point I came to recognise anew in Paris and New York.

At the same time, I was able to confirm that there is a great difference between Paris and New York.

Central Paris is, as regards buildings, a place of little great change. There are detailed rules on rebuilding and renovation, so that the atmosphere of the streetscape does not change.

Paris was occupied by Germany for some four years during the Second World War, but even then the streetscape did not change. Some may know it, as it became a film: because General von Choltitz, the occupation commander, defied Hitler’s order to “destroy Paris,” the Arc de Triomphe, the Opéra and the Louvre all retain to this day the form they had of old.

It was not only such famous structures that escaped destruction. The passages (arcades covered with glass roofs) and apartments — buildings raised a hundred, two hundred years ago — still remain, and the streetscape itself is precisely Paris’s identity. In 1897 the “Commission du Vieux Paris” was founded, and under the strong leadership of state and administration the conservation of historic buildings and streetscapes was carried out, while many citizens too have loved old, good Paris.

That historic buildings are firmly preserved and still in active service may be called the ultimate ecology, but seen another way it also means there is no new competition in real estate. A new commercial building rising in the very centre of town and vying for revenue with the old buildings — such a configuration does not exist in Paris.

New York, on the other hand, is a city forever changing. A miscellany pours in from all over the world and keeps generating new trends. As for buildings, a new condominium will go up right beside a century-old property where a single unit costs billions of yen.

Take 432 Park Avenue, the 89-storey skyscraper condominium born in 2015. Its top-floor unit was priced at about ten billion yen and sold in no time. For this building to survive a hundred years too, it must compete with the new properties born one after another, be chosen by people, and keep raising revenue — just as the Ansonia and the Dakota have done.

New York is where such brutal competition is repeated day after day. Cheap, low-yield properties are swiftly weeded out, and on the same spot something new is built again. Developers and real estate firms therefore come, of their own accord, to aim for the highest quality. Such a competitive environment is what raises the quality of New York’s architectural culture.

It is precisely the property that wins that contest of revenue that is a property of value. To survive by chance is impossible. Thoroughgoing ingenuity is applied to the design; it is beautiful, and therefore stirs people’s emotions. As a result, the property can survive.

Beauty generates economic value. Is there any other city where this appears as clearly as in New York?

Another great discovery in New York concerned the “construction period” mentioned earlier. Until I visited New York, I had vaguely assumed that making something truly beautiful and valuable takes time and cost, and so cannot be made easily. For the more time and cost it takes, the greater the risk borne by the builder.

But the Flatiron, which moved me so deeply, was completed in less than a year from breaking ground — and with the building technology of a hundred years ago, at that. With present-day Japanese building technology, at least technically, to make a building of that scale and that standard without a long construction period is by no means impossible. Such a conviction I was able to gain.

I learned of the Flatiron’s construction period only after going to New York and seeing the building. Thinking, “How much effort and money must it have taken to make this beautiful building?,” I asked a local agent and found out. Having been in Paris until the day before, I was stunned by the fact that the building was made in about ten months. For the more I looked at the Haussmann apartments of Paris, the more I had been seized by a feeling close to resignation: “To build such a building, raised with prodigious labour and cost, in the present age is impossible.”

The beauty of the Paris apartment was realised only under the former aristocratic polity, sparing neither money nor time, with the finest materials and the finest technique. Was there a method to make a building of such quality in the present age? — I had been assailed by a kind of despair.

But that despair was soon dispelled in New York. The Flatiron was the answer. Even in the present age, it is possible to create something beautiful as a business. That building said as much.

The land on which the Flatiron stands is by no means large. It is an irregular plot wedged between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, built moreover on a very narrow space. This too was one of the great discoveries. The Flatiron is proof that even on a cramped plot in a great city, with ingenuity and ideas, a beautiful building can be raised.

Visiting New York, I felt every piece of reasoning within me shattered. It takes time, it takes money, there is no land. Those arguments in my head were nothing but excuses to lead to the conclusion that “to build a beautiful, valuable building in Japan is impossible.”

In the very heart of Manhattan stands a building raised more than a century ago. Around it are newer buildings made relatively recently. But even compared with those new buildings, the beauty and quality of the Flatiron are of another order. Even if the new buildings are torn down, the Flatiron will remain. In all likelihood, fifty years, a hundred years from now, it will shine resplendent on that spot.

That is not merely because it is beautiful, but because that beauty becomes the power to win through the fierce competition of Manhattan — because it keeps raising revenue as a commercial building. That in itself is proof of the building’s value, and proof of the power that the beauty of real estate possesses.

There is a fact that shows that “power” concretely. In January 2009, the Sorgente Group, a Rome-based real estate investment firm, purchased over 50 percent of the Flatiron’s floor area. The investment sum was not disclosed, but Sorgente plans to wait for the current tenants’ leases to expire and turn the building into a luxury hotel. Rather than use as offices or residences, making it a hotel maximises the Flatiron’s value — so they must have thought.

A business pouring a prodigious sum into a century-old building to convert it to a new use. Is that conceivable in Japan? This is precisely the power of the Flatiron.

Going to New York, I felt I had been shown a level of an entirely different dimension. It was as if the standard I had thought supreme within me had been raised at a stroke. I was made to realise anew, and strongly, that the standard of architecture now called cutting-edge in Japan is by no means the highest seen globally.

Going to New York, I feel I was confronted with what we must do: to create, with all the sense, logic, deliberation and technique we can muster, a solution for making truly beautiful real estate in contemporary Japan. That solution must surely exist.

To go back a little, when I visited Paris I also ventured into the suburbs — to Chantilly, some 30 kilometres north of Paris, and to a small town called Senlis, a further 40 kilometres or so away.

Chantilly is a place popular even with travellers from abroad as a tourist spot near Paris. Its racecourse, where the 2016 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe was held, and the Château de Chantilly standing by its lake, are famous. Yet the town’s bearing is utterly tranquil, and a green, abundant rural landscape stretches out.

Plate V パリ近郊シャンティイ。湖畔に建つシャンティイ城。

Senlis, for its part, is known for its surviving beautiful medieval streetscape. A Notre-Dame cathedral built across the 12th and 13th centuries soars at its centre, and around it stand, again, characterful houses raised centuries ago — a most beautiful town, brimming with an atmosphere in which any scene one frames seems to become a painting. The moment I stepped out of the taxi in the square before the cathedral and set foot on the cobblestone road, I was seized by a very deep emotion. For building, space and scenery all seemed to be in perfect harmony.

What I felt in Senlis was the “beauty of living” — a sense of beauty and an aesthetic eye rooted in daily life, dwelling alongside everyday living. The town is not a special tourist destination, nor does it have any notable industry. People simply live in a town that has survived from the Middle Ages. Why is that town so very beautiful?

It is, in all likelihood, because people’s lives and the buildings and streetscape are completely as one, and there, in a life by no means flashy or wealthy, a very rich living is carried on. That, I thought, is precisely what is expressed as the “beauty of living.”

