250-Year-old Japanese Farmhouse Moves to Belmont as Cultural Center

250-Year-old Japanese Farmhouse Moves to Belmont as Cultural Center

By Melissa Russell, Belmont Voice correspondent

By the end of the year, Belmont will be home to a new center that promises to be a significant contributor to knowledge of and appreciation for, ancient and contemporary Japanese culture.

The building, just north of Belmont Center on Concord Ave., is still under construction. But even in its incomplete state, it is fascinating.

It’s a 250-year-old Japanese farmhouse, or minka, that was taken apart and moved from its home in the Shiga Prefecture of Japan to Belmont last year.

The building sits on land once owned by the family of the late Anne Allen, one of the last sisters of the wealthy, land-owning Claflin family. She died in 2015. The nonprofit organization, Miho Belmont International, which is dedicated to deepening the understanding of traditional Japanese arts, purchased the land.

The minka is located behind Allen’s former home, a reproduction of a Georgian-style home, which was built in the 1980s, and is attached to the house by a passageway that will ultimately hold bathrooms and a state-of-the art kitchen.

The center is the passion project of 81-year-old Peter Grilli, president emeritus of the Japan Society of Boston.

Grilli was born in the U.S., but he grew up in Japan. He moved back to the United States after high school to study at Harvard University. Through his work as program director at the Japan Society of New York, director of the Japan Project for PBS, executive director of the Donald Keene Center for Japanese Culture at Columbia University, and as a writer, editor, and filmmaker, he has made deepening the understanding of Japanese culture his life’s work.

The following interview has been edited for clarity.

Tell us about your association with Japan.

I grew up in Japan. My parents went right after the war [World War II] when I was five years old.

What did your parents do? Why did they go to Japan?

Gen. Douglas McArthur, who ran the occupation of Japan right after the war, brought to Japan a great number of civilian specialists; many of them were academics, historians and civil administrators. He had to run a country that he didn’t know much about except as an enemy. My dad was a historian, and he came as part of a civilian group to write the history of the occupation as it was happening. My mother happened to be an art historian, who even before the war was studying Japanese art. For her, it was paradise. The occupation ended in 1952, but they loved it so much and met so many interesting people they decided to stay and lived there the rest of their lives. I came back here to go to college.

You mentioned you have a fascination with Japanese houses. Why is that?

I learned so much about Japanese history, culture and ways of life by the homes that my friends lived in, either in the newer homes in Tokyo or old farmhouses in the country. They are shelters, but they talk about the society, they express so much. I’ve always been in love with Japanese farmhouses, and I always wanted, sort of a dream, to bring to America a traditional farmhouse and put it up as a teaching device so people could come and see the way I learned.

Where did the farmhouse come from?

From an area northeast of Kyoto, next to the biggest lake in Japan, in a very historic district. The family lived in the house for generations, and like many Japanese people these days, they find the ancient houses dark, dirty, old and cold. They want modern, warmer. They were happy to give up the house, let us take it down, so they could build a new house.

A lot of old houses, particularly in the countryside, are being abandoned. Families are walking away from them, or tearing them down. We’re very much into preservation of historic buildings.

Can you talk about Japanese architecture as it relates to the old homes?

The one particularly interesting thing about old Japanese architecture is there are no nails. They were built connecting beams to joinery — joints fitted together. Because Japan has a lot of earthquakes and huge winds, these houses were exceptionally sturdy and survived because they were flexible. They stood for hundreds of years. You can see the beams — that piece of wood is 250 years old. It was cut from a tree, the carpenters kept the shape of the original tree because a curve like that is structurally stronger.

What will people experience at the cultural center?

There is going to be a great big room, and in the back, there will be a small stage for concerts and performances. There will be rooms with tatami mats for tea ceremonies and flower arranging. It will be a combination of traditional styles modernized for educational uses. The connector (between the two buildings) will be a welcoming passageway for people arriving, with a state-of-the-art kitchen for demonstrations. We hope to have great Japanese chefs come to demonstrate what they do. We’ll have events and invite school children to come and learn about Japanese culture. The whole program is being evolved as we speak.

What is the connection to Belmont? Why build it here?

There are a number of wonderful connections to Belmont. A young Japanese woman went to Belmont High School 30 years ago. Her father was a diplomat and a professor teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is now the empress of Japan. Many people I’ve met in Belmont, when I mention the word Japan, say “I went to school with a princess.”

Also, one of my great professors at Harvard, the most distinguished Japanese specialists in Japan and Japanese history, Edwin Reischauer, lived down the street here on Concord Avenue. He became ambassador to Japan under President Kennedy. His home became a meeting place for world leaders who would visit him in Belmont to talk about international affairs. I had enormous respect for Reischauer.

Being so close to Boston is just wonderful. We wanted a property that had land around it, and thanks to Anne Allen, this property, which is four acres, was put under a conservation restriction so that three of the four acres could never be built on. Only one section in the middle was buildable, so the property is not of any interest to developers. But, it is perfect for us.

For more information about Peter Grilli and the Japanese Cultural Center visit petergrillifund.org.