Monday, April 29, 2024

Traditional Japanese Houses

traditional japanese house

The house was carefully dismantled in Japan in 2018 and about a year later was shipped to the U.S. The reconstruction process at the Huntington wrapped up on the house last spring, and work on the garden followed soon after. A 320-year-old rural house that was built in Japan and occupied by one family for more than three centuries has been relocated to the Huntington. After a five-year restoration and shipping process, the Japanese Heritage Shōya House finally makes its public debut on October 21. As in any typical living room, this is the area of the house where people gather.

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Stay current with the latest posts from Remodelista each day – in their entirety. Your resource for finding the best storage and home organization solutions for every room in the house. SOURCEBOOK FOR THE CONSIDERED HOMEThe one-stop sourcebook for the considered home, guiding readers artfully through the remodeling and design process. The home was designed by a Japanese architect named Katsutoshi Sasaki.

Essential Elements of Japanese Style

Lined with tatami, they are separated by sliding paper doors, the shôji , or by opaque doors, the fusuma . Traditional Japanese houses were also often a place of work as well as homes, and needed space for storage and an area that could be used as a shopfront. Kominka were usually homes for artisans, farmers, or merchants, as well as wealthy families.

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The oshi-ire is not a room per se but a storage space tucked away in a different room of the house. The tataki and the agarikamachi are technically the two entrances in a Japanese home. In olden times, the tataki floor consisted of pounded earth, but nowadays, it consists of smooth concrete. There are tiny homes that would be a claustrophobic’s nightmare and mansions that require an army of housekeepers for upkeep. But a traditional Japanese minka would have these rooms on the list below, despite differing sizes, geography, and climate.

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Such gates were symbolic of the status and sophistication of the owner. While simplicity and understatement are the hallmarks of Kyoto style, interiors in Osaka often bustle with exuberance and spontaneity. This traditional Japanese house was built in an upscale residential area of Osaka over 70 years ago by the grandfather of the current owner, Teizo Sato. The panel on top of the shoji screens consists of two perforated panels with one sliding behind the other; opening or closing these apertures allows the room to adapt to different ventilation needs of changing seasons. For colder months, a wool or cotton quilt cover was used, a kakebuton. In summer, sleepers might use a mosquito net suspended from the ceiling, a device which has been used since antiquity in Japan.

Irori are sunken hearths that are often found in the center of a traditional Japanese house. Ranma are often decorated with carvings or paintings, and they can be made of different types of wood depending on the style of the house. Engawa are verandas that are built around the perimeter of a traditional Japanese house. Shoji are thin, translucent paper screens that also serve as windows. Each side of the room is a triangle shape, which is how the tops can meet at a point, but the roof isn’t nearly as tall as the other styles, making it a much smaller slope.

traditional japanese house

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Even nowadays, the highest-ranking seating positions in a reception room are those closest to the tokonoma. The kamiza or “seat of honour” is to sit facing the room with one’s back to the tokonoma, just like the lord and master of centuries gone by. Shōji are translucent sliding panels that cover door and window openings, offering privacy while allowing the light to pass through.

Upon entering, the first thing you will always see is a genkan (玄関) space. In some homes, the genkan area is a bit lower than the rest of the house to make the difference even more clear. It is important to only wear your outdoor shoes in the genkan area, and never touch the rest of the floors of the house with your dirty shoes. Many people have indoor slippers to keep their feet from getting cold to use in the rest of the house.

traditional japanese house

There’s even a tranquil side garden that you can squeeze into near the home’s formal entrance. You might not always find this porch-cum-entryway in this shape, but it’s predominant in traditional Japanese homes. The engawa/entryway is typically unmatted, where one can enjoy the outdoors, sans footwear. Upon further observation, this floor plan indicates one bathroom, which houses both the toilet and the bath. This bathroom layout is atypical of the traditional minka, where the bath is a separate room from the toilet.

It is a room for TV-watching, having drinks, and simply enjoying each other’s company. Jeanette Marantos is a Features reporter focused primarily on plants, gardening and Southern California’s changing landscapes for the Los Angeles Times. Times Plants newsletter, which includes a calendar of upcoming plant-related events. Email calendar submissions or plant-related story ideas to for consideration. Regular readers of our site are likely aware of our admiration for The Modern House, the impeccably curated UK-based real estate website.

Engawa without rain shutters or exterior panels to keep the rain out are called nure-en. In extreme cases, the best part of a lot was given over to the garden, and the house design on the land left over. Entire shoji walls can be pushed aside, creating an intimate unity with the garden. Traditional Japanese housing, or Minka’s, has deep roots in Japanese history and culture, but also provides a means of art, architecture, and design.

First, there’s the tataki, which is the ground floor right behind the entrance door. Nowadays, it generally is made of concrete but in the past, the pounded tataki floor consisted of earth, lime, and bittern. In ancient Japan, ordinary people traveled in a kind of litter (a type of human-powered transport) called a kago, and the tataki floor in front of the entrance was used as a space to set this down.

These were especially popular in towns and cities from the 17th century CE and typically showed urban scenes (especially related to leisure activities), famous scenic spots, and actors. Finally, purely decorative ornaments were used sparingly in the home, but a fine example of porcelain or lacquerware might be displayed. Ornaments and sometimes an arrangement of flowers or an incense burner were placed on shelves which were typically a staggered pair (chigaidana). The home hails from Marugame, a coastal city in the southwest of Japan with a climate not too dissimilar from Southern California (and, yes, it’s the namesake of the noodle chain). It was built as a live-work space for shōya, village leaders who were a liaison between the government and the local farming community.

In the past they served as ties to strengthen the building, but nowadays they are mostly ornamental. Tokobashira are ornamental posts at either side of the tokonoma alcove. Tokobashira are generally square, but visual interest can be added through the use of round posts, semi-squared posts with bark left on the corners, and posts with chamfered edges.

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