To seek beauty in buildings and in the streetscape is nothing other than to seek beauty in living. To realise it without the slightest strain, as a perfectly ordinary undertaking — that, I think, is what the people of Chantilly and Senlis are. In economic terms they must surely fall below the Japanese average, but in the true richness of life they seem to me to far surpass the Japanese.

On French soil, I found myself recalling the state of the regional cities I had visited in Japan for research. A large shopping mall stands along the national road, and apart from where the locals throng there, everywhere is desolate. Since land is cheap and surplus, one sometimes sees homes somewhat grander than in the city, but basically wooden houses and apartments built “cheap and fast” line the streets. Vacant houses, abandoned and left to ruin, unlived-in for years, also stand out, their figures seeming to symbolise the very decline of the regional city.

Speak with the locals, and the young of course, but the working-age generation too, say with one voice, “There’s nothing here,” making no attempt to hide their disappointment with home. “Against my wishes, but for some reason I have no choice but to live here” — it is written on their faces. However the state may wave its flag, if those who live there cannot love their own town, regional revitalisation can never be realised.

Chantilly and Senlis alike, it was plain at a glance, by no means imitate Paris, but take pride in the history and culture of their own town. It was a state of town and people in real contrast to the Japanese regional city, which has lost its identity in chasing after Tokyo.

Living in a high-priced city centre, or in a high-rise condominium others envy, is not the whole of happiness; the countryside has its own rich, down-to-earth living. In the suburban towns of Chantilly and Senlis too, I felt, lies a great hint to the living culture we should aim for. In a sense different from Manhattan’s Flatiron, they gave me great inspiration.

As I have said, I met more than ten people in Paris and New York. To help them understand Japan’s real estate situation, I told them, “Japanese buildings are torn down in about thirty years. And even if they are not torn down, their value as real estate is almost entirely lost.” To this, most replied, “I don’t understand what you mean. Why must they be torn down in thirty years?”

Those who knew a little of Japan said, “Japan has many earthquakes, so they must collapse.” To this I answered as follows.

“Japan does have many earthquakes, but cases of houses collapsing from a quake are by no means many. Even in the Great East Japan Earthquake, houses totally destroyed by the shaking were less than 10 percent of the whole; most of the damage was from the tsunami. Buildings are demolished because they are ‘buildings it is all right to demolish’ — that is, because their commercial and real estate value is gone. So why is the value gone? Because the people who want to live in or use the building disappear. Why do they disappear? Because the building itself has no appeal.”

With this, everyone was convinced. The fact itself that “a building is demolished in thirty years” they could not understand, but if such circumstances lay behind it, then, ah, perhaps its being torn down was not unreasonable after all. Such was the response.

Another fact that surprised many was that in Japan the land has more value than the building itself. “Why does the land have value? If no building stands on it, the land itself means nothing,” everyone said with one voice. Indeed — I understood well that this is the ordinary sense in the West, and that it is the Japanese, with an almost faith-like feeling toward land, who are the peculiar ones.

Japan’s bubble economy was brought about by the soaring of land prices; the bubble collapsed when land prices fell. That, I now belatedly understood, was precisely a peculiarity of Japan.

The Haussmann-style apartments I saw in Paris, the splendid streetscape of Senlis, the Flatiron I saw in Manhattan, the people who gave me precious suggestions — the journey to Paris and New York taught me a very great deal.

But at the same time, a new challenge came into view.

The Paris apartment was born of Paris’s own history and culture, and New York’s beautiful buildings too were created out of the country of America and that city’s own distinctive culture.

So how is a building of that standard to be created in Japan? What is a building that reflects Japan’s own history and culture, embodies a splendid beauty, and yet does not fall in value even after fifty or a hundred years?

Leaning back in my seat on the plane bound for Tokyo from John F. Kennedy International Airport, watching the New York scenery grow steadily smaller, I turned that question over, again and again.

パリとニューヨークで「美しさ」こそが不動産の価値を決定づけるという確信を得た私でしたが、同時に新しい課題が突きつけられたと感じました。私たちが暮らす日本の地で、日本ならではのアイデンティを生かし、かつ価値が100年、200年にわたって保たれる物件をつくるにはどうすればいいかという課題です。

例えばマドンナも入居を断られたという逸話で有名なマンハッタンのサンレモは、私が理想とするアパートメントの一つです。セントラルパークを見下ろすツインタワーが印象的な造形は、建築から90年以上たった今も、多くの著名人や資産家を魅了してやみません。

しかし、あれと同じものを日本に建てても仕方がありません。不動産にとって最も重要な要素が美であるとするならば、それをこの日本でどう追究していくか。それを考えなければ、すべては欧米の猿真似、イミテーションになってしまいます。

私たちがパリに行って、まさしくパリならではのアパルトマンを見て感動する。ニューヨークに行って、これこそがニューヨークという佇まいのビルを見て感動する。それと同じように、世界中の人が日本に来て、なるほどこれが日本ならではの建物だと感動するような不動産をつくらなければなりません。日本的美、日本の魅力、日本のアイデンティティが表現されなければなりません。

では、その表現の形とはどういうものか。

東京の目黒区に東京都庭園美術館という建物があります。1933年に建てられた朝香宮邸を美術館にしたものです。あの建物の中を歩くと、西洋文化が怒涛のように押し寄せていた当時の日本にあって、その頃の建築家らが必死に日本の美と西洋の美との融合を模索していたことが感じられます。

当時はアールデコの全盛期で、建築を担当したのは宮内庁の技師をしていた権藤要吉ですが、部屋の設計や内装はフランス人芸術家のアンリ・ラパンに依頼をして、アールデコのエッセンスを積極的に取り入れています。しかし、アールデコといっても、ニューヨークのエンパイアステートビルやクライスラービルといったアールデコの代表的な建築物とは明らかに異なったニュアンスがあることが建物中を歩くとわかります。それは例えば、色の使い方や造形のディテールに現れていて、伊勢神宮などの日本の伝統建築に通じるものがあると感じられるのです。

あの建物に、日本的美を追求する一つのヒントがあると私は考えています。もちろん、朝香宮邸をそのまま再現すればいいということではありません。あの建物を成立させた方法論を参考にすべきであるということです。

朝香宮邸、あるいは小笠原伯爵邸といった建物は、当時としては非常に優秀なプロフェッショナル集団によってつくられています。集団の中には、建築家がいて、デザイナーがいて、職人がいました。その一流のプロたちの試行錯誤によって、尋常ではないほどの精緻さが生まれ、独自の美が生まれたのです。

つまり、あれらの建物は「チームプレイ」があって初めて生まれたということです。一人の天才の力によってではなく、一流のプロの集団の試行錯誤によってそれまでになかった建物をつくる。その方法論をもってすれば、現代の日本において新しい日本的美をつくり出すことは可能なのではないか。そう私は考えています。

朝香宮邸から非常に強く感じられるのは、「様式への意思」のようなものです。日本ならではの様式を生み出そうという決意と工夫があの建物には満ちています。その「意思」もまた、大いにお手本としなければならないでしょう。その意思の先に、日本ならではの新しい様式があるのではないかと私は思うのです。

