The roughly 60 homes recently put on the market represent the first significant paring of Kawamoto's investment in Hawai'i real estate.

His Honolulu attorney, Carol Asai-Sato, said she did not know why the real-estate tycoon decided to put the properties on the market, or if he planned to sell his other 100 Hawai'i homes not listed for sale.

Only one property listed by Kawamoto, a home on 'Elepaio Street in Kahala listed for $850,000, would be considered high-end, according to Asai-Sato.

The billionaire, who made his fortune in real estate in Japan, began acquiring houses and condominiums on O'ahu 15 years ago following a trip to Hawai'i in which he said he noticed there were many houses for sale but a shortage of rental properties. So he bought homes mainly in Hawai'i Kai, Kailua, Waikiki and Kahala to rent out.

Kawamoto, who always paid cash, was known to buy houses after seeing them only from the curb, and he solicited homeowners whether their properties were on the market or not. He paid top dollar for several high-end properties, including $42.5 million for the leasehold interest in the former estate of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, before scaling back to buy $200,000 to $300,000 homes at market prices.

Community members and politicians criticized Kawamoto as one of many land speculators from Japan who drove up property values. But Kawamoto said he was not a speculative buyer, and that he planned to keep the properties as 10- to 20-year investments.

In mid-1988, Kawamoto bent to public criticism and cut short his plan to buy as many as 1,000 homes here.

Since then, Kawamoto has sold few of his Island properties. In 1994, he abruptly turned the Kaiser estate over to landowner Bishop Estate, to which he had been paying lease rent of $1 million a year.

According to property records, Kawamoto sold just three properties since 1990, for a total of $7.5 million.

Kawamoto, 69, continues to visit Hawai'i but no longer maintains a residence here, she said.

Recently, Kawamoto was caught up in a dispute with neighbors over driveway access in Kahalu'u, where he owns a 130-acre property on which he wants to build a vacation home.