Japanese house

“ He naturally dislikes the anomaly of a house of the lightest description oftentimes sustaining a roof of the most ponderous character, and fairly loathes a structure that has no king-post, or at least a queen-post, truss; while the glaring absurdity of a house that persists in remaining upright without a foundation, or at least without his kind of a foundation, makes him furious. The mistake made by most writers in criticising Japanese house-structure, and indeed many other matters connected with that country, is that these writers do not regard such matters from a Japanese stand-point. ”

“ Fig. 98.—Plan of dwelling-house in Tokio. P, Parlor or Guest-room; B, Bed-room, K, Kitchen, SR Servants' Room; BR, Bath Room, E, E, Side-entrances, V Vestibule; H, Hall; WR, Waiting-room; C, Closet; T Tokonoma; U and L, Privy. If a foreigner is not satisfied with the severe simplicity, and what might at first strike him as a meagreness, in the appointments of a Japanese house, and is nevertheless a man of taste, he is compelled to admit that its paucity of furniture and carpets spares one the misery of certain painful feelings that incongruities always produce. ”

“ The farms are very small so that the open country is dotted over with little houses—the same low dainty houses of wood and paper that delighted us when we first saw them, and which will always delight us when, from the other side of the world, we think of them. For there is something in the sight of a neat little Japanese house with its few feet of garden which appeals curiously to one's imagination and one's sentiment. ”

“ It would be obviously absurd to suggest as a model for our own houses such a structure as a Japanese house. Leaving out the fact that it is not adapted to the rigor of our climate or to the habits of our people, its fragile and delicate fittings if adopted by us, would be reduced to a mass of kindlings in a week, by the rude knocks it would receive; and as for exposing on our public thoroughfares the delicate labyrinth of carvings often seen on panel and post in Japan, the wide-spread vandalism of our country would render futile all such attempts to civilize and refine. ”

“ The first thing that impresses one on entering a Japanese house is the small size and low stud of the rooms. The ceilings are so low that in many cases one can easily touch them, and in going from one room to another one is apt to strike his head against the kamoi, or lintel. He notices also the constructive features everywhere apparent,—in the stout wooden posts, supports, cross-ties, etc. The rectangular shape of the rooms, and the general absence of all jogs and recesses save the tokonoma and companion recess in the best room are noticeable features. ”

“ There will never be skyscrapers in Japan, or apartment buildings with families piled high in air. The family, not the individual, is the social unit of the land, and the private house is the symbol of the family. Even in the congested slums of Japanese cities, or in the quarters given over to the pitiful outcast class called eta, each family has its house, though the house may consist only of a single room no larger than a woodshed and may harbour an appalling number of people, as miserable and as crowded as those of the poorest slums in the United States. ”

“ At the foot of the bluff there is a ruinous Japanese house, where an Aino family has been placed to give shelter and rest to any who may be crossing the pass. I opened my bentô bako of red lacquer, and found that it contained some cold, waxy potatoes, on which I dined, with the addition of some tea, and then waited wearily for Ito, for whom the guide went in search. The house and its inmates were a study. The ceiling was gone, and all kinds of things, for which I could not imagine any possible use, hung from the blackened rafters. Everything was broken and decayed, and the dirt was appalling. ”

“ The Count wore his rustling native dress; but two black cocker spaniels followed at his heels. This combination presented an odd mixture of English squire-archy and the daimyo of feudal Japan.
On the crest of the hill above him rose the house, a tall Italianate mansion of grey stucco, softened by creepers, jessamine and climbing roses. Alongside ran the low irregular roofs of the Japanese portion of the residence. Almost all rich Japanese have a double house, half foreign and half native, to meet the needs of their amphibious existence. ”

“ From this superficial glance at the character of the house in the outlying Islands of the Japanese Empire, as well as at the houses of the neighboring countries, Korea and China, I think it will be conceded that the Japanese house is typically a product of the people, with just those features from abroad incorporated in it that one might look for, considering the proximity to Japan of China and Korea. ”

“ In the sections which are to follow, an attempt will be made by description and sketches to convey some idea of the details connected with the structure and inside finish of the Japanese house.
There is no object in Japan that seems to excite more diverse and adverse criticism among foreigners than does the Japanese house; it is a constant source of perplexity and annoyance to most of them. ”

“ The history of house development in Japan, if it should ever be revealed, will probably show a slow but steady progress from the rude hut of the past to the curious and artistic house of to-day,—a house as thoroughly a product of Japan as is that of the Chinese, Korean, or Malay a product of those respective peoples, and differing from all quite as much as they differ from one another. A few features have been introduced from abroad, but these have been trifling as compared to the wholesale imitation of foreign styles of architecture by our ancestors, the English ”

“ It may readily be seen that this is quite an inconvenient custom for foreigners!
Schools, churches, offices, stores, and other places for large and frequent public gatherings are being constructed in Occidental style, with doors on hinges, glass windows, chairs, benches, tables, stoves, grates, and other “modern conveniences.”
A room in a Japanese house seems to an American to be comparatively bare and plain, as it is devoid of furniture and bric-à-brac. There is no stove, for only a small box or brazier, containing a few pieces of charcoal in a bed of ashes, is used for heating purposes. ”

“ Many of the dwellings are often diminutive in size; and as one looks in at a tiny cottage containing two or three rooms at the most, the entire house hardly bigger than a good-sized room at home, and observes a family of three or four persons living quietly and in a cleanly manner in this limited space, he learns that in Japan, at least, poverty and constricted quarters are not always correlated with coarse manners, filth, and crime. ”

