[gentle upbeat music playing] - [Philippe Voiceover] My name's Philippe Simay.

I'm a philosopher, and I'm interested in what architecture tells us about our lifestyles.

I'll take you to explore the most singular habitats on the planet, to discover the meaning behind them and to share in their riches.

[meditative music playing] Day breaks over Kyoto, a city with a prestige dating from the time it was the imperial capital of Japan, for more than a thousand years, until 1869.

Nestled at the foot of its surrounding hills, Kyoto is today a modern city, but one which has successfully been able to conserve the greatest cultural riches of Japan.

With its 2000 temples and shrines spread out across every district, the city is impregnated with the sacred.

[pedestrians chatting] [meditative music continuing] The quintessence of Japanese lifestyle can be seen in its architecture, its bridges, its gardens and nature, which is celebrated everywhere.

[meditative music continuing] [water trickling] To me, visiting this city is like going back in time, to discover the machiya of craftsmen, which were townhouses constructed from the 17th century on.

Built entirely in wood, intimately linked to nature, and imbued with spirituality, they perfectly reflect their city, which was composed mostly of wooden homes until the end of World War II.

Although many machiya have been demolished since the early 20th century, these past few years have seen a keen interest in them arise.

There are 8000 of them still spread across the city, fixed up and lived in.

[meditative music continuing] [car engine rumbling] [bike gears rattling] I wonder if this clearly-stated choice of living in a traditional residence is driven by cultural or architectural motives?

[bike stand clanging] Why in the modern world, would anyone want to live in a home anchored in an ancestral lifestyle?

[Philippe knocking] - Hi!

- Hello!

Welcome, welcome!

We were expecting you.

- Thank you very much.

- Please come in.

- Wonderful!

Amazing.

- This is our garden.

- Amazing!

- This is my wife Fumi, and my son Junichirô.

- Hello.

- Nice to meet you.

- Please... - Thanks.

- This way.

[footsteps passing] - [Philippe] Three years ago, Keichiro decided to live in this machiya where he's greeting me today.

[gentle music playing] Disenchanted with uniform, over-sanitized modern architecture, he bought this abandoned townhouse and had it restored to its original style.

- 10 minutes to go... [Fumi and Keichiro speaking Japanese] Machiya are the result of knowhow accumulated by the carpenters of the past.

They're the quintessence of Japanese culture.

I thought to myself, "If one day I'm to own my home, "I want it to be a house like this."

Even if lots of people say that a machiya isn't very comfortable.

I love discovering, day in, day out, the wisdom and the smart tricks invented by our ancestors.

Thanks to that, I find that the machiya is very pleasant to live in.

- [Philippe] Do you think that these very old houses can be adapted for modern-day life?

- [Keichiro] With modern-day objects and appliances, a machiya is very comfortable to live in.

In fact, it's a very flexible house; very easy to transform.

In that sense, it's totally adapted to modern living.

[gentle music playing] - [Philippe] Keichiro takes me upstairs.

The most spacious part of the house and, in his eyes, the most representative, due to the fact that it can be modulated and transformed according to his needs.

Beyond the functional aspects, I'm also struck by the bareness of this floor.

Rooms and corridors are empty, with few objects or decoration.

There's nothing here to remind you of modern daily life.

It's as if I've gone back in time.

What room is this, exactly?

- This is our guest room.

Philippe, you are our guest today.

Would you like to stay here, in our guest room?

Yes, here.

- Very well.

[Keichiro laughing] And so what is this room?

- This is reserved for official guests.

It's the most important room in the house.

In fact, it's designed so that the guest has the best possible view from the room.

- [Philippe] And this space is completely adaptable depending on the situation?

- [Keichiro] Exactly.

For example, you can remove the sliding doors.

You do it like this.

- [Philippe] You can remove them all?

- Yes.

And all you're left with are the pillars and beams.

In fact, the house is built with a very light wooden structure.

And for it to resist earthquakes, it must have a very simple structure and very light furniture.

[sprightly music playing] - [Philippe] A Westerner might find the house devoid of all life, but a quote from the writer Junichiro Tanizaki springs to mind: "Beauty is given to a Japanese room "by the absence of all accessories."

