It's difficult to do without damaging the lumber. The traditional Japanese house is a house with no nails.
Metal rusts easily in the humid and wet climate of Japan so nails can have a short life span.
In the traditional house,wooden posts, beams, flooring, and panels are built with very accurate joints. Carpenters have designed over seventy different joints that are the basis of a system of construction that uses wooden wedges and pegs to secure pieces of wood together. Since there are no nails, building parts can be dismantled and repaired easily without damaging the wood.