Although it has not yet become a tourist attraction, this house, an antique shop, standing bravely alone at the junction of three busy highways, is a source of amusement to passersby, of irritation to hurried motorists and the local police, a headache to the Tokyo Municipal Government and a simple matter of pride and principle to the 81-year-old owners and sole inhabitants.
When the new highways were being projected, owners of houses on the chosen sites moved away more or less willingly, but this old couple decided that the indemnity offered was not enough for a home containing a lifetime of memories.
The old man boned up on his law and discovered that he could not be forcibly ejected, and that although he may be a nuisance, his house could not be considered a traffic hazard as it is plainly visible to the naked eye. There have, in fact, been no accidents up to now simply because traffic slows down to take a better look at the incongruous, isolated building.
So the local police agency turned to the Metropolitan Highways Corporation who, after one and a half years of vain negotiation with the stubborn couple, have now thrown the matter into the lap of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
In the meantime, the old couple have lost all but the most intrepid of their customers, for few dare to cross a busy highway at the risk of life and limb and, for the same reason, there are days on end when the old couple cannot get out of their house to do the necessary shopping. But old people, they say, need little sustenance.
The incessant blare of car horns and the overbearing odor of exhaust-gas fumes which would drive a younger couple to surrender, fall on age-deafened ears and insensitive nostrils, disturbing them neither during the day nor at night. For old people, they say, need little sleep.
The offer of money to remove themselves and resettle in a new home is no temptation to them, for their days of adventure are over and all their memories are enclosed within the four walls of this tiny building.
-- The East, vol 1, No. 5, 1965, p.54-55.