But in a machiya, emptiness is merely apparent.

It makes room for the essential: natural materials, simple forms, and pure lines, which create an open space diffused with light.

- [Keichiro] The basics of Japanese architecture are very simple.

There are pillars and beams, but no actual walls.

In a way, the building and nature are connected in space.

Japanese design is very simple and minimalist.

All superfluous decoration is absent, and a single flower decorates the empty space.

That's the Japanese aesthetic.

[meditative music playing] - [Philippe] I go down to see Fumi, who practices ikebana, Japanese flower arranging.

[flowers rustling] Ikebana is more than making a bouquet of flowers.

What does it represent to you?

- Japan has four distinct seasons, so we want to introduce nature into the home, by decorating it with flowers depending on the time of year.

We not only put flowers in full bloom, but also buds which are yet to blossom.

And that's how we introduce time into ikebana, and we try to represent its passing in nature.

This arrangement is composed of red and white flowers, two colors of prosperity in Japan.

These are because we're welcoming you as a guest today.

[gentle music playing] - [Philippe] Everything, down to the simplest gesture, is codified here.

Keichiro's gardeners, who are here working this morning, also seem to have very clear directives.

What are you planting today?

- [Gardener] This is a type of cherry tree known as a Hana Kaidô.

Narukawa-san asked to plant a seasonal tree which he could admire from the living room.

In the machiya, the garden is just next to the living room, so that it can be contemplated from there.

Unlike in Europe, we don't go into the garden to rest or for a barbecue.

Do you want to help us plant it?

- [Philippe] Okay, where do I put it, here?

- [Gardener] Yes.

[dirt shuffling] - So I just place the moss?

- Yes, and without pressing down too hard.

The moss will take root by itself.

- Why do all machiya have a garden?

- Machiyas are located in densely-packed spaces.

So it's difficult to introduce nature here.

So the presence of a garden is essential to obtaining light and a breeze, for example.

- I guess so, but they must exist more than just for functional reasons.

Is there a symbolic dimension to the garden?

- Yes, indeed.

This small garden is like a vast imaginary landscape.

This stone symbolizes an island, as does that one over there.

We use an effect of perspective to make the garden look much bigger than it really is.

- [Philippe] So the garden is more for contemplation than it is functional.

- [Keichiro] Exactly.

Traditionally, the garden was purely for contemplation, and children weren't allowed to play in it.

It was reserved for the master of the house.

But that has all changed today.

Now you can go out and walk on the stones.

But some parts are still forbidden.

You can step here.

Here, too.

This is okay.

But this is forbidden.

[gentle music playing] - [Philippe] In home gardens in Europe, there are always lots of plants.

Here, I find it astonishing and very beautiful that there are so few plants, and just a few flowers laid out in a very balanced way across the whole garden.

- [Keichiro] The reason there aren't so many plants and flowers is because in the universe of a Japanese garden, the ma are very important.

Ma are voids, empty spaces.

Visually, ma and plants create a rhythm together in space.

When you're sitting in the master of the house's spot, you feel like you're looking out onto a large tree.

But if you really look there, you see a much smaller plant.

All is very calculated.

So you must have voids.

That way, each individual plant creates a world around it, and all these small worlds form a larger universe.

If there are no ma and everything is joined together, there would be only one single universe with no perspective.

- What is the true meaning of ma?

- Ma is what you could call the "off" part of space, a "design of emptiness".

When you think of design, you think of the design of something that exists physically.

But ma is the design of what doesn't exist.

[gentle music playing] - [Philippe] I'm astonished to see how much each part, or function, of a machiya is loaded with spiritual meaning.

I'm starting to understand that in Japan, the concept of space is based on a philosophy in which the senses and the sacred are inseparable.

It's not a matter of chance that temples and machiya are forms of architecture with wood constituting the entire structure.

I head up to the wooded hills overlooking the city to visit the Buddhist temple Senyuji.

Master carpenter Tadanori Kimura is currently overseeing its restoration.

Like his predecessors of bygone years, he has the necessary skills to restore both a machiya and an imperial temple.

- You're a master carpenter who restores the most sacred temples in Japan.

