In the hills of Kamakura, Japan’s ancient samurai capital, Brian Heywood supervises a crew of 12 workers putting the finishing touches to a new house, set on a spacious hilltop surrounded by blooming wild cherry trees with views to Sagami Bay to the west and Mount Fuji in the distance.
“I wanted to transport people who drove up to another world,” Mr. Heywood, 57, said on a recent afternoon.
The little more than an acre of land in this seaside town about 30 miles south of Tokyo was a feat of negotiation and preservation. The property, which Heywood calls “Shozan,” is a bizarre amalgam of a three-century-old wooden house, a 150-year-old abandoned Buddhist temple, and other cultural artifacts. All of this was meticulously dismantled, moved here from its original locations, and rebuilt over a five-year period. Its aesthetic and basic design have been carefully maintained. But the building features modern amenities like heated floors and Western proportions, like higher ceilings and large doors, that reflect its American owners.
Heywood sees Shozan as an environmental movement that ties into his conservative worldview. Some of the buildings had been abandoned or scheduled for demolition, but he chose to donate them rather than have them restricted by the Japanese government as “cultural properties.” Meanwhile, while he completes a nature-focused facility in Kamakura, he is spearheading the fight to repeal climate change legislation in his home state of Washington. His work aligns with what he sees as “government intervention disguised as a good program that actually takes money from people who need it and does no good,” he said.
Haywood, an Arizona native, first came to Japan in the 1980s as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “From the day I arrived, I was fascinated by the temples, the homes and the gardening,” he says. “In Osaka, I visited old country houses with rows of bonsai trees outside, some of which were said to be 100 years old. It represented the cultivation and preservation of beauty over generations, a concept unheard of in the Western United States.”
After working with and investing in Japanese companies for decades, he now heads a Japan-focused investment and advisory firm based in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland, but he wanted to build a traditional home here to rival his 40-acre farm in Redmond, Washington.
Shozan is in an upscale neighborhood near the Great Buddha, a 44-foot-tall bronze statue that has stood facing the sea for seven centuries. Above the main entrance hangs a large wooden plaque that reads “Shozan,” a Japanese word that combines the characters for “kusunoki” (camphor) and “yama” (mountain). “Shozan” refers to the three camphor trees that tower over the property, reminding Heywood of the giant camphor trees that are home to forest spirits in the 1988 animated classic “My Neighbor Totoro.”
Like that film, Shozan deals with fantasy, a constructed fantasy called Japan.
The main residence consists of two sturdy tile-roofed farmhouses, each about 200 years old, which Heywood and architect Masataka Sakano found hundreds of miles away in the snowy mountains of Toyama Prefecture with the help of a Japanese Jodo Shinshu miyadaiku (contractor for the imperial court).
When Heywood found it, the farmhouse, like many old buildings in rural Japan, was uninhabited. The owners had considered demolishing it, but it took many negotiations before they were convinced of the idea of ​​giving up possessions that had been passed down for generations. Heywood, who speaks fluent Japanese, promised to be the caretaker. When they finally agreed, a team of about 20 specialized shrine and temple carpenters dismantled the farmhouse, numbering each plank, including a massive ox-strewn beam that was about 43 feet long, and transported it by truck to Kamakura. Heywood acquired the buildings for free, paying only for the cost of leveling the land so it could be used again.
The two homes were then merged into one L-shaped property of a size and luxury rare in Japan. A stately foyer with 15-foot-high ceilings leads to an airy family room and kitchen with a spacious marble island, restaurant-grade gas stove and a dining table made from two zelkova planks. A highlight is the steel-and-glass extension from the kitchen that opens onto a wide wooden balcony with views of camphor trees and the Pacific Ocean in the distance.
A flight of stairs leads through oversized doors removed from a traditional storehouse to the master bedroom. Beneath a 20-foot-high ceiling, a king-size bed sits on a raised platform next to a work area where Mr. Haywood’s wife, Rochelle Haywood, paints watercolors of geishas and samurai. Outside the window, Mount Fuji towers on the horizon.
“I’m a super visual person, but Brian is a thinker, a doer and a maker,” says Mrs. Heywood, 57, who has three grown children with her husband. “Shozan is where I come back to Japan and breathe.”
The home’s hybrid features include an oversized Japanese cypress bathtub and a traditional tatami-floored bedroom with decidedly non-traditional décor, including beanbag cushions and plush armchairs. Like the doors, the hallways are wider than usual to better suit Heywood’s 6-foot-3 frame.
“The essence of this project is a collaboration between American and Japanese culture. My main job was to strike that balance,” said Sakano, 50, who attended Berklee College of Music in Boston and worked as a professional saxophonist in New York before becoming an architect.
“There are so many forms in traditional Japanese culture,” Sakano says, “but they go beyond what Japanese people think. Houses before the Kamakura period were completely different from today, and had a sense of openness. So there is more to it than people think. This project aims to reconstruct that.”
