What’s Schueler selling? Sophisticated computers? High-priced machinery? Nope: log cabins. Schueler’s company, Rocky Mountain Log Homes, sells precut, easy-to assemble building components–not Lincoln Logs, the toys, but real cabins, like Abe lived in. His success is all part of the latest consumer trend in Japan: what the Japanese call “the outdoorsy boom.”
For several years now, a growing number of Japanese “salarymen” have been easing up on their workaholic schedules–and fleeing cramped urban homes-by heading on weekends for the great outdoors. The number of camping and sporting-goods stores in Japan has increased tenfold, and sales of hiking, camping and canoeing equipment have grown at stunning rates. Nearly 40 million Japanese–almost a third of the population–now claim to be avid hikers. In recreation as in commerce, the Japanese are intense. (You might call them “relaxaholics.”) Encounter a family on the hiking trails outside Tokyo and they’re often dressed as if they just stepped off the set of “The Sound of Music”: the perfect boots, shorts and socks. “Basically, the Japanese are into the Western lifestyle,” says Schueler.
So what better country home to have than a cabin copied from the Old West? At least 15 U.S. companies now ship readyto-assemble log cabins to the Far East. In Japan soaring demand and limited land ensure handsome profit margins. Schueler charges $50 to $90 per square foot at home, but in Japan buyers pay $90 to $150 per square foot for a 1,200 square-foot, two- to three-bedroom weekend cottage. “I think it’s the all-wood building, the comfort and the surroundings that intrigue them,” says Schueler.
The idea of getting away from urban dwellings that even the Japanese themselves call “rabbit hutches” doesn’t hurt, either. By exporting log cabins, Schueler’s company and others do their bit to reduce the Japan-U.S. trade imbalance. Far more important, the outdoors craze is yet another signal that at long last, the Japanese are becoming more interested in consuming and less focused on outproducing and out exporting the rest of the world.
In the mid-1980s, a U.S. diplomat was asked what the primary goal of American trade policy toward Japan should be. Getting them to buy more agricultural products? More computer chips? “No,” he replied wearily, “getting them to relax.” The Japanese are relaxing–at least a little. A few years ago Hiroki Uchiyamahad a wooded section a few hours out of Tokyo all to himself. He was the first to put up a log cabin, complete with an American flag on the porch and a sign in brass letters saying “The Country House.” Today, Uchiyama has neighbors. At least a dozen other “country houses”–log cabins all–have gone up on either side of his.
