Once every three years, Niigata Prefecture becomes home to the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, a huge art trail spread across galleries, public spaces, villages and repurposed buildings throughout the region.
One of the most interesting aspects of the festival is the way old buildings are given a second life.
Japan has millions of vacant and deteriorating homes, many of them timber buildings with decades — sometimes centuries — of history still sitting in their walls, floors and beams.
Rather than allowing every one of those buildings to disappear, projects like Echigo-Tsumari show what can happen when an old structure becomes the material for something new.
A House Covered in a Million Cuts
On this visit, Christian stepped inside one particularly remarkable example: Shedding House.
Almost every visible timber surface has been carved.
The walls, posts, beams, floors and other surfaces are covered with an estimated one million individual lines, transforming the interior of the old house into something that sits somewhere between architecture, sculpture and an enormous act of handwork.
The project took approximately two and a half years to complete.
During the final six months, around 30 art students worked full-time on the house, cutting line after line into the darkened timber.
And the tool used for all that carving?
A Kakuri V-gouge and a mallet.
Carving Into 150-Year-Old Timber
What makes the project even more striking is the material itself.
The house contains old timber that has been darkened by years of smoke and use. Instead of covering that history, the carving works directly into it.
Every fresh cut reveals a lighter line beneath the dark surface.
Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of cuts and the entire building begins to change character. The marks follow the architecture rather than hiding it, turning the existing timber into the artwork itself.
It is a wonderful example of something we see repeatedly in Japanese craft: the material already has a history, and the maker's job is not necessarily to erase it.
Sometimes the most interesting thing you can do is add another layer.
About “Shedding House”
The artist Junichi Kurakake described the project this way:
“This house, which had survived here for 200 years, was falling into ruin. I wanted to show my appreciation to a place that had remained unchanged while I lived my life in the ever-changing city. Shedding House has set a new clock for marking time, so that those who carved the house actually ‘shed’ themselves.”
— Junichi Kurakake, quoted by the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale
That idea becomes much easier to understand once you are standing inside the building.
The carving is repetitive, physical and slow. No single line is especially dramatic, but together they completely alter the space.
The house still carries its age, its smoke-blackened timber and the shape of its original construction, but it has also become something entirely different.
Old Buildings, New Lives
Shedding House is a particularly extreme example, but it also reflects something broader about the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale.
Old houses, schools and other buildings that might otherwise sit empty or disappear are given new reasons to be entered, looked at and talked about.
The building is not restored to pretend it is new.
Its age remains visible.
Instead, another chapter is simply added to the timber.
And in this case, it took about a million cuts to write it.