美しい音楽の旋律と同じように、人間がつくり出すあらゆるものには、老若男女、古今東西の人々が美しいと感じる「黄金比」があると私は考えています。様式とは、その黄金比を具象化したものにほかなりません。

しかし、様式を新たに生み出すというのは、非常に難しい課題です。日本の寺社仏閣にははっきりとした日本的様式がありますが、あれを現代の日本の都市の新しい建築様式とするのは難しいでしょう。例えば、高さ100メートルの高層マンションを建てるという現代的ニーズがあった場合、それを神社仏閣のスタイルでつくるわけにはいきません。現代のニーズ、さらには未来に求められるであろうニーズを踏まえて、いかに独自の様式を実現していくか。私たちはそれを考えていかなければなりません。

建築の様式を構成する要素の一つは、素材です。国産の木、土、石、紙。そういったものですべてをつくることはできないとしても、建物のシンボリックな部分にそのような日本独自の素材を使っていくのは一つの方法でしょう。

アメリカ人建築家フランク・ロイド・ライトは旧帝国ホテルを設計するにあたり、栃木県宇都宮市で採れる大谷石を用いました。やわらかで加工しやすく、「みそ」と呼ばれる独特の穴が時間の経過とともに丸みを帯び、何ともいえない表情を見せる。それは、その土地の文化や風土に根ざした有機的な建築を提唱したライトが、是が非でも採り入れたかった日本の素材だったと言われています。

若き日にシカゴ万博で平等院鳳凰堂をモデルにした日本館に魅了されたライトは、来日して見た日本の町並みに失望したそうです。高度に洗練された伝統の建築様式を無視して、西洋の借り物のような建物ばかりが立ち並んでいたからです。

言うまでもなくライトの旧帝国ホテルは、伝統的な建築様式をそのままなぞったものではありません。しかし、日本の文化と様式に敬意をはらい、日本ならではの素材を用いて建てられたからこそ、今も名建築としての名声をほしいままにしているのです。

もう一つ、設計のもととなるインスピレーションがいかに日本的なものかということも重要なポイントとなるでしょう。自動車メーカー・クライスラーの本社として立てられたニューヨークのクライスラービルの頂上部分は、一般的には自動車のラジエーターキャップを模したデザインとされていますが、私には宝石がデザインのインスピレーションのもととなったのではないかと感じられます。

インスピレーションの源泉に何があるかによって、生まれるものは異なります。そのインスピレーションを日本的なものから生み出していくことが必要とされているのではないでしょうか。

建築のインスピレーションの源泉となる日本的感性とは、どのようなものでしょうか。

例えば、「わび」という言葉があり、「さび」という言葉があります。「わび」とは、「お金がなくて侘しい」という場合の「侘び」であり、何かが足りないけれども、その不足感こそが実は美しいとする日本独自の伝統的感覚です。この感覚を海外の人たちに理解してもらうのは簡単ではないでしょう。

一方の「さび」とは、「寂しい」とか「寂れる」という現代語にも含まれる「寂び」であり、また「錆」に通じる言葉であるとも言われます。これも「わび」と同じように、寂しくなるくらいの足りなさ、あるいはものが枯れ衰えていく中に現れる美を意味しています。ニューヨーク生まれの日本文学研究家であり、後に日本に帰化したドナルド・キーン氏は、「控えめな表現が生み出す優雅さを愛する日本人の心」とこの言葉の本質を表現しています。

その表現は『日本人の美意識』（中公文庫）という本の中の一節ですが、同じ本の中でキーン氏は、日本人には伝統的な「いびつさ」や「不規則性」を愛する側面があると指摘しています。日本人は中国式の様式を取り入れる場合でも、定められた仮借ない均斉を居心地が悪いと感じ、しばらくすると、いくつかの建物を中心軸の向こう側に移すことによって、その単調さを破ったといいます。

そのようなスタイルは、例えば、高野山の真言宗本山金剛峯寺に見られるそうです。中国風の様式が取り入れられてはいるが、建物をばらばらの軸線上に建てることで、独自のいびつさを生み出している。それが金剛峯寺の特徴であり、日本的建築の特徴であるとキーン氏は言います。

「いびつさ」や「不規則性」は、自由な感性によって生み出されるものだと私は思います。輸入したものを教科書通りに再現するのではなく、自由でのびのびした感覚でそれをアレンジする。その結果が、一種の「いびつさ」や「不規則性」として現れる。それが日本的感性の一つの特徴なのだと思います。

庭園設計にも、研ぎ澄まされた日本的感性を見ることができます。禅宗のお寺を中心に用いられる枯山水は、その一つの代表です。白砂の上に大きさも形も異なる自然石を配置し、河のせせらぎや大海、山や雲海を表現する作庭方は、世界に類を見ない日本独自の作庭方です。西洋の庭がシンメトリーを基本として、秩序正しく幾何学的な要素を組み込んでいるのとは、あらゆる面で対照的です。

こういった日本的感性はすべて、今日における日本的様式の建築物を生み出すインスピレーションの基礎となるはずです。

もう一つ、「いき」という、これも海外の人たちに説明するのが大変に難しい言葉があります。この言葉を『「いき」の構造』（岩波文庫）という有名な著書で考察したのが、昭和初期に活躍した哲学者の九鬼周造でした。

現代では、「いき」には「粋」という漢字が当てられていますが、語源として考えられるのは「生」「息」「行」「意気」などであると彼は言います。生命力と、それを支える呼吸と、そこから生まれる行動と精神──。そのような多重の意味が「いき」という言葉には織り込まれているというのです。

彼の定義によれば、「いき」とは「色っぽい」ことであり、「垢抜けしている」ことであり、「張りがある」ことです。エロスがあって、洗練されていて、力強い。そう言い換えてもいいかもしれません。これらの要素は、私が考える日本的様式のイメージにかなり合致します。

九鬼周造は、「建築上の『いき』は茶屋建築に求めてゆかねばならぬ」と言っています。二階に天井の高い客間があり、張り出しの縁側があり、欄干が設けられ、焦げ茶色の味わい深い外観の建物が並ぶ。今でも金沢などに行くと、そのような歴史ある茶屋街が残っています。あのような建物が「いきな建築」の一典型であると彼は言います。

見逃してならないのは、そのような「いきな建築」が、九鬼周造が生きた時代にも、また私たちが生きる現代にも、取り壊されることなく確かに残り、かつ観光資源となって収益を生み出し続けているという点です。つまり「いきな様式」とは、継続的な経済的価値を生み出しうる様式でもあるということです。

「いき」という感覚もまた、日本的様式を新たに生み出す一つの源泉となるはずです。

ところで、現代の日本の建築には様式はないのでしょうか。意識された明確な様式はないにしても、共通する傾向、潮流のようなものはあります。それはいわば「俗流モダニズム」です。

