Mr Ichikawa slides across a picture of a 300-year-old wooden house in Kumamoto that has been gorgeously restored and invisibly…

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Mr Ichikawa slides across a picture of a 300-year-old wooden house in Kumamoto that has been gorgeously restored and invisibly fortified by Sumitomo. As a consequence, it survived April’s earthquake.

This, he acknowledges, is at the highest end of what Sumitomo can do for Japan’s millions of ageing — often abandoned — wooden houses. With a little renovation, he suggests, you could be looking at a vast new stock of Airbnb properties.

–Out of the woods: an old-economy stalwart pivots in Japan (viaiamdanw)