“ Many of the outer walls are also detachable, and on a warm summer day are put aside, when a delightful breeze constantly passes through the house. The floors are covered with thick, soft straw mats, which are kept so clean that the people, even when dressed in their best clothes, sit or loll on them. On entering a Japanese house you must leave your shoes at the door, just as you {79} do your hat. It would be an unpardonable offense to come inside and tread on the mats with your shoes on. ”

“ The ancient ceremonial of welcome and introduction would seem ludicrous in the full light of a Western drawing-room, but in the perfectly subdued light of these romantically beautiful apartments, charged with some strange and melancholy emotion, the visitor from the West feels himself entering upon the rare experience of a new world.
Everyone knows how few are the treasures that a Japanese displays in his house. ”

“ This encloses the whole sides of the house,—a width of about two feet being left in one side as an entrance. There is no flooring in the houses of any description, and there is generally laid over the mud inside a mat, on which the inmates lie or sit.”
Considering the presence for so many centuries of strong Chinese influence which Mr. Brunton sees in the Loochooans, it is rather surprising to find so many features of the Japanese house present in their dwellings. ”

“ Whether the Japanese house is right or wrong in its plan and construction, it answers admirably the purposes for which it was intended. A fire-proof building is certainly beyond the means of a majority of this people, as, indeed, it is with us; and not being able to build such a dwelling, they have from necessity gone to the other extreme, and built a house whose very structure enables it to be rapidly demolished in the path [pg 13] of a conflagration. ”

“ In the manner of building, one recognizes the propriety of constructive art as being in better taste; and in a Japanese house one sees this principle carried out to perfection. The ceiling of boards, the corner posts and middle posts and transverse ties are in plain sight. The corner posts which support the roof play their part as a decorative feature, as they pass stoutly upward from the ground beneath. A fringe of rafters rib the lower surface of the wide overhanging eaves, and these in turn rest firmly on an unhewn beam which runs as a girder from one side of the verandah to the other. ”

“ In the Japanese house the traveller is at least not exasperated with such a medley of dreadful things; he is certainly spared the pains that “civilized” styles of appointing and furnishing often produce. ”

“ A house as the abode of man as a social being; has it no relation to the development of human society and human culture? Also has it no concern with human character and conduct? In discussing dwelling houses, all these should be taken into consideration. And though it seems to be entirely beyond the scope of an architect’s work, yet it has [9] a great concern with the future development of Japanese houses.
There can be nothing perfect in this world; in order to fulfil one desire something else may or must be sacrificed: for economy’s sake beauty may be sacrificed ”

“ Flags were hung over the quaint Japanese doorway of the villa; and the manager, the landlord, and all the servants, were in proper array to greet the long line of jinrikishas which were escorting the guests. Our shoes removed, we were ushered through numerous rooms and corridors, made attractive with the quiet beauty of choice screens and the finest of mats, into the best apartment of the house. Here bright red felt had been spread over the mats; a tall lacquer hibachi, daimyo style, stood in the middle of the chamber ”

“ The Japanese dwellings are always of wood, usually of one story and unpainted. Rarely does a house strike one as being specially marked or better looking than its neighbors; more substantial, certainly, some of them are, and yet there is a sameness about them which becomes wearisome. Particularly is this the case with the long, uninteresting row of houses that border a village street; their picturesque roofs alone save them from becoming monotonous. ”

“ Exteriorly a Japanese street may appear little better than a row of wooden barns or stables, but the interior of any dwelling in it may be a wonder of beauty. Usually the outside of a Japanese house is not at all beautiful, though it may have a certain pleasing oddity of form ”

“ In the dwellings of the middle classes, rooms of eight, of six, and of four and a half mats are those oftenest met with. The kitchen and passages are not matted, but have a wooden floor, which is kept brightly polished. But the passages are few in a Japanese house, each room opening as a rule into the others on either side.
When a house has a second storey, this generally covers but a portion of the ground floor. The steps leading up to it resemble a ladder rather than a staircase. The best rooms in a Japanese house are almost invariably at the back, where also is the garden ”

“ Rein, in his really admirable book on Japan, says “the Japanese house lacks chiefly solidity and comfort.” If he means comfort for himself and his people, one can understand him; if he means comfort for the Japanese, then he has not the faintest conception of the solid comfort a Japanese gets out of his house. ”

“ The great elaboration and variety in the form and structure of the house-roof almost merit the dignity of a separate section. For it is mainly to the roof that the Japanese house owes its picturesque appearance; it is the roof which gives to the houses that novelty and variety which is so noticeable among them in different parts of the country. The lines of a well-made thatched roof are something quite remarkable in their proportions. A great deal of taste and skill is displayed in the proper trimming of the eaves ”

“ It is rare to see cabinets or conveniences for the display of bric-a-brac in a Japanese house, though sometimes a lacquer-stand with a few shelves may be seen,—and on this may be displayed a number of objects consisting of ancient pottery, some stone implements, a fossil, old coins, or a few water-worn fragments of rock brought from China, and mounted on dark wood stands. The Japanese are great collectors of autographs, coins, brocades, metal-work, and many other groups of objects ”

“ We sit in a house where there is practically no arrangement for heating and where we are poorly protected from the gusts from without. The Japanese house is built opening widely into the external air; it has but a few segments of external walls around it; therefore one can select no breezier abode during the warm months, but in the dead of winter—the mere thought of it makes me shiver. Those immense open spaces could be closed, to be sure, at night with solid pine-board sliding doors; but in the daytime the question of light comes in. ”