House at Ontake

A traditional farmhouse at Ontake — in the mountainous Kiso district associated with the sacred volcano — appears in the architectural documentation of rural Japan that ran as a current through Kasamatsu's landscape work. The Ontake region's isolation preserved vernacular building traditions longer than more accessible areas, and the farmhouses Kasamatsu recorded there — heavy thatched or bark-shingled roofs, earthen walls, open hearths — represented a way of building inseparable from landscape and climate.