Well, one thing to keep in mind while reading this is that in Japan, house turnover is unusually high. In the sense that often (or at least much more than in US), a family will tear down and construct a new home when buying a property.
So in such an environment, innovative / different construction techniques are much more testable and able to be experimented with. And when the costs are being compared against full build, the cost of an even expensive prefab unit is not so bad.
I think the implication is that if estate taxes are high, then when someone dies their estate is calculated as hard assets + cash and they have to split that somehow to pay the tax.
If taxes were 25% and the house was worth 200k and the deceased had 20k in cash, you'd end up paying 55k in taxes but only have 20k in cash to pay it with unless the descendants used their own funds. As such, it's easier to sell the house, take the 220k and pay the taxes.
That is common in the US for mansions. You buy the lot for the view and put the house you want on it. Sometimes you remodel the existing house, but that is only if needed to work around some sort of legal issue - the remodel is leave one wall standing, and when done a second remodel to replace that one wall.
For most people the cost of the building is enough that if it is functional you would want to use it.
Also, although still a generalization, quite a different attachment to things, especially buildings, partly due to the routine exposure to natural catastrophes.
I mean, sure people are attached to old buildings and monuments, but even those can be rebuilt more or less often.
I don't known if this is related or a reflection of a similar cultural thinking, but there is the important Ise Jingu shrine that gets torn down and rebuilt every 20 years, even though it is conceptually like 1500 years old.
20 years between rebuilds is just enough to transfer the knowledge and the craft to the next generation - and the craft is what they want to keep. I wrote a bit more about that in another post.
It's one of those things (like pieces of code) where:
A) You should build often enough that the institutional knowledge and practice can be handed down effectively between generations
or
B) Not build until it breaks and the people doing it have to rediscover and properly design it again from scratch.
It's the dangerous middle ground where people need to modify/rebuild something in the meantime, but lost the practice and knowledge about how to do it properly!
Earthquakes and typhoons. Historically buildings in Japan have been transient out of necessity, so it permeates Japanese culture.
Even shrines and temples are periodically rebuilt. For instance the Ise Grand Shrine (one of the most, maybe even the most important shrine of Japan) was rebuilt in 2015, for the 62nd time...
Even the wooden artifacts inside are being rebuilt. I was in Ise watching the rebuild the previous time. Bridges, buildings, everything. The new building is built beside the old building, a new bridge beside the old one and then you tear down the old ones (and that material is then re-used at other smaller shrines). Next time you swap back.
I was wondering about this system until someone in an Ise pub handed me a leaflet where it was all explained.
The Japanese believe that what's important to keep is the knowledge and the craft - how to build the things. The actual buildings aren't important - the history is in the craft, not in the buildings themselves. If nobody keeps building then the "how" is forgotten and the historical buildings will then just degrade and disappear over time anyway. And I understand that completely. I've watched how very experienced people try to recreate the techniques of building old boats, and even after years and believing they "got it right" there are still gotchas (and near-fatal disasters). So the Japanese figure that rebuilding everything every 20 years is just enough to transfer knowledge and the "how to" to younger people. A good millennium of rebuilding is a good track record in that respect.
>The Japanese believe that what's important to keep is the knowledge and the craft - how to build the things. The actual buildings aren't important - the history is in the craft, not in the buildings themselves.
There was an NHK program I saw recently that interviewed a carpenter who specialized in temple construction (I think he built a store front for a restaurant shown on the program, but I can't find it). I was wondering how that could ever be enough work to live off of. But now it makes sense.
So in such an environment, innovative / different construction techniques are much more testable and able to be experimented with. And when the costs are being compared against full build, the cost of an even expensive prefab unit is not so bad.