Home Life in Tokyo

by Jukichi Inouye

As for the other rooms of the house, there is no fixed article of furniture as much depends upon the uses to which they are put. The general absence of furniture in the rooms, however, does not imply that we are absolutely without necessary articles of daily use. The principle on which we proceed is to keep in a room only such articles as are in constant use, the rest being put away as soon as they are done with and brought out again when they are needed. Hence, one of the most striking features of a Japanese house is the number of closets and cupboards in it. Indeed, next to the arrangement of the rooms, the most important consideration in selecting a house is the number of closets it contains. These closets are three feet deep and a yard or two in width. Considering the quantity of household goods that are put away in these closets, there is no inconvenience we feel so much as their scarcity.

There are no rooms specially set apart for sleeping. This absence of bed-rooms enables us to put up with fewer rooms than would be required in a European house for a family of the same size. There are no bedsteads. A bed consists of one or two mattresses, and one or two quilts according to the season, and a pillow. These beds are spread in any room that is handy and put away in the closets in the morning. The parents and the children, especially if young, sleep in the same room; and unless there is an out-of-the-way chamber where they can sleep in peace, their beds are made in the parlour. For if the beds are made in that room, the others can be swept and made ready for use while the family are still in bed. In the sitting-room breakfast can be got ready, while the anteroom can be used at once if a visitor calls, as he sometimes does very early in the morning or very late at night when the children have been put to bed. In a two-storied house an upstair room is often used as a reserve parlour, so that the anteroom need not be got ready for receiving callers at unseasonable hours. If the family is a large one, the rest shake down where they are least in the way. The rooms to sleep in every night are of course assigned to permanent members of the household; but country-cousins on a prolonged visit can be put to bed anywhere without much inconvenience. For the belated guest the bed is spread in the parlour and its usual occupants are driven into other rooms.

There is no special dining-room. The family take their meals in the sitting-room. If there is a visitor, a dinner-tray is set before him as well as before the host in the parlour; thus, there is no need to have a room set apart for dining. A Japanese at home, then, may remain all day in one room; he can sleep, take his meals, receive his friends, or study without once standing up, for the room changes its character with the articles that are brought into it.

A CHEST OF DRAWERS AND A TRUNK.

Articles of clothing are put into chests of drawers or wicker-trunks. Chests of drawers are commonly made in halves with two drawers each, put one upon the other and fastened by iron clamps. This is to facilitate their removal, a provision which is of importance where fires are frequent. The wicker-trunk has a lid which is as deep as the trunk itself and encloses it, and thus any amount of clothing may be put into it up to the joint depth of the two. The trunks are hidden away in the closets; but the chests of drawers, if they cannot be put into a closet without inconvenience as they are over three feet wide, are set in a corner or against a wall. Indeed, they are purposely put sometimes where they can be seen and become part of the furniture of the room. In large houses where there are godowns, or fireproof plaster storehouses, the chests are put in them, and only such as contain articles of daily wear for the season are kept in the house itself.

If the house is large enough, a special room is set apart for toilet; but even then, as the toilet-case and its appurtenances can be readily moved to any other room, the toilet-room is more useful for keeping the necessary articles than for the toilet itself. And from the way in which Japanese dresses are worn, that is, as nothing is put on over the head like a jersey or the feet foremost like the European nether garments, a Japanese woman can change her clothes without exposing her body, and it is possible for her to dress or undress in any part of the house. When she is going out with her children, she often manages to turn the house inside out by calling upon its inmates to help her and the children to dress. Tables or desks are set for children in a spare room or in a corner of one that is occupied; but there is no nursery, and the children pervade the whole house. They play wherever they please, and peace prevails only when they are out or asleep.

Nor is there a special room for books, for the library does not find a place as an important feature in a Japanese house. We Japanese are not a nation of readers. A man of ordinary education has studied the Chinese classics and read the legendary histories and quasi-romances of his country recounting the exploits of the favourite national heroes; he also reads the papers and some of the current literature; but his knowledge of books cannot be said to be wide or sympathetic. What books he has, if they are in the usual Japanese style of binding, are piled up in small wooden cases with lids in front. If he has a godown, he keeps the more valuable of his books in it and only brings out such as he may require at the moment; but there are not many, besides those with whom literature is a hereditary calling, with so many books as to need storing in godowns. Far more Japanese take to the composition of Chinese poems or Japanese odes as a refined pastime, while a still larger number lose their heads over games of go and chess. For these they use their private rooms more frequently than for reading and study.

Public baths are, on account of their great convenience, largely patronised in Tokyo; but in many private houses bath-rooms are also built. A bath-room of the ordinary size is three yards by two. The bath of the commonest kind is made of wooden staves bound together with metal hoops. It is oval in shape and inside the bath near the edge a thin iron cylinder with a grating at its lower end passes through its bottom. Into this cylinder live charcoal is put in to heat the water of the bath; and a small plank partitions the cylinder to protect the bather from being burnt by contact with it. Oblong baths are now made with thick wooden sides and a furnace at one end which is fed with coke or faggot. The ground of the bath-room is paved with stone or beaten down with concrete; and on it stands a movable flooring, a foot or more high, of narrow planks with open spaces between to allow the water to run down. The bath holds one person or at most two spare persons, and the water in it is deep enough to cover the crouching body. The bather always washes himself on the flooring and gets into the bath only to warm himself.