Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings

by Edward Sylvester Morse

Simple as the house just given appears to be, there is quite as much variety in the arrangement of their rooms as with us. There are cheap types of houses in Japan, as in our country, where room follows room in a certain sequence; but the slightest attention to these matters will not only show great variety in their plans, but equally great variety in the ornamental finishing of their apartments.

The plan shown in [fig. 98] is that of the house represented in figs. 36 and 37. The details are figured as in the previous plan. This house has on the ground-floor seven rooms besides the kitchen, hall, and bath-room. The kitchen and bath-room are indicated, as in the former plan, by their floors being ruled in wide parallel lines,—the lines running obliquely, as in the former case, indicating the bath-room or wash-rooms.

The owner of this house has often welcomed me to its soft mats and quiet atmosphere, and in the enjoyment of them I have often wondered as to the impressions one would get if he could be suddenly transferred from his own home to this unpretentious house, with its quaint and pleasant surroundings. The general nakedness, or rather emptiness, of the apartments would be the first thing noticed; then gradually the perfect harmony of the tinted walls with the wood finish would be observed. The orderly adjusted screens, with their curious free-hand ink-drawings, or conventional designs on the paper of so subdued and intangible a character that special attention must be directed to them to perceive their nature; the clean and comfortable mats everywhere smoothly covering the floor; the natural woods composing the ceiling and the structural finishing of the room everywhere apparent; the customary recesses with their cupboard and shelves, and the room-wide lintel with its elaborate lattice or carving [pg 116] above,—all these would leave lasting impressions of the exquisite taste and true refinement of the Japanese.

I noticed that a peculiarly agreeable odor of the wood used in the structure of this house seemed to fill the air of the rooms with a a delicate perfume;[12] and [pg 117] in this connection I was led to think of the rooms I had seen in America encumbered with chairs, bureaus, tables, bedsteads, wash-stands, etc., and of the dusty carpets and suffocating wall-paper, hot with some frantic design, and perforated with a pair of quadrangular openings, wholly or partially closed against light and air. Recalling this labyrinth of varnished furniture, I could but remember how much work is entailed upon some one properly to attend to such a room; and enjoying by contrast the fresh air and broad flood of light, limited only by the dimensions of the room, which this Japanese house afforded, I could not recall with any pleasure the stifling apartments with which I had been familiar at home.

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. He recalls with satisfaction certain works on household art, in which it is maintained that a table with carved cherubs beneath, against whose absurd contours one knocks his legs, is an abomination; and that carpets which have depicted upon them winged angels, lions, or tigers,—or, worse still, a simpering and reddened maiden being made love to by an equally ruddy shepherd,—are hardly the proper surfaces to tread upon with comfort, though one may take a certain grim delight in wiping his soiled boots upon them. 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. Mr. Lowell truthfully remarks on “the waste, and aimlessness of our American luxury, which is an abject enslavement to tawdry upholstery.”

We are digressing, however. In the plan referred to, an idea of the size of the rooms may be formed by observing the [pg 118] number of mats in each room, and recalling the size of the mats, which is about three feet by six. It will be seen that the rooms are small, much smaller than those of a similar class of American houses, though appearing more roomy from the absence of furniture. The three rooms bordering the verandah and facing the garden are readily thrown into one, and thus a continuous apartment is secured, measuring thirty-six feet in length by twelve in width; and this is uninterrupted, with the exception of one small partition.[13]

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. The house is simply charming in all its appointments, and as a summer-house during the many long hot months it is incomparable. In the raw and rainy days of winter, however, it is not so pleasant, at least to a foreigner,—though I question whether to a Japanese it is more unpleasant than the ordinary houses at home are with us, with some of the apartments hot and stifling, and things cracking with the furnace heat, while other parts are splitting with the cold; with gas from the furnace, and chimneys that often refuse to draw, and an impalpable though tangible soot and coal-dust settling on every object, and many other [pg 119] abominations that are too well known. The Japanese do not suffer from the cold as we do. Moreover, when in the house they clothe themselves much more warmly; and for what little artificial warmth they desire, small receptacles containing charcoal are provided, over which they warm themselves, at the same time keeping their feet warm, as a hen does her eggs, by sitting on them. Their indifference to cold is seen in the fact that in their winter-parties the rooms will often be entirely open to the garden, which may be glistening with a fresh snowfall. Their winters are of course much milder than our Northern winters. At such seasons, however, an American misses in Japan the cheerful open fireplace around which the family in his own country is wont to gather; indeed, with the social character of our family life a Japanese house to us would be in winter comfortless to the last degree.