The first home that Kazunori Hamana bought is perched on the hillside above the Pacific Ocean, on the Boso Peninsula of Japan. The water is just a few dozen meters below, close enough that you could scramble through the brush and jump in. 

Hamana often does just that. “I quit being a professional fisherman, so I just cast my net and eat what I’ve caught on the spot,” he says. He’s friendly and suntanned, with a frank manner and few airs. He’s also a ceramicist whose elegant, hand-built pots grace galleries from Tokyo to New York. But Hamana himself prefers to stay home, puttering between the three properties he owns in this area.

He built this first house 20 years ago, having settled in Chiba following a childhood spent in Hyogo Prefecture, a stint in the US and some time in ...