Kerr also set his sights on Japanese obis (sashes for robes or kimonos), which, he says, could be purchased for a few hundred yen in the early 1970s. When Kerr left Japan to earn his Master of Arts as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, he began to buy Tibetan and Chinese imperial robes, which came over the border into Nepal. “I went wild,” he says. “I went into debt at Oxford because I’d go to Christie’s and Sotheby’s to buy Chinese textiles. Of course I never had enough money, so my friends had to lend it to me.”

In his final year, Kerr, broke, entered the Chancellor’s English Essay contest at Oxford and won £50 for writing on the subject of exploration in Tibet. The prize, which had never been awarded to an American before, launched his writing career. He returned to Japan after graduation, and for the next 20 years, ran the Oomoto School of Traditional Japanese Arts. It was during this time that Kerr met David Kidd, a legendary collector and dealer who had a fantastic eye. “He taught me an important lesson that I never would have learned from art historians and curators: Beauty comes first,” Kerr says. “It should be old and valuable, but first ask yourself, ‘Is it beautiful?’” Today, Kerr runs the Origin Program of Japanese Arts, based in Kyoto. (For more on Kerr’s writings and programs, visit alex-kerr.com.)

Kerr’s collection includes Japanese ink painting, calligraphy, scrolls, screens, Chinese and Tibetan textiles and rugs, Chinese spirit stones, literati studio objects, Chinese and Southeast Asian ceramics and furniture, and houses. Most of the pieces are in storage, with only a few on display in his home outside Kyoto. “I move them around,” he says, explaining his display philosophy. “In Europe, oil paintings have been on castle walls for centuries, but it’s the opposite in Asia. Here, everything changes. It can be rolled up, folded, and something else takes its place.”

The houses he collects include four residences—two in Japan and two in Thailand—as well as eight houses in Kyoto, which are owned by his company. Kerr created Iori Co. in 2004, and the firm is dedicated to preserving the old machiya townhouses of Kyoto. So far Iori has acquired eight houses, which have been restored and made available for visitors to stay in as well as for cultural programs. He also owns a 250-year-old farmhouse in the mountains of Shikoku, which he has restored to the original wooden floors, floor hearth and thick, thatched roof. “The house is the collection,” he says, “and the beauty of that house is emptiness. I’ve tried to hang scrolls, and I’ve brought all kinds of things to the house, such as Chinese furniture, and the house rejected them all because it wants to be empty. What is compelling about the house is when you sit at that floor hearth and the smoke is rising and you look at the empty expanse of those black floors, you feel like you went back 10,000 years.”

Even though it might seem like Kerr has it all, the collector still has an eye on the horizon. “I want a calligraphy by Sen no Rikyu, the founder of the tea ceremony,” he says. “Sometimes he’d write records of the tea utensils from one of his tea ceremonies. You can buy one of those, and considering Rikyu’s importance to world art history, at about $20,000 it’s amazingly inexpensive. I won’t rest until I have one.”