Changing Nature

A mountain town in Japan has become a showcase for forward-thinking design.

- Katie Kitamura

IN LATE WINTER, I met my mother and my aunt and traveled to the mountain resort town of Karuizawa, in Nagano Prefecture, a little over an hour from Tokyo by shinkansen. When we stepped off the train, the air was bracingly cold. We were surrounded by forest, gentle drifts of snow, and a rare and delicious quiet. Hovering over the landscape was stately Mount Asama, its summit tipped with white.

I had heard about Karuizawa for what felt like the entirety of my childhood. It was the place where my mother had gone on vacation when she was a child. Some years later, after my older brother was born, my grandfather purchased a weekend home there. Karuizawa has long been known as a retreat for wealthy families fleeing Tokyo's summer heat. It's where, in 1957, the Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko famously met playing tennis. It's also where Yoko Ono and John Lennon liked to vacation; Ono once described Karuizawa as "an old summer resort in Japan very much like the Hamptons, except it's in the mountains."

For our family, having a house in Karuizawa represented the pinnacle of a postwar story of ambition and aspiration. My grandfather was a self-made man who built a successful business in the 1960s and 70s. But he also experienced the 80s bubble and the 90s recession, when his company, like so many in Japan, went bankrupt. And while the family tried to hold on to the Karuizawa house as long as possible, they were eventually forced to sell it.