The Kominka Collective's mission is to save Japanese kominka folk houses and other traditional structures while preserving Japanese building arts. We are a not-for-profit company.

In 2021, the owners of what is now the “Zen House Kominka” guesthouse, Kiyomi Koike and Bill Oliver, learned that Eric Carlson, a Kominka Collective board member, was rebuilding a minka on his property ten miles down the road from where they live. Kiyomi san is a tea ceremony teacher and the founder of Sei Mee Tea, a company selling Japanese green tea. She sold the company last year, but at that time she was hoping to have a small tea house on her property to use for tea ceremonies and as a space for quiet reflection. The timing was somewhat serendipitous as, having successfully sent Mikawa House to Wallowa County, Oregon, we were already planning that our next step in this project would be to create a 200 sq ft “minka studio” in Japan – as a kind of kit - and send it to Oregon to be assembled for use as non-residential structure that, as such, would not require planning permission to build. As it turned out, this was exactly the type of small space that Kiyomi san was looking for. The studio was designed with input from members of our team, with details worked out over numerous Zoom calls across time zones, and then crafted in Japan using new and old materials by carpenters at Toda Komuten. For various reasons, we were fortunate to be able to use Japanese cypress for much of the studio, and this certainly adds to the beauty of the structure. As with Mikawa House, we packed the studio and all types of furnishings and fixtures – including an old ladder to reach the loft area, shoji screens, decorative ceramic roof tiles, doors, tansu, new windows, and new roofing material - into crates which went into a 40 ft container, and we sent it on its way to a beautiful setting near the Wallowa Mountains of northeastern Oregon. Minka Studio arrived in early October 2022 and was assembled and completed over about a month by members of our team and a few kind and curious friends – although Eric spent a few more months doing finishing work on his own, including the interior and exterior plastering as we were concerned that the plaster might crack enroute to the US were we to do it in Japan. Being Oregon and being October, an early snow added a certain unexpected excitement to the reassembly process. During the planning of the Minka Studio, Kiyomi san decided that she wanted to extend the structure to make it a place where people could stay and where, as a certified life coach, she could hold wellbeing retreats in the calm setting of a kominka. On the Japan side, we found a small kominka that was going to be torn down, was the right size, and had a wonderful beam structure, and disassembled it and carried out the work in the workshop to prepare to send it to Oregon. This minka, which we referred to as Obu House due to its original location in the town of Obu in Aichi Prefecture, was approximately 90 years old and had at one time been surrounded by rice fields and vegetables patches. When we visited the minka, the town had closed in around the house and it was essentially a farmhouse in a somewhat urban setting in a rural area. During the visit, the owner and her adult son kindly showed us around the house. At that time, no one was living there, but furniture and various furnishings, as well as decades of memories - the family altar, ceramic vases, and other beautiful items that one would expect to find in an old folk house - were still in place throughout the house. We asked the owners how they felt about a house that had been home to their family for decades being disassembled and sent to Oregon, and they answered that they were so delighted and grateful that the minka and many of its furnishings would be given another life. When we left, the owners generously insisted that we take some lovely small decorative items from the minka’s tokonoma altar area with us to remember our visit, and we gratefully did so. It was wonderful having the opportunity to spend time with the owners of Obu House and it is equally wonderful knowing that, thanks to Kiyomi san and Bill san, the key elements of the house have a second life as a space for mindful reflection. Nothing could be better. Returning to the topic of the second phase of the Zen House Kominka project, as one might imagine, logistics of how to connect the two structures in a practical and aesthetically pleasing way, specifics of the design of the second structure, and details regarding planning permission were worked out over many hours of Zoom meetings. Designing this second structure with the aim of attaining permission to build required some strategic thinking outside the box, and now, going forward, we are more confident about knowing how to approach this. We are also keen in the future to use more reclaimed materials in traditional and modern ways, keeping the principle of “mottainai” – nothing going to waste – closely in mind during all stages of the planning and building process.