建築におけるモダニズムの金字塔と言われているのは、ル・コルビジェのサヴォア邸です。一階部分が柱だけのいわゆるピロティ形式で、水平窓があって屋上庭園がついている非常に有名な建物です。

あの建物の特徴は何より自由で美しいフォルムにありますが、装飾性を徹底して排しているのも大きな特徴になっています。フラットな真っ白い壁と白い柱と直線的なサッシが、あの建物の美しさを際立たせています。

しかし、あの建物が成立しているのは、周囲に広大な空間があるからです。大きなキャンバスにフリーハンドで好きな形を描き、フォルムで黄金律を表現した。そんなふうにして生まれた建物であると私は思います。

もし、あれがモダニズムの頂点にある建築物であるとすれば、モダニズムを基調とした街は、ものすごく広大なエリアのあちこちに自由なフォルムの建物が点在するような街になるでしょう。それはおそらくアート作品が並んでいるような風情の街で、それ自体を想像するのは非常に楽しいことです。

では、それを国土が狭い日本の、しかも都市部で実現できるかと言えば、とうてい不可能です。そこで日本の建設事業者は、モダニズムを取り入る際、「フォルム」を捨て、「非装飾性」という側面だけを残したわけです。それによって、「モダニズム=シンプル」という解釈が日本の不動産業界に定着することになりました。本質を見誤ったのです。

皮肉にもその解釈は、容積を重視し、狭い空間にできるだけたくさんの住宅を安価で建てたいという業界のニーズに合致しました。装飾性は必要ないから、コストも時間も抑えることができます。シンプルなデザインでいいから、クリエイティブな工夫をしなくてもすみます。結果、日本の現代建築は、装飾やデザインのコンセプトをもたない単なる「箱」になりました。容積を最大化し、コストを削減するという目的で採用されたデザインが、美しさを生むわけがありません。そして日本の街並みは、何の個性もない箱の連なりになったのです。

建物の外観には何の個性もないから、差別化をするには、機能性や構造の強さを訴えなければなりません。しかし、すでに述べているとおり、機能や建物の構造自体には人のエモーションを捉える美はありません。だから、10年、20年とたつうちに誰にも見向きもされなくなり、価格が下がり、取り壊すしかなくなる。それが、日本の建築の「俗流モダニズム」がもたらした結果です。

もちろん、都市部に建物が密集しているのは日本だけではありません。人口密度が高いことで知られるオランダやベルギーの都市には、レンブラントなどの画家が暮らしていた時代から、狭い空間に長屋を隙間なく建てる街並みが続いていました。

オランダでは国土が狭すぎて、間口の広さによって納税額が異なったくらいです。しかし、その狭い空間に建てられた家々には、装飾があり、意匠があり、独自の美がありました。今もあります。決して、ただの箱ではない。

しかも、空間を縦に上手に使うことで、開放感のある居住スペースを実現しています。国土の4分の1が海抜ゼロメートル以下というオランダでは今も国民の8割が都市部に集中し、決して広いとはいえない住宅で暮らしていますが、市街地で数多く見られるメゾネットハウスでさえ、天井高3メートルに迫る家がほとんどです。男性は180センチメートル、女性でも170センチメートルを超す世界一の平均身長を誇るオランダ人にとって、天井の高さは心地よい生活に欠かすことのできない要素なのでしょう。

国土の狭さや厳しい地理的条件を言い訳にせず、豊かな住環境と美しい街並みを創造したオランダに、日本は謙虚に学ばなければなりません。

現代のパリも同じです。パリのアパルトマンも、多くは一種の長屋です。一棟一棟が分かれているようで実はつながっていたりします。狭い都市の空間の中で人をたくさん住まわせようと思えば、そうならざるを得ないわけです。

でも、やはりそれぞれの住居のデザインは工夫されています。美を求めようとする感覚が現れています。モダニズムを曲解し、装飾性を排除した箱を並べている日本の街並みとはまったく異なります。

箱のような住居の利点は、早く、安く、たくさん建てられることです。ディベロッパーから見れば、俗流モダニズム建築はコストがかからず、販売数を増やして収益を上げるにはもってこいなのです。だから日本は、これほどまでに味わいのない建物が林立する国になってしまったのです。

「装飾」というと、いろいろな要素でごてごてと飾りつけた様子を思い浮かべるかもしれません。しかし、単に「盛る」だけが装飾ではありません。最低限の工夫で最大限の美的効果を上げること。それもまた装飾です。

例えば、本書でもたびたび例にひいている世界最高峰の高級腕時計メーカー、パテック・フィリップの代表的なモデルである「Ref・96」（通称「クンロク」）は、装飾性を最小限に抑えたシンプルなデザインで知られています。しかし、そのフォルム、針、文字盤などには、装飾に関する明確な意思が感じられます。

本体のカッティング、数字の書体、スモールセコンドの配置と大小のバランス、本体とベルトをつなぐラグの立体感──。黄金律に基づいた調和と言っていい美しさがクンロクにはあります。余計なものを徹底的に削ぎ落としたデザインですが、ここに装飾がないわけでは決してない。いわば「引き算」の装飾があるのです。

装飾性をなくすことによって箱のようになってしまったマンションと、装飾を最小限にとどめることで究極の洗練を表現しているクンロクとでは、その本質に雲泥の差があるのは明らかです。

日本人は古代から装飾を大切にしてきました。縄文時代の壺に施された装飾の多くは、機能性とは無関係なものです。事情はどの国のどの文化でも同じでしょう。パルテノン神殿にあの装飾がなかったら、遺跡としての価値は大きく減じていたに違いありません。

装飾は、人間の美意識、エモーションをダイレクトに刺激します。装飾は、住文化における美を生み出す重要な要素であり、装飾について徹底的に考えることは、そこに住む人のエモーションを豊かにするために欠かせない作業なのです。

私は、日本の不動産の新しい様式を考察するにあたって会社の仲間たちと一緒に、思いつくままにキーワードを挙げて、そこから本当に重要だと思える概念を選ぶ作業を続けてきました。残ったのは、次のような言葉です。

「シンプル」「都会的」「ヴィンテージ」「モダン」「洗練」「タイムレス」「アート」「カジュアル」「フォーマル」「男性的」「女性的」「ノスタルジック」「フレキシブル」「エモーショナル」「開放的」──。

「カジュアル」と「フォーマル」、「男性的」と「女性的」のように対立する概念が含まれているのは、様式には幅がなくてはならないと考えるからです。様式というからには、確固たる方向性や揺るぎのないコンセプトがなければなりませんが、その方向性やコンセプトが完全に固定的なものであってもいけません。その物件が建つ場所、物件の規模、施主のニーズ、コストなどによってテイストをある程度変えることのできる柔軟性がなければなりません。つまり、そのつどの個別のプランニングは不可欠だということです。

様式の中にはさまざまな要素があります。そのうちのどの要素を一番目に重視し、どの要素を二番目に重視するかは、状況や条件などによって異なります。プライオリティの判断にもまたクリエイティビティが求められることになります。

