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The kiritsuma (open gable, right) is the simplest style, with the roof sloping from the ridge down to the eaves on two sides, forming two triangular gables at the narrow ends of the house. The illustration above shows the three typical roof-types of a traditional Japanese house. The en-no-shita is a crawl space under the veranda or floor, created to provide ventilation and reduce humidity inside the house. Some are completely enclosed with baseboards to prevent dead leaves and debris from accumulating under the house, while others have gaps between the boards to improve airflow. This is a favourite place for cats and dogs to retreat from the heat of the day.
Traditional Japanese Architecture
Tatami mats are definitely better for the environment compared to western-style mattresses made from synthetic materials. Due to the significantly less cushioning, tatami mats will feel much harder to sleep on than western-style mattresses.A tatami mat has just enough cushioning that it won’t feel like sleeping on a hardwood floor. But due to its inherent qualities, you cannot sleep in the same positions as you would on a mattress. Sleeping on a tatami mat takes some getting used to, but in the end, it is better on your back. A tatami mat generally measures 36 inches by 72 inches, or 18 square feet, or “jo” in Japanese. So do not be surprised to see Japanese floor plans that indicate a room to be 10J.
The Irori (hearth)
For this reason, those who could afford to often employed a caretaker if they were absent for any length of time. Traditional floors found in Minka’s are largely curated from rice straw. This highly common floor is not only for comfort but also for design. Most importantly, they promote Japanese traditions like sitting “seiza”, praying, and sleeping on the floor.
Genkan 玄関
Japanese paper (washi) is pasted to the lower portion of the walls to protect the guests’ kimonos from the mud plaster on the walls. The Takamatsu house was built in 1917 in the Sukiya style in Nagoya, and relocated to a scenic part of the Aichi Prefecture in the 80s to save it from destruction. In keeping with the true Sukiya aesthetics of understatement, this large house has an air of modest elegance rather than showy pride.
Who designed the home?
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This is the perfect area to enjoy a cup of tea, listen to birds trilling, and breathe in the fresh air. The engawa is a very special and integral part of a traditional Japanese home. It does not simply serve as a terrace, but the engawa connects the living room to the garden.
This roof style is most often seen on Japanese farmhouses but will sometimes be seen in other styles. There are also different post and beam support styles in traditional Japanese houses. The doma is a ground-level room, often with a floor of packed earth, but sometimes tile or stone. The doma has direct access to the outside and contrasts with the raised floor of the rest of the house. This is a utilitarian area, a little like a lean-to shed, used for food preparation and activities such as pounding or milling rice. The exterior walls of the house that align parallel to the ridgeline are known as hira walls, while the shorter end walls under the gables are called tsuma walls.
With all these, the house is perfectly equipped to handle the different climates throughout the year. Minka, or traditional Japanese houses, are characterized by tatami mat flooring, sliding doors, and wooden engawa verandas. Another aspect that persists even in Western-style homes in Japan is the genkan, an entrance hall where people remove footwear. The flooring for the house proper is raised a little off the ground to prevent dampness from entering and to keep the living area from flooding in the case of heavy rain.
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During the renovation of the house, Bengs added double-glazed windows to the room, giving it a more open atmosphere. The deeply sloped style of traditional Japanese roof is very suited to this mountainous region of Niigata which receives some of the heaviest snowfall of the prefecture. Simple white calls accentuate the earthy textures of the beams and reeds on the ceiling.
One of the most peculiar features of a traditional Japanese house, tatami mats, are thick straw mats, measuring 1x2 meters. In the past, tatami mats were used only by rich people, but they gradually became more common. They are so popular that a room is measured according to the number of mats it can fit. Houses are usually surrounded by rōka, wooden passages similar to hallways. Rōka are portioned by shōji, sliding doors made of thin paper that let the light through, and protected by wooden roofs. The partitions can be removed to create a unique, large meeting room; or they can be moved around to create smaller rooms.
Constructed more than a hundred years ago, the amado have not warped and can still be easily pushed one after another, like a train of cars along the rails. Koichi Sato is the 11th head of a family of landowners in Akita, in the northern part of Honshu. Winters here are severe, and everything mantles over with thick snow from November to April. While the exterior and parts of this imposing edifice are built to withstand extreme weather conditions, parts of the interior have been design in the delicate aristocratic Shoin style. Like many traditional Japanese homes, this house contains a square, open hearth (iriori), which was once the center of family life, providing heat, light and a place to cook.
One may find these particular floor plans in bigger Japanese cities where space is a luxury. As said above, they can be found around the perimeter of the house and they let the light come in. An engawa (edge, side) is a strip of wooden floor around the house, like a porch.
People sit with their legs under kotatsu to relax, have a meal, study or watch television for hours on end. In most regions of Japan, houses aren’t centrally heated and rely on various forms of space heating. Family homes were historically viewed as temporary and were reconstructed approximately every 20 years. They were primarily made of wood and other natural materials such as paper, rice straw and clay. Since the sides are protected from the elements from the slope of the roof, but the front and back are left exposed, this style of roof is made longer to create a shelf over the unprotected walls. There are four common roof styles found in traditional Japanese houses.
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