The continuing saga of Gensiro Kawamoto.

THE CONTINUING SAGA OF GENSIRO KAWAMOTO

The affordable-housing offerings of Japanese billionaire Gensiro Kawamoto are his way of making a contribution to the people of Hawaii, says his local spokesperson/attorney. But at least one construction industry observer says that the events surrounding

Kawamoto's apparent generosity sound more like the plot of a bad soap opera. Kawamoto's ongoing personal battle with Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi - a conflict that more than once has degenerated into childish name-calling - has been widely publicized. His recent withdrawal from a proposed affordable-housing subdivision in Kapolei is just the latest misadventure to land Kawamoto's name in the headlines.

Last January, Kawamoto suddenly pulled out of developing Kapolei Village Two, a 312-home affordable-housing subdivision, saying he had learned he would not be the one to hand out the keys to its first occupants. "He wants to be acknowledged as the developer who developed the project and took the (financial) loss. Otherwise, there would be no meaning to the project," his attorney, Carol Asai-Sato, told the local media. But Joe Conant, the state's Housing Finance and Development Corp. executive director, told the press that no one at HFDC had told Kawamoto he wouldn't get credit, and that Kawamoto could have handed out the keys if he so desired. With Kawamoto's withdrawal from the project, the HFDC selected Watt Hawaii Inc. - the developer of Kapolei's Village Three - as the new developer of Village Two.

The Japanese billionaire initially proposed building both villages, intending to price 80 percent of the 618 homes in the affordable-housing range. Kawamoto stood to lose $39.4 million in developing the project - a loss he said he was willing to incur to improve the negative image of Japanese investors in Hawaii. But Fasi charged that all Kawamoto did was further undermine that image. He called Kawamoto an "Ugly Japanese" - a reference to the "Ugly American" label pinned on Americans traveling abroad in the 1950s.

Fasi's remarks are not the first verbal assaults that Kawamoto has had to fend off. Ranked by The Japan Economic Journal as the sixth richest individual in Japan in 1987, Kawamoto went on his first Hawaii home-buying spree in the fall of that year, when he purchased more than 70 Oahu homes in four months. The Boston Globe later quoted the billionaire as saying the homes he bought in Hawaii were "lousy, candy houses." The remark riled local residents, who accused Japanese investors collectively of gobbling up available inventory, adding to the high cost of housing and causing property taxes to soar.