The Houses · H-06
Cedar House
Aomori Prefecture · Established 1993 · Limited public program
Cedar House is small and does little on its own account. Nearly all of its work is done as one partner among several.
- Region
- Asia and Pacific
- Residential places
- 12
- Residential periods
- Twelve places. Residential periods of seven to twelve days; conversational Japanese is expected of residents staying longer than a fortnight.
- Public gathering
- Community meal, weekly, at the town hall. Not a Continuance observance; all are welcome.
- Arrival
- Two hours by train and bus from Aomori. Winter road closures are common between December and March.
- Access
- Ground floor step-free. The workshop has a raised threshold of about ten centimetres.
- Correspondence
- Write to the steward at Cedar House, in Japanese or English.
The house
The house was established in 1993 at the invitation of a neighbourhood welfare council that had more work than volunteers and no objection to a foreign institution taking instruction rather than giving it. That arrangement has been kept deliberately: the house does not run programmes in the town, it staffs other people's.
The craft work began with a joinery workshop whose owner was closing it. Two residents apprenticed themselves for four years so that the tools and the method would not leave the valley. The workshop reopened in 2001 under its original name.
The house's records are kept in Japanese and reconciled into the Common Record in translation, with the Japanese held as the authoritative version.
The work
- Elder support: meal delivery, home visiting, and winter checks, rostered by the neighbourhood welfare council.
- Craft preservation: joinery and tool maintenance with the reopened workshop, and an apprenticeship of four years.
- Community meals, cooked weekly for anyone who comes, in the community hall rather than at the house.
Observance kept here
Repair before replacement
A tool is not retired while any bench in the workshop can still restore it. The judgement belongs to the workshop, not to the house.
The shared forms, here
- The Repair Table
- Tools. A blade is not retired while any bench in the workshop can still restore it.
- The Weather Entry
- Entered against the forest survey, which uses the southern-slope readings; the house keeps its seasons by the local year and not by the Maine one.
Local participation
- The snow round in winter: eleven households, checked twice a week.
- Orchard work in the two weeks after the first frost.
- Separation
- Noticed once, to the steward. The snow round is reassigned before the notice is filed.
The steward
Rie Katsuragawa
Nurse · steward since 2018
Twenty-six years in district nursing. Holds the roster with the welfare council and does the winter checks herself.
Records
Other houses
- Karst House — Upper Carniola
- South House — Southland, South Island
Entry H-06 · reviewed 30 January 2026