Nothing to be taken

Shadows and the outdoors
In The Holy Land, D.J. Waldie's account of suburban life, the author keeps coming back to his parents and their death as important elements in his experience of life in the suburbs. At one point, when he is talking about his house, he mentions that "[his] mother would have preferred a Japanese house of paper and satinwood -- a house without anything that could be taken from her" (37). This concept of a house with or without something that could be taken immediately stood out to me as something that required a closer look.
What does Waldie mean when he says this, and what does this statement imply about his house, his suburb, and suburbs in general? It is interesting to analyze the relationship between post-WWII suburban American homes and traditional Japanese homes. Waldie's home was built as cheaply and quickly as possible, out of wood, cement, and stucco, in order for its developers to make a profit from satisfying a housing shortage. The government is in charge of planting a single tree on his property, and the rest of his grassy lawn goes largely unnoticed other than the regular mowing. Japanese homes are characterized by a greater interconnectedness between indoors and outdoors, and more effort is made to respect and appreciate nature. The materials used in traditional Japanese homes, paper, and wood, exhibit a level of care and craftsmanship than is missing from the construction of suburbia. Japanese homes are reminiscent of the type of place that Christopher Alexander would approve of, they are arranged based on a series of traditional principles, but each one is different.
So, what does Waldie think could be taken from his mother in their home, that could not be taken from her in a Japanese home? Is it the appliances that the original inhabitants of the house would have paid nine dollars a month for? Or the furniture? Or maybe the car culture that goes hand-in-hand with living in such a place? Maybe the answer lies in the following quotation, from an essay called In Praise of Shadows, by the Japanese novelist Junichiro Tanizaki: "And so it has come to be that the beauty of Japanese rooms depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows -- it has nothing else. Westerners are amazed at the simplicity of Japanese rooms, perceiving in them no more than ashen walls bereft of ornament."