An impressive full-scale model of Kyoto's Sa-an Teahouse occupies part of the basement gallery of Japan House London on Kensington High Street. In keen juxtaposition, the centre of the gallery space features a 1:2 scale model of the Toindo Hall of Yakushi-ji Temple in Nara, intricately detailed; the beams, rafters and posts slotting together immaculately and supporting the roof’s deep eaves. The joints are barely discernible, but that is the technical precision that has come to characterise Japanese carpentry and woodwork. The focus of an ongoing exhibition, The Craft of Carpentry: Drawing Life from Japan’s Forests, at the London-based cultural space, a series of models, builds and drawings allows visitors to delve into the intricate craft of woodworking, quintessential to Japanese culture. "Carpentry is essential to everyday life in Japan, even today, and is celebrated both within the country and beyond for its careful craftsmanship," Simon Wright, director of programming at Japan House, notes in the official release. He continues, "Centuries of treating the raw materials of Japan’s forests with respect have resulted in deep relationships between humans and trees.”

It is this intrinsic relationship that the exhibition, conceived in conjunction with the Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum in Kōbe, provides a comprehensive peek into. The craft of carpentry is not only part of the technical aspects of construction and vernacular design in the country, but it is also associated with Japan’s rituals and beliefs, with nature, religion and society deeply intertwined in their culture. Folk art and craft are often imbued with an animistic quality, with the ‘spirit of the wood’ celebrated by the local craftspeople. This respect for trees (viewed as divine in Shinto ideology) translates into a craft that reveres the economy of material and precision in detail.

On view from March 12 – July 6, 2025, the exhibition focuses on three core aspects of Japanese carpentry—dōmiya daiku (temple and shrine carpenters), sukiya daiku (teahouse carpenters) and kigumi (wood joinery)—and brings together specialist tools from Kōbe along with the wood structures mentioned above, that were created by a team of master carpenters, to offer a detailed overview of the millennia-long tradition.

The traditions associated with the craft of carpentry in Japan date back thousands of years, with timber being one of the major building materials for the Japanese, since forests cover roughly two-thirds of the Japanese archipelago. A section of the exhibition elaborates on this, showcasing the different woods used for construction and showing them in different stages - from wood chips to fine shavings. These materials and how they are used are detailed in the sections that dwell on the inner workings of the construction of traditional architecture from the island nation.

The section dōmiya daiku displays models and various joints involved in temple building and elaborates architectural drawings to demonstrate how joints come together. The techniques on display are not only material efficient and easily dismantlable, but are also proven to be effectively seismic resistant. This directly lends the inference that the methods of wood construction employed were highly specific to the context from which they have been created, born out of necessity and human ingenuity, and yet speak a near universal language owing to the ubiquity of timber as an aesthetic and material choice.

Seismic resistance is also the main reason why most traditional Japanese shrines are raised on stone bases. The exhibition demonstrates how stone and wood come together through different models. The showcase particularly spotlights the meticulous work of Tsunekazu Nishioka, one of the foremost craftspersons of the 20th century, by displaying structural drawings carved into wooden boards alongside racks of templates used to cut the different components.

While the near reverential and incredibly nuanced craftsmanship needed for the construction of shrines is awe-inspiring, in contrast, the section on sukiya daiku, underscores the lightweight nature of the work, which tends to use untreated material (unlike that for shrines). Embodied by the presence of the teahouse in the exhibition, the architecture is stripped of its plaster layers, so visitors can gain a cross-sectional understanding of what appears exceedingly simple from the outside.

The last section, kigumi, brings all the components from the previous two sections together. Focused on the detailing, such as kumiko latticework screens and sashimono joinery, the objective here is to foster a clearer understanding of how Japanese wood structures come together without the use of any binding agents or nails and how they can withstand extreme weather and natural disasters. Visitors are welcome to interact with some of the joints on display on the ground floor of Japan House in an interactive section of the exhibition.

"Environmentalism and sustainability are concepts that have been practised by Japan’s carpenters for hundreds of years. What is important about woodworking in Japan? How is Japan’s craft of carpentry seen and understood by those in Japan themselves? My hope is this exhibition answers some questions and perhaps throws up a few surprises by providing an unfiltered narrative about Japan’s craft of carpentry,” Wright reiterates in the official release. A focus on sustainability, the nuanced role of craft in the timeless and the handmade, as opposed to the fast-paced and technocratic nature of modern building, is an interesting position from which to consider the future.

Those who are familiar with the fable of the Ise Shrine and its ritual dismantling and reconstruction every 20 years will already be familiar with a Japanese focus on ephemerality, care and the integral role that rebuilding and repair play in the built environment. In that, from a world that is increasingly looking for alternatives to conventional methods of construction that are incessantly resource and carbon-intensive, the insistence on the precision and cohesiveness of craft in Japan House’s programming is a breath of fresh air.