Culture of Japan-Housing

Japanese these days tend to live in modern day houses, but some older people live in their own traditional Japanese houses. One interesting fact about Japanese traditional house is that they don’t actually have a special use of their room except for kitchen, bathroom and toilet. For example, your bedroom can be your living room if all your family gathers up. They could eat in whatever room and study in whatever room. This is possible because Japanese people always had portable furniture in their housings.

This furniture was stored in a storage room called oshiire. The doors of the Japanese house were made with paper covered over a net shaped wood. Like other portable furniture, this door was designed to make it easy to take it out and in when needed. Such were making the room larger when they don’t have enough space to fit in.

The floor of Japanese house is very unique. The Japanese flooring, called tatami, is a mat woven by rice straws. Most tatami have edging with plain cloth, but in some tatami they don’t have any edging at all. Tatami was a luxury item in past Japan around in Heian period. The lower classes then had mat-covered dirt floors, which is different from these days since almost all people around Japan uses tatami as their flooring.

Tatami is also divided into parts when a host invites guests into his/her house. They have entrance mat, guest mat, host mat and hearth mat. The guests are supposed to sit on the guest mat, and the host sits on the host mat. If there are too many guests and they cannot fit in, some guests sit on the entrance mat. They put their lower half of the body inside the hearth mat to keep themselves warm. The table that is put on the hearth mat contains a cover-like thing that works like an insulator for the heat from the hearth.

Tatami also has the knowledge of Japanese people inside it. Since tatami is made out of straw, it absorbs the humid air of Japan. Since Japan is an island country, they have a lot of humid air around the country. Also, tatami controls and insulates the temperature of the house very well. If it is very hot during summer, tatami keeps the floor cool enough so that people can feel comfortable. Also, when it is winter, tatami makes the room warm and keeps the temperature inside the house.