In a historic corner of Nara, Japan, Shingo Sakuma and Jin-Yi Liu have transformed a forgotten Shinto priest’s house into an art space – founded on light, shadow, and emotional architecture.
In the Japanese city of Nara, Shingo Sakuma and Jin-Yi Liu have preserved an 18th-century Shinto priest family’s residence on the edge of a primeval forest leading to the Kasugataisha Shrine. Once near collapse, Toma House has been restored by the Toma family’s descendants, standing today among the monumental architecture and spiritual landmarks of Nara’s historic Takabatakecho district – alongside the forest’s free-roaming deer, said to be sacred messengers of the Shinto gods. While exhibitions, workshops, and artist residencies now inhabit the space, parts of the property remain untouched, as Shingo and Jin-Yi engage traditional craftspeople to restore its individual elements.
“Toma House exists in a state of in-betweenness. This film is about what remains unfinished – and how that state of incompleteness gives a space its life. I wanted to explore the emotional architecture. What does it mean to live with the past? And what does it mean to care for a place not as a possession, but as a living being?”
Following a new phase of the project in the short film Toma Unrestored, Tokyo-based filmmaker Sybilla Patrizia captures Toma House as a vessel for art, memory, and reverence – through the restoration of two sets of fusuma sliding doors, originally painted by Katsuyama Takugan. By centering the quiet power of the space as the weathered panels are revived and reinstated, the film studies emotional architecture through the connection to the house in its incomplete state, honoring the living legacy and energy of rooms shaped by time and memory.mes in den Mittelpunkt rückt, während die gealterten Paneele wiederbelebt und eingesetzt werden, untersucht der Film emotionale Architektur durch die Verbindung zum Haus in seinem unvollendeten Zustand – und ehrt das lebendige Erbe und die Energie von Räumen, die durch Zeit und Erinnerung geformt sind.
