Originally from the Bethesda area in Montgomery County, Maryland, Kerr's father, a naval officer, was posted in Yokohama from 1964 to 1966.
He lived in Kameoka, near Kyoto, working with the Oomoto Foundation, a Shintō organisation devoted to the practise and teaching of traditional Japanese arts.
In the early 1970s, Kerr purchased a crumbling, abandoned, two-hundred-year-old Japanese house in the Iya Valley, a remote mountainous area of Tokushima prefecture on the island of Shikoku.
The restoration of Chiiori began a project by Kerr and others to preserve Japan's vanishing arts, culture and traditional lifestyle.
It was originally written and published in Japanese as Utsukushiki Nihon no Zanzō (美しき日本の残像, Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan).