I first met Manpei Tsurubayashi, owner, designer, and craftsman of the omnidirectional speaker brand Listude, back in 2018 when I interviewed him for a Wallpaper* Trip story on the city of Nara. He and his wife, Anna Hasegawa, had converted a large sushi restaurant on the outskirts of the city with a listening and event space on the upper floors and a workshop on the ground floor, where Tsurubayashi was building his speakers.
The brand, founded in 2007, was originally called Sonihouse, but changed to Listude (a portmanteau of listen and attitude) in 2021. In 2025, after three years of planning and building, the company moved to a private enclave nestled among tall red pines in Yamanashi. The purpose-built concert-hall-workshop-listening studio and living areas were designed by the couple’s longtime friend Yoshiaki Nagasaka of Hitotomori Architects.
‘I had been delivering speakers to musicians, such as Yuni Mori and Gen Tanabe, and local cafés and restaurants in the area for some time, and really felt there was a good community of musicians, artists and people making great food and wine,’ Tsurubayashi explains as his reason for deciding to move shop from Nara to the small city of Hokuto in Yamanashi. His speakers seem to connect like-minded people, be it musical artists like Mori, or Eishi Okamoto from Beau Paysage winery.
The wooded site from above
When a local real estate agent showed him the roughly 1,000 sq m plot in 2022, Tsurubayashi decided on the spot that this would be the new home, not just of Listude, but also for his family of four. ‘The site slopes gently, and I had this early vision of using this natural slope to make an outdoor stage for concerts,’ he reminisces. Tsurubayashi also knew he wanted the project to include a large concert hall, outdoor stage and listening room, as well as a production area for his product.
Nagasaka managed to fit all of this into a simple rectangular volume. Two levels are split in the middle by an opening that leads to an outdoor stage with simple bench seating in the adjacent woods. The front part of the building houses the production workshop and offices on the ground floor. A spiral staircase outside leads up to the listening room with its large picture window looking out onto the nearby forest. At the back are the family’s private living quarters.
In a forest-facing concert space, Listude’s Scenery speakers hang from the ceiling
The entire rear of the building forms a double-height concert hall, open to the forest on two sides. Six Scenery speakers by Listude hang from the ceiling, with wall-mounted sound panels made by Tsurubayashi himself using thick curtain fabric and wooden frames. ‘It’s very hard to find good sound panels in the exact sizes I wanted. And as I studied art, I am pretty good at building canvases,’ he says.
Tsurubayashi hired acoustic specialist Hiroshi Suzuki to reduce electro-magnetic noise in both the sound system in the concert hall and the listening room using two separate circuits; one for machinery, office and living use and the other for the audio equipment in the listening room and concert hall.
Listude has already tested the system with concerts, both inside and outside. The sound, as expected, is crisp and clear like the forest that surrounds the new home of this innovative Japanese speaker brand.
Listude’s Scenery series of speakers