So why are you interested in machiya, which are basically working-class townhouses?

- [Kimura] Nowadays, constructions in wood, be it a temple, a shrine, or a house, are technically very similar.

If you want to pass on traditional techniques to the next generation, the carpenters of Kyoto have to know how to rebuild anything.

- [Philippe] Restoring a temple like this one presupposes the knowledge of very old techniques.

- [Kimura] Regarding wooden architecture, ancient Japanese techniques reached a certain level of perfection.

The farther you go back in time, the more the construction techniques are "basic," but the results are extraordinary.

Since antiquity, Japanese culture has embraced wood, and we still continue to build with it.

It's an indispensable material in our homes.

In machiya, there's notably the main pillar, a huge piece of timber, along with the spiritual heart of the house: the tokonoma, the alcove shrine.

I'm convinced that to maintain a wooden house, you must love it and take good care of it.

My laborers are working on this gate, Chukushu-mon, because a decorative flower broke off.

So they're now restoring it.

If we let it deteriorate farther, it would be seen as negligence on the part of the head monk.

So we need to show people that we're taking care of these buildings.

[meditative music playing] - [Philippe] The philosopher, Martin Heidegger, said that "building is not simply constructing a dwelling, it's making it live," by which he meant creating a fundamental relationship between man and the world.

This notion of unity gives space its full meaning.

In Kyoto, the machiya embodies this livable space where everything is linked, where the house is as much a way of being as an object, where architecture not only serves to organize the various rooms, but also to place man at the center of his home.

[Philippe shuffling] - I'm setting up an ornament called kabuto.

- A kabuto is a samurai helmet?

- That's right.

It's for "Children's Day", formerly "Boys' Day," when parents wished for their sons' good health.

First, you put this piece here, and the other piece here.

Now I'll put it in the tokonoma.

Like that, everyone can see it.

[meditative music beginning] - [Philippe] The passing on of this ritual to his son is one more way for Keichiro to be in osmosis with his house.

Here, in front of the tokonoma, or recess, I realize that everything is designed for harmony: tradition and gesture, mind and matter.

- [Philippe] Keichiro, is this machiya built all with the same wood?

- No, in fact, there are a number of species used in Kyoto machiya.

Take the design of this tokonoma.

This is ebony, and that's cherry.

We also use cedar from the island of Yakushima.

But the most important part is this pillar, the toko bashira.

- So it's this sugi-tree trunk that gives true worth not only to the tokonoma, but to the whole room?

- [Keichiro] For the main pillar, we use sugi wood from the forest of Kitayama, in the hills of Kyoto.

It's a tree native to Kyoto, with delicate folds on the surface.

For this pillar, we used Kitayama sugi, as it's a very precious wood.

And I'm very proud of it!

[meditative music beginning] - [Philippe] With such praises sung of this wood, I was keen to visit the cradle of this wonder tree, the mysterious forest of Kitayama.

Just a few kilometers northwest of Kyoto, I finally find myself standing before these sugi trees, the cedars native to Japan.

Deep within the forest, I meet forester Osamu Nakata, a master of the singular art of growing these trees and producing timber for the construction of machiya.

- You hold it here- - Okay.

- and pull downwards.

- Okay.

- Your turn.

- Here?

- Yes, and one big pull.

[tree branch cracking] Good job!

That's excellent!

[both laughing] - [Philippe] Amidst these trees standing at attention on the hillside, pointing to the sky, I realize that their wood is more than a future pillar or beam.

It's a sensitive material that bears all the virtues that the people of Kyoto attribute to nature and to the forest of Kitayama, the oldest cultivated forest in the world.

It's fantastic!

[gravel crunching] [wood scraping] [bark cracking] [Philippe grunting] How did I do?

- Very well.

[wood scraping] - [Philippe] I'm pretty proud of myself.

The amazing thing is, once you've removed the bark, the wood is so smooth and light.

- Yes, and as the tree contains water, the surface is still a bit damp.

- Once the bark is off, how does it dry?

- We leave it to dry a while in the forest.

And then we cut it and take it to our depot.

We have plenty of trees drying out in our depot.

Shall we go see?

- Okay, let's go!

