I love Gassho interiors (if that's the correct term for the relationship between the houses and the interior styles). There's something about the simplicity and the framing of the exterior natural world which appeals to me. It's a particularly modern, reductionist approach which seems to have prefigured and perhaps inspired a contemporary minimalism.
I own two or three books on Japanese interiors. The family that served as my refuge when my own was being so bullshit lived in a semi-traditional Japanese layout created by a Japanese ex-pat back in the early '50s. They maintained the Japanese touches and threw in a few Danish Modern flourishes. It definitely influenced my own style. I've long suspected that the Japanese discovered many modern themes and social conventions early because they were the first modern civilization to face population pressures. Yeah, India, yeah, Egypt but there's an extra incentive when you're on an island, I think. Here's one of my favorite sites. There was a time I was going to buy this property up on a steep mountaintop and then build something like this on top. It woulda been dope.
I spent a lot of time poring over my Taschens of Japanese interiors and Moroccan interiors when I was turning my place from empty shell into slightly less empty shell. I ended up with a sort of weird Zen, earthenware, industrialist cocktail which is not entirely unpleasant.