重要なのは、変化する要素が何で、変わらない要素が何かを明確にすることです。条件がどれだけ変わっても、決して譲れない要素は何か。様式について考える場合は、それをはっきりさせておかなければなりません。

私たちが考えるその不変の要素は、「洗練」「エモーショナル」「タイムレス」の3つです。

旧朝香宮邸の魅力は、アールデコのスタイルを、当時最先端の感覚をもった日本人たちが自分たちなりに消化して、それを一流のクラフトマンシップによって形にしている点にあります。結果、海外の直接的な模倣ではない独自の建造物となった。それが、私が考える「洗練」のイメージです。つまり、徹底的に考え抜き、何が必要で、何が必要ないのか、何が最良なのかを見極めることが洗練につながるということです。この洗練の感覚は、先に述べた「いき」にも通じるでしょう。

「エモーショナル」については、これまでも何度も述べてきました。エモーショナルとは、「人間の感覚を刺激し、感動を引き起こす」ということですが、「感覚」にしても「感動」にしても個人に紐づいたものなので、エモーションとはどうしても個人的なものだと思われがちです。

しかし私は、本当にエモーショナルなものとは、誰もが「ああ、わかる」と思える普遍性を持ったものであると考えています。人間の潜在意識の中に共通するある感覚があって、普段はそれに気がつかなくても、何かに接することによってその感覚が呼び覚まされて、感動したり、ワクワクしたり、涙を流したりする。その「何か」がエモーショナルなものなのだと思います。

例えば、黄金比です。古代ギリシャで人体の彫刻に取り入れられて以来、最も美しく安定感のあるバランスとしてさまざまな場面で用いられてきた1対1.6の黄金比は、そんな背景や理屈を知らなくても、「美しい」と感じさせるものです。時代や民族を超えて、もはやDNAに刷り込まれています。

黄金比をはじめとする人間に共通するエモーションは、歴史的に培われてきたものです。例えば、初めて見たものなのに得も言われぬ懐かしさを感じることがあります。それを私たちはノスタルジーと呼びますが、そのノスタルジーには誰にでも共通する傾向があるように思います。人間の心の奥底にあるそのノスタルジーを引き起こすことができるかどうか。それがエモーショナルな建築なのかどうかを左右する重要な要素となります。

初めて見たものなのにノスタルジーを感じる。それがもう一つの要素「タイムレス」につながります。新しくつくられたものなのに、それに懐かしさを感じるということは、それはある意味で「はじめから古い」ということであり、またそれゆえに、「時間がたつても古くならない」ということでもあります。

一方でタイムレスという概念には「常に新しい」という意味合いも含まれます。その新しさが人のエモーションを刺激することも当然あります。

パリやニューヨークで私が見た100年以上前に建てられた建築物の多くは、新築時にも十分に素晴らしかったはずだし、現在でも本当にかっこよく感じられる、そんな建物でした。そのような不動産を日本でつくっていくことは、決して不可能ではない。そう私は信じています。

私たちにできることは、ある意味で「時間」と「空間」をアレンジしていくことです。ある特定の時代にあった様式があって、ある場所で生まれた様式がある。それらの様式の中から、洗練されていてエモーショナルでタイムレスな要素を見極め、それを私たちの奥深くにある日本的感覚で組み合わせていく。そこに新しい、日本的アイデンティティをもった様式が生まれるのではないかと私は思うのです。

服飾の領域で見ると、シャネルというブランドは、まさに時間と空間をアレンジしたスタイルを持っているように感じられます。ココ・シャネルは女性のファッションに革命を起こしたと言われますが、それは女性の洋服から過度な装飾性を大胆に削ぎ取ったからです。

シャネルのスタイルを一言で言えばアールデコということになりますが、しかし、シャネルのスーツを見ると、形自体はアールデコでも、そこに絶妙なノスタルジーがあったりします。また、デザインによっては非常に新しい感じもします。つまり、基調となる様式を持ちながら、そこに時間や空間を超えたさまざまな要素が織り込まれているということです。

建築の領域に置いても、これまでの歴史の中でさまざまな様式が生み出されてきました。西洋では、ギリシャ、ビザンチン、ペルシア、ロマネスク、ゴシック、ルネサンス、バロック、オスマン、アールヌーボー、アールデコ、モダニズム、ポストモダニズム──。日本においては、法隆寺や薬師寺のような古代の寺院建築に始まり、鎌倉時代の中世建築、室町以降の城郭、茶室、書院造、数寄屋造、武家屋敷、町屋建築、明治に入ってからの西洋風建築──。それら過去の様式から「洗練」「エモーショナル」「タイムレス」という視点で優れた要素を抽出しながら組み合わせていく中で、新しい日本独自の様式が生まれると私は考えています。

私は決して、アート作品を生み出そうとしているわけではありません。アートとは、私の解釈では、その時代の思想や空気を鋭敏に捉えて表現したものです。いわばエッジの効いた問題提起がアートであって、それに接した人に新しい感覚やものの見方を提供する役割がアートにはあると思います。

そこに結果的に普遍性が生まれる場合もあるし、そうではない場合もあります。そのアートに強力な普遍性があれば、それは人類の資産としての残ることになるでしょう。しかし、そうはならない可能性も高い。だからアートとは、一種の賭けなのです。

私はそのような賭けをするつもりはありません。私がやりたいことは、また日本の不動産業界に求められていることは、100年後もその価値が持続すると確かに思える建物をつくることであって、アバンギャルドで人々に強烈な印象を与えはするけれど5年後に見向きもされなくなるかもしれない、そんな建物をつくることではありません。

そう考えれば、私が目指す不動産とは、工芸品に近いと言えると思います。明確なコンセプトやデザインがあって、それを実現するレベルの高いクラフトマンシップがあって、美しく、しかもそれを利用する人が長く使い続けられるものが工芸品です。優れた工芸品とは、常に「用と美」つまり、実用性と美しさとが融合したものです。

優れた工芸品としての不動産とは、どうあるべきか。それもまた、私にとって極めて重要な問いなのです。

建築のコストもまた、日本の不動産の新しい様式を生み出すにあたって避けては通れない問題です。現代の日本に残る美しい建物の多くは、公共のプロジェクトであったり、先に挙げた朝香宮などのように、皇族や大資本家などによって建てられたものであったりします。潤沢な資金を背景に、お金も時間も惜しむことなくかけることができたわけです。

現在の日本の一般の住居で、それと同じことができるはずはない。そんな考え方もあるでしょう。しかし、私はそうは思いません。ヒントは、商業系建築と住居系建築とのギャップにあります。

商業系物件の仕事をしていつもびっくりするのは、店舗の内装などに大変なお金がかけられていることです。高級ブランドの店舗なら、内装に一坪当たり200万円以上かけるケースも珍しくありません。それに対して、一般的な住居は、いかにコストをかけずに建てるかの勝負になります。建築総費用が一坪当たり50万円でも高いとされているのが住居の市場です。