[energetic music beginning] - [Philippe] On the way to his village, Nakata-san tells me why sugi wood became so precious.

In the 16th century, the greatest tea ceremony master in Japan, Sen Rikyu, was seeking to perfect his art, and on discovering the sugi, found that its paleness and softness would be the absolute refinement and represented, in his eyes, the aesthetic ideal of a tea-house.

[birds singing] [water trickling] Like all the master foresters who preceded him in his village, Osamu Nakata has continued to improve his technique to obtain this aesthetic ideal.

- [Nakata] These are sugi trunks after being polished.

They're the end product.

- [Philippe] They look so light.

[Philippe grunting] But I couldn't carry one for long.

[both laughing] Will all these trunks be used for building machiya?

- No, the trunks used in machiya are these ones.

They're used as pillars in the tokonoma.

Their purpose is to highlight what's on display, so the tokonoma stand out.

That's the most important role of these trees.

Without sugi, the objects displayed in the tokonoma wouldn't appear so beautiful.

That's the role these trees play.

[relaxed music playing] [water trickling] [sand scraping] - [Nakata] This way.

We're sanding down the trunk.

With real sand!

[sand scraping] It's sand that you can find only at the bottom of a pool beneath a waterfall called Bodai no taki.

The grains are very fine, and break up easily.

Since the olden days, this sand has been used to sand and polish sugi.

- Can I try?

- Sure, try with my mother!

- Okay.

- Go ahead.

Mama, can you show him how?

- Okay, I take some sand... - [Nakata's Mother] Take a handful of sand, put it on the trunk, then rub.

- Like this?

- Yes.

- And then I rub?

- That's right.

[sand scraping] - It's like massaging the wood.

- [Nakata's Mother] See how it cleans the surface of the trunk?

It becomes all smooth!

- You smooth out all the rough patches, and you can still feel the veins in the wood.

It's very sensual.

[sand scrubbing] - [Nakata] Let's put it in the tank.

- [Philippe] Okay, let's do this.

[Philippe grunting] [water sloshing] It's marvelous.

Is this the final stage?

- [Nakata] Yes, it is.

This one will now get married.

- Married?

What do you mean?

- It's going to get married!

Since forever here, when we give the trunk its last wash, the final step, it means there's a buyer.

So we say, "This one's getting married."

It's as if we were talking about our darling daughters leaving the home to get married.

- When I watch how you work, I think the things we make are quite similar.

When you take care of them, they also take care of you.

[meditative music beginning] - [Philippe] As night falls across the valley, the close links which unite the elements of the Japanese lifestyle finally become clear.

Everything seems to have its place, from mountain to town, from wood to house, from matter to mind.

[Keichiro's family chatting] - [Keichiro] There's rice on top and egg custard underneath.

Enough for six people.

[china clinking] - [Fumi] Can we serve it all?

- [Server] Yes.

And that's the sauce for the tempura.

- [Philippe] Back at Keichiro's house, a surprise awaits.

Following the strict rules of tradition, a typical meal is served in the large room upstairs to wish the guest of honor farewell.

[meditative music continuing] [door clacking] Oh!

[Philippe and Keichiro laughing] It's magnificent!

Really magnificent!

Thank you so much.

- [Keichiro] It's a traditional Japanese meal.

- [Philippe] It looks delicious, and I adore Japanese food!

Let's go.

Better understanding the way this house is used, I take full advantage of the event.

Equipped, like my guests, with a small cushion and a low table which constitute the evening's furniture, I feel at one with the spirit of the room and the moment.

- [Keichiro] Can't you sit cross-legged?

- [Philippe] You mean this isn't right?

- [Keichiro] No, only women sit like that.

- [Philippe] Oh, okay, I'll change.

[all laughing] As my visit comes to an end, the moments of daily life shared with Keichiro and his family leave me with the feeling of having tested a rare lifestyle which implies discipline and constraint, but which also depends on a constant attention to each moment in the construction, to the materials, to nature, and to everyday gestures, even the most banal.

I also believe that living in a machiya is much more than merely living.

It's adopting a lifestyle elaborated down the centuries which shows all the subtle forms of interaction between the individual and his environment.

[energetic music playing] [energetic music ending]