Kawamoto used the proceeds to help pay $12.2 million for the nearly 1-acre estate. The four-bedroom and five-bathroom beachfront house with fountains, a pavilion and tennis court was one of the most opulent Hawai'i homes when Hemmeter built it in the late 1980s. He died in 2003.

It is not publicly known what either buyer plans to do with their newly acquired properties.

ABC chief executive Paul Kosasa declined to disclose why he bought the Kaka'ako property through SMK Inc. "It's really premature," he said.

The transactions are the latest shuffling of real-estate assets in Hawai'i for the enigmatic Japanese investor, who three years ago began selling many of the roughly 160 O'ahu homes that he snapped up with "pocket change" in the late 1980s.

Kawamoto in early 2002 announced plans to sell all his Hawai'i homes to take advantage of undisclosed "tremendous investment opportunities" in the United States and Japan. Soon afterwards, he scaled down the sell-off plan, disposing of about 60 homes.

Over the last two years, Kawamoto has sold more homes, including about 20 since January, and used proceeds under tax-free exchange rules to buy several more homes, mostly in Kahala.

Property records show Kawamoto bought four Kahala homes this year for between $2 million and $3 million each. Between 2002 and 2004, he also bought Kahala homes for $1.7 million, $3.6 million and $8 million.

Kawamoto bought the Kaka'ako commercial property in 1989 for $14.8 million, and announced that he would "immediately" start working to develop a 250-unit apartment building on which he said he didn't expect a profit.

At the time, then-Mayor Frank Fasi, who was an outspoken critic of foreign investor impact on Hawai'i's real estate market, complained that he felt Kawamoto's Kaka'ako plan was nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Kawamoto never submitted development plans to the state agency governing development in Kaka'ako, though the market for residential condominiums crashed in the early 1990s.

Then when Kawamoto reappeared on the local real-estate scene in early 2002 as the condo market took off, he announced that he would revive plans for the 25-story residential building with units for rent or for sale to middle-income buyers.

In early 2003, he said he personally was working on an elegant "antique" design, and wanted to start work that year.