この差が何に起因しているかは明らかです。商業建築はお金を生み出す。住居は、自宅であればお金を一銭も生み出さない。賃貸に出しても商業施設ほどの収益は生み出さない。だから、商業建築にはお金をかけられるが、住居にはかけられない──。そのような考え方が常識になっているからです。

私が一貫して問題にしているのは、まさしくその常識、「住居はお金を一銭も生み出さない」という常識です。

人々が商業建築にお金をかけるのは、そうやって建てた建物にお金を生み出すことを期待しているからです。ならば、住居もお金を生み出すことができれば、多くの建築費用を費やして、質の高い建物をつくることができるということです。それは可能なのか。

可能である、というのがこの本で私が何度も述べてきたことです。「洗練」「エモーショナル」「タイムレス」の3つの要素を備えた住居は、資産となるばかりでなく、その資産価値は時間がたっても落ちることはありません。壊されることもありません。少なくとも、パリやニューヨークではそれが不動産の真実です。日本にも、もちろんその真実は当てはまります。今の日本の住文化を変えることができるなら。

もちろん、商業系物件と住居では、収益の構造や事業計画のスパンは異なります。商業施設なら、うまくいけば建築時に費やした予算を数年で回収できるでしょう。住居の場合は売却時に、あるいは賃貸であれば月々の家賃収入と売却益によって、建築費用を回収することになります。その回収が完了するのが10年先なのか、20年先なのか、それとも50年先なのかはわかりません。

しかし、たとえ回収までに時間がかかったとしても、「資産価値が確かに残る」という揺るがぬ事実があれば、費用をかけて質の高い住宅をつくることができます。また逆に、質の高い住宅をつくることが資産価値を永続させることにもなります。そのような構造をつくり出せるかどうかによって、日本の不動産文化を刷新できるかどうかが決まるでしょう。

日本の住文化を変えるためには不動産文化を変えることが必要であり、そのためには不動産会社の組織のあり方も根本から改める必要があります。

通常、大手の不動産開発業者、つまりディベロッパーは、設計、建築といったクリエイティブ部門を社内に持っています。しかし、そういったクリエイティブ部門がビジネスの中心を担うことはほとんどありません。社内で圧倒的な力を持っているのは、お金を直接的に生み出す営業部門だからです。クリエイティブ部門とは、言ってみれば、営業部門の社内下請けに過ぎないのです。

営業担当者が重視しているのは、原価をできるだけ抑えて、早く、安くつくることです。金太郎飴のような物件を大量につくっても、それが売れるならまったく問題ではありません。情熱を傾け、手間暇をかけて一つひとつの物件をつくるのは完全な無駄である。そう考える営業担当者が少なくないのです。

この不動産会社の組織構造とそれを指示するトップの意識が、実は日本の住文化の多くの部分を規定してしまっていると私は考えています。営業主導で物件開発が進み、実際に物件をつくるクリエイターたちは、営業の顔色をうかがい、できるだけ時間とお金をかけずにそこそこのものをつくろうとする。そのようなビジネスの仕組みが優れた文化を生み出すはずはありません。

重要なのは、圧倒的に質の高いものをつくり、なおかつそれによって確実に収益を上げることです。クオリティと収益性が不可分のものとなるようなビジネスモデルをつくることです。そして、設計や建築部門の人たちが、自分たちの努力が収益性に結びついているという確かな手ごたえと誇りを得ることです。

不動産会社の営業担当者の多くは、自分が担当する物件を「俺の物件」だと思っています。プロデュースする権利が自分だけにある物件だと思っています。しかし、彼らにものづくりに必要なノウハウや知見はないから、結局、物件を囲い込んだ挙句に、金太郎飴のような何の個性もない姿で世に出してしまうわけです。そのような構図のなれの果てが、現在の日本の住文化というわけです。

不動産会社の中のいろいろな部門が対等な関係となって、クオリティと収益性が両立するモデルをつくること。その先にあるビジョンは、業種や会社の枠を超えて志を一にするメンバーが集う一種のアソシエーションをつくることです。

日本の住文化を変えるという壮大な目標は、一企業だけで達成できるものではありません。設計者、デザイナー、建築家、アーティスト、職人、建材のサプライヤー、場合によっては行政の担当者や政治家──。そういった人たちとプロフェッショナルの集団をつくり、一つのムーブメントとしていくことが、目標達成のためには絶対に必要であると思います。

そのアソシエーションの中心となるのは、ディベロッパーでなければなりません。仕事をゼロからつくり出し、アソシエーションの仲間たちに仕事の場を提供できるのはディベロッパーだけだからです。ディベロッパーである私たちモリオ自身が主導してアソシエーションをつくり、そこに集まった仲間たちの思いを束ね、イノベーションを起こしていく。これが私のビジョンです。

異なるプレーヤーを結びつけるのは、仕事への情熱であり志です。設計者やデザイナーや職人の多くは、クオリティもアイデアも熟練の技も求められない仕事を、ぎりぎりのコストの中で進めることが常態になっています。にもかかわらず、仕様や仕上がりの基準や納期は絶対に守らなければならない。そのような業界のあり方に、フラストレーションを募らせている人たちは少なくありません。

それに対して、「コストや時間をある程度かけてもいいから、とにかくいいものをつくってほしい」という発注が来れば、プロとしての力を存分に発揮することができるし、何より仕事が楽しくなるに違いありません。それによって、モチベーションが高まり、建物のクオリティが高まり、資産価値が高まり、十分な収益性が生まれる。そのようなスパイラルができれば、日本の住文化は大きく変わっていくでしょう。

モリオは、本物を求めるあまり現状に不満を抱える真摯な探求者の受け皿になります。情熱と技術を持て余しているプロフェッショナルの方は、ぜひわれわれのもとに参集してください。

住文化とは、いわば日本文化全体のインフラです。住文化という基盤の上に、いろいろな文化が育ち、それが総体としての日本文化を豊かにしていく。そう私は考えています。

例えば、現在の日本では、アートはアーティストやアートの専門家のものです。アートの世界と普通の人々の日常生活は分断されてしまっています。しかし、欧米の多くの国では、アートは人々の生活の一部であり、住文化とはっきり結びついています。

高い絵をみんなが購入しているという意味ではありません。ちょっとした絵や写真で家の壁をデコレートする。それがないと家が完成しない。そういう意味での日常です。暮らしの文化の中に美が当たり前のものとして包含されているということです。

美しいものを自分たちの暮らしの一部とする。それは明らかに一つの文化であると思います。そのような文化的基盤ができれば、そこで生きる人たちは自然に成熟してくことになります。江戸の町に生きた人たちの洗練は、江戸という町が持っていた文化の力が生み出したものです。

美しく、細部まで意識の行き届いた住居に住み、歩くだけで気持ちが落ち着くような街で育った子供と、美しさというものにまったく無頓着な環境に生きた子供がそれぞれ将来どのように育っていくか。その違いは明らかだと思います。美に対する意識が満ち溢れた環境で育った子供は、その美意識を自分の中に育て、大人になれば美を自ら生み出すことになるでしょう。文化と人との関係とはそういうものです。文化は人がつくり出すものですが、その文化が人を育てていくことにもなるのです。