To create the guesthouse, Sakano and Heywood found a nearly 400-year-old merchant’s house (a folk house) 185 miles west, near Lake Biwa. Heywood says the house is still owned by the original family that built it “about 27 generations ago.” Dismantled and rebuilt, the house combines traditional elements, like carved wood paneling over sliding doors and a central hearth, with modern appliances and a toilet.
Architectural preservationist Toyohiro Nishimura advised the house’s previous owners in their negotiations with Heywood. “We want to preserve the old house, but it’s difficult due to depopulation, and it would be expensive to reuse it as private lodging,” Nishimura said. “The house was a symbol of the area. The locals are happy that it will not be lost, but will continue to exist in Kamakura for another 100 or 200 years.”
Mr. Heywood got through the rigorous permitting process by nemawashi, the Japanese practice of forging agreements before making a formal proposal. (A Kamakura city hall spokesman said he could not provide any information about the project.) And as construction progressed, neighbors worried that a Buddhist cult was taking over the land, so Mr. Heywood organized a mochi-pounding event, a traditional neighborhood gathering to make glutinous rice, to explain the project and ease their fears, he said.
“I’ve heard stories of people demolishing their houses because they don’t want the government to designate them as heritage sites, which they can’t change anything about,” Heywood said. “If you can’t sell it because you can’t change it, then the place has no value, so the smartest thing to do is to demolish the house. Government intervention is unfairly encouraging the destruction of something beautiful.”
Haywood has a history of challenging what he sees as government overreach. In Washington, he’s the lead sponsor of several ongoing ballot measures, including a repeal of the state’s new capital gains tax on high-income earners and the Climate Commitment Act, which aims to fight climate change through a cap-and-trade system that he blames for soaring gas and food prices. His efforts have infuriated Democrats, who argue those laws fund the state’s education, renewable energy and health care costs.
“I’m a Republican, and no Republican would say, ‘I want our air and water to be dirtier,'” he said. In his view, current law “doesn’t help the climate at all. It’s a total money-making machine.”
Stuart Elway, a longtime Washington pollster, noted that the state Legislature has already passed some of Haywood’s bills and others will be on the November ballot. “If they pass in part or in full, we’ll start to learn a lot more about him,” Elway said.
Haywood was born to a poor family in rural Arizona, on land “overgrown with tumbleweeds, strong winds and scrub,” Haywood said. He went on to Harvard University, majoring in East Asian studies. A lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he had hoped to serve as a missionary in the Soviet Union, but was instead sent to Japan, where he learned Japanese language communication and negotiation skills. He built a business career, founding Taiyo Pacific Partners in 2001. The firm helped the management buy Roland Corporation, a popular electronic musical instrument manufacturer, in 2014. Haywood and then-CEO Junichi Miki took the company private and restructured it. Roland relisted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2021.
Miki has also stayed at Shozan. “Everyone said, ‘That’s impossible,’ and ‘There’s no precedent,’ but Brian had a strong attachment to old houses, and after many negotiations he achieved a wonderful result,” Miki says.
Heywood articulated a vision of controlling nature in a small space, reflecting what he called “the beauty of God’s majesty in the macro.” When he bought the land, it was covered in bamboo, vines, Asian giant hornets and venomous giant hornets. He approached the wilderness with a missionary-like zeal.
“Total chaos is not necessarily beautiful,” said Heywood, who declined to disclose the cost of the project. “Structured chaos is interesting. The art of Japanese gardens is to take something that is very intricately planned and make it look as if it just happened naturally.”
The details of Matsuyama’s garden were overseen by Kawauchi Isao, a landscape gardener with deep roots in Kamakura. He preserved all the plants that could grow on the site while adding distinctive features such as water basins and lanterns, some of which date back to the late 17th century. “We don’t use anything new, only historical stones. Without them there’s no atmosphere,” said Kawauchi, 74.
But Mr. Heywood’s gem of a paradise was a Buddhist temple he found about 160 miles away, near Shirakawa-go, a historic village of thatched-roof farmhouses. Like thousands across Japan, the temple was in ruins, its graceful curved roof in danger of collapsing due to flooding.
Local residents and the Jodo Shinshu sect gave Heywood permission to move the 150-year-old temple to Zhang Zan after a Buddhist demolition ceremony, a Shinto ground-breaking ceremony and a rebuild, complete with a giant bronze bell from a temple outside Tokyo. Now restored and equipped with air conditioning, AV equipment, beanbag chairs and exercise equipment, the temple serves as a cinema, yoga studio and corporate retreat.
“When you bring together someone like Sakano, who has a Japanese sense of aesthetics and great craftsmanship, with an American who believes there are no boundaries, something amazing happens,” Heywood said.