人を育て、人を豊かにし、人を幸せにする。その文化のインフラとなるのが不動産である。それが私の確信です。

私たちモリオは、ビジネスのプレーヤーという意味では、いちディベロッパーに過ぎません。しかし、多くの大手ディベロッパーと異なるのは、自社が儲けること以上に、「世のため人のため」、つまり公共性を重視している点です。

いち企業である私たちが利益を上げることは、活動を続けていくための必須条件であることは言うまでもありませんが、それが私たちの目的の核ではありません。不動産業界に関わっている人たちが、自分たちのプロフェッショナリズムを十全に発揮することができて、極めてクオリティの高い建物が生まれ、そこに住む人たちの日々の生活が豊かになり、後年になってそれを売る際には十分な売却益が得られる。そういう不動産が日本全国に増えていって、日本の住文化の質が高まり、不動産全体の価値が上がり、それが日本経済を底上げする──。そこまでのビジョンを私たちは持っています。

建物だけではありません。街、景観、さらには都市までを生まれ変わらせることができたらどんなにいいでしょう。「不動産のイノベーション」というビジョンは、そこまでを含むものです。不動産のイノベーションによって変わるのは、日本の風景そのものなのです。私たちがパリやニューヨークに街並みそのものを楽しみに出かけるように、日本の都市の風景が変われば、日本の都市を楽しむために外国から人がたくさんやってくるでしょう。そうなれば、製品やサービスだけでなく、風景で外貨を稼げるようになるのです。

そういったビジョンを実現するための「旗」を立てることが自分の役割であると私は考えています。すでに、その旗のもとに参集してくれている人たちもいます。私とモリオが掲げるビジョンに魅力を感じ、「ぜひ一緒にやりたい」と言ってくれている人たちがいます。アソシエーションが実現すれば、そこからムーブメントが生まれます。いったんその流れができれば、もう誰にもその勢いは止められないはずです。

なぜならば、われわれが描く未来の姿と、その実現にむけた変革のグランドデザインは、圧倒的な説得力を持っているからです。たとえこれまでのビジネスモデルに固執して、既得権益を失いたくないと抵抗しようとも資産として生き続ける不動産と、美しい風景を本心から望まない人はいません。結論はもう出ているのです。

不動産イノベーションが実現すれば、戦後一貫して続いてきた「新築神話」と「住宅30年限界説」から日本の人々は解き放たれ、不動産は100年以上にわたって価値が保たれる本物の資産になるでしょう。

一度建てた家が「一生住み続けられる家」になれば、住宅ローンを払った後は住居費の負担はほとんどなくなり、その分、可処分所得が増えます。賃貸すれば、家賃収入が年金代わりになります。売却すれば、莫大な現金が手元に残ります。それだけではありません。その建物は、子、孫にまで受け継がれる財産にもなるのです。

つまり、不動産が資産になるということは、人々が経済的に現在よりも圧倒的に豊かになるということであり、不動産イノベーションを起こすことは、どんな経済政策よりも、骨太で本質的なソリューションになりうるということです。

イギリス人は、日本人などに比べると、あまり貯金をしない国民であると言われています。なぜなら、持ち家が貯金代わりになると考えているからです。不動産の価格は物件が古くなるほど上がっていくので、購入した時よりも必ずと言っていいほど高く売れる。これを「貯金」と見なすのです。現在の日本からは考えられないことですが、不動産イノベーションが起これば、日本でもこのようなことが当たり前になるでしょう。

住居の建て替えが必要なくなれば、欧米のように内装やインテリアにもっとお金をかけることができるようになります。結果、日常生活の中にアートが普通にあるような洗練されたライフスタイルが実現し、人々の美的感覚もより豊かになっていくでしょう。

個人の経済レベルや文化レベルが上がるだけではありません。個々の不動産に「美」という重要な要素が加われば、都市の美観も当然向上します。現在の日本の雑多で猥雑な街並みが美しい建物の集合体になり、街の風景が美しく変わるのです。そうなれば、日本人が美しい街並みを見るために欧米各国を訪れるように、日本にも「街を見る」という観光が生まれるでしょう。

建物や街並みという「ハード」が、さまざまな魅力的なコンテンツという「ソフト」が掛け合わされることで、何倍もの価値を生みます。日本のコンテンツには、世界でもトップクラスの魅力があります。食、アニメ、ゲーム、ファッション、四季、自然、おもてなし、治安──。それらの日本が世界に誇るべきコンテンツに、「街並み」が新たに加わるわけです。それによって、日本という国の観光価値が向上し、観光による収益が増大することになります。

パリ、ローマ、ロンドンといった街は、建物を壊さず、街の景観を何百年にもわたって守り続けてきました。それによって、現在に至るまで高い収益を上げ続けています。この収益性は今後も継続していくでしょう。永続的に高い収益を稼ぎ続ける街並みは、経済効果が高く効率的な社会の真の資産なのです。今後の日本の都市開発における本質的な課題は、パリやローマやロンドンのように、「永遠に稼ぎ続ける街をつくる」ことであると言っていいでしょう。

ニューヨークやパリ、ロンドンの不動産を購入することは、世界中のセレブリティにとって、一種のステイタスシンボルになっています。日本の不動産の価値が向上し、グローバルな不動産マーケットでプレミアムなポジションを得ることができれば、世界のセレブリティがニューヨークやパリやロンドンと同じ土俵で日本の不動産物件を比較検討するようになるでしょう。そうなれば、日本の不動産の価値は跳ね上がることになります。

現在、マンハッタンと東京都心部の不動産価格には大きな開きがあります。マンションで見ると、この原稿を書いている2017年の年初時点において日本で一番高い価格で販売されているのは「元麻布パークハウス」で、区分価格が7億5000万円です。一方、マンハッタンには、30億円から100億円の区分物件がいくらでもあります。

重要なのは、その価格帯の中に築100年以上の物件がたくさんあるということです。元麻布パークハウスは築10年弱です。日本で築40年以上の物件を検索すると、「赤坂アーバンライフ」の2億5000万円が最高値です。築100年を超す物件がないので正確には比較しようがありませんが、マンハッタンと東京の不動産価格には、先進国と発展途上国くらいの差であると言っていいでしょう。

グローバル化によって、人、もの、金がボーダーレスに行き来するようになり、商品やサービスの価値が世界共通のマーケットの中で公平にジャッジされるようになっている現代において、日本の不動産は、その国際競争から取り残されてガラパゴス化している。この事実を、日本の人々はもっと重く受け止めるべきであると思います。

日本はもともと、世界的に見ても非常に魅力的な自然と美しい四季を持つ国です。その日本を、特徴も魅力もない金太郎飴のような街が点在する国にしてしまった歴代の政治家やディベロッパーの責任は非常に重いと私は思います。今こそ、新しいビジョンを提示し、日本が本来持っているポテンシャルを発揮するための取り組みを始めるべきです。このままでは、日本は「不動産後進国」の暗い道をまっしぐらに歩み続けることになります。

不動産イノベーションはまた、日本の都市部への異常な人口集中を是正することにもなります。

海外の先進国と比べても、東京を中心とする首都圏への人口集中は度を越しています。しかし、首都圏都市部の不動産価格が高騰すれば、物件を購入することが難しくなり、多くの人が郊外や地方に住まいを求めるようになるでしょう。結果、人口が分散していくことになるでしょう。

それは決して「勝ち組」と「負け組」を生み出すということではありません。経済力、価値観、ライフスタイル、嗜好性などに応じて、住むところを決められるようになるということです。都心でマンションを購入することが幸福の指標ではありません。お金があって、都市が好きならそうすればいいというだけのことです。住宅に費やせるお金がそれほどなく、かつ自然が好きなら、地方に住めばいいのです。先に紹介したフランスのサンリスのように、都会から離れた美しい村で過ごすことも幸福の一つの形です。

地方では、空き物件が年々増え続け、コミュニティが急速に劣化しています。どの自治体も地方活性化をスローガンにしていますが、地方を活性化させるほぼ唯一と言っていいソリューションは、「人口が増えること」です。そのためには、「地方に住みたい」と考える人が増えなればなりません。「一生ここで暮らしてもいい」と思える街並みが日本中になければなりません。だから、不動産イノベーションは地方においても必須なのです。

海外には、地方の価値を高める、という点で究極というべき取り組みをしている人物がいます。カシミアニットで有名なイタリアのファッションブランド「ブルネロ・クチネリ」の創業者であるブルネロ・クチネリ氏です。彼は、まさに「美」という視点によって、地方の小さな村の経済的価値、文化的価値を大きく高めた人です。

彼は、自分のブランドを立ち上げたあと、妻の生まれ故郷であるウンブリア地方のソロメオという小さな村に移住し、14世紀に建てられた古城を買い取り、それをリノベーションしてブルネロ・クチネリの本社としました。それだけではなく、村にあった工場を買い取って生まれ変わらせ、教会も修復し、図書館、アートフォーラムなどを建設し、ソロメオというさびれた村をファッションと文化と芸術の拠点としました。さらに、アートフォーラムの建築に携わった職人の技術を守ろうと、クラフトマンを育成するための「ソロメオ学校」も立ち上げたのです。

彼の理念と行動に、私は心から敬服しています。不動産イノベーションのお手本のような人物。そう言っていいと思います。

それぞれの地方が、それぞれに工夫を凝らし、その土地のアイデンティティを体現した美しい街をつくり、そこを気に入って根を下ろす人たちが増える──。その前提となるのが不動産イノベーションです。

テクノロジーの進化や交通網の発達で、都市部と地方の利便性という点での格差は以前ほどなくなっています。地方にいても、あるいは離島にいても、常に最新の情報を入手できます。都市部に住まないとできない仕事は、以前と比べて非常に少なくなっています。

バブル時代にも、郊外や地方の開発は盛んでした。しかし、あの時代にはまだ、中央至上主義、都市至上主義が色濃くありました。都市部に住めないのは負け組という価値観がありました。不動産イノベーションは、その価値観から人々を解放します。

日本中に、美しく、何十年も何百年も住み続けられる物件が増えれば、都市にも郊外にも地方にも、その場所ならではの美しい街並みが生まれ、その土地ならではの生活のスタイルが生まれ、そこに住む人たちは自分が住む場所に心から誇りと愛着を持てるようになるでしょう。不動産イノベーションは、日本の経済力を上げるだけでなく、人口集中、地方の衰退と過疎化、空き家問題などをまとめて解決することのできる最強のソリューションなのです。

安倍晋三首相はかつて、日本を「美しい国」にすると宣言しました。そのビジョンを実現するためには、不動産イノベーションが絶対に必要です。不動産イノベーションによって美しい建物が生まれ、その結果として美しい都市が生まれる。その都市は世界中の羨望の対象となり、称賛の的となるでしょう。そうして日本人は、自分の国に愛着と誇りを持ち、日本人としてのアイデンティをより強く意識するようになるでしょう。その結果、日本は、経済だけではなく文化的に世界にも堂々と胸を張れる本当の意味で「美しい国」になるでしょう。

もちろん、それほど簡単なことでないことは覚悟しています。そのビジョンを実現するためには、不屈のスピリットが求められるはずです。実現を目指す過程では、大変な緊張を強いられる戦いが続くでしょう。しかし、私はそれを恐れてはいません。むしろ、その過程を楽しみたいと思っています。

勢いに任せ、拙速にものごとを進めることは避けなければなりません。しっかりと地に足をつけ、私たちが掲げる理念を共有してくれる仲間を一人ひとり増やしていき、盤石のチームをつくり、その総力によって成果を一つひとつ挙げていく。そんなふうに事業を進めていきたいと思います。

もちろんスピードも大切です。歴史を紐解けば、ごく短い間に成し遂げられた変革は数え切れません。パラダイムシフトと呼ぶにふさわしい大変革は、そうしたものなのかもしれません。みんなが「これが勝ち馬だ」と思えば、雪崩を打ってそちらにシフトし、従来の価値観や常識は忘れ去られます。

その光景をこの目で見届けるために、自分の命を燃やし尽くしてでも、日本の不動産文化を変え、住文化を変えるというビジョンを私は実現していきます。そしてその思いを一人でも多くの仲間と共有したいのです。

その夢を実現する第一歩として、この本を書くことを決めました。この本を読んで共感していただけたなら、日本の不動産にイノベーションを起こすために、私たちと一緒に行動を起こしてください。不動産業界に関わる方であれば自らの事業を通じて、美しい家、美しい街、美しい国をつくる努力をしてください。

私たちは今、それを実際に形にするための知識と経験を死にものぐるいで自分たちのものにしようとしているところです。私たちに足りない実績、資本力、人材などを持っているなら、どうぞ力を貸してください。その代わり、私たちも一切の出し惜しみはしません。力を結集して、日本の不動産の新しい時代を拓いていきましょう。

この本を読んで、「大した実績もないのに何を大きなことを言っているんだ」と思われた方もいるはずです。もしかしたら、こちらのほうが多いかもしれません。でも、本を書いたり発言したりして一番つらいのは何の反応もないことなので、そういう声もありがたく受けとめます。フラットアイアンビルの設計者ダニエル・バーナムは、次のような言葉を残しています。

日本の不動産にイノベーションを起こすという私の計画は、大きさという点ではバーナムの「シカゴ・プラン」に引けを取らないと自負しています。笑われたり、「できっこない」と断じられることは私たちの成長の糧であり、何ら心をくじくものではありません。「バカ者」の顔を一度見てやろうという方は、ぜひ私たちに会いに来てください。じっくり話をする機会をいただければ、それほどうれしいことはありません。

みなさんのアクションを心からお待ちしています。