CHAPTER IV.

HOUSES: INTERIOR.

The sizes of rooms—The absence of furniture—Sliding-doors—Verandahs—Tenement and other small houses—Middle-sized dwellings—The porch and anteroom—The parlour—Parlour furniture—The sitting-room—Closets and cupboards—Bed-rooms—The dining-room—Chests of drawers and trunks—The toilet-room—The library—The bath-room—Foot-warmers.

A Japanese room is measured, not by feet and inches, but by the number of mats it contains. A mat consists of a straw mattress, about an inch and a half thick, with a covering of fine matting which is sewn on at the edges of the mattress either by itself or with a border, usually dark-blue and an inch wide, of coarse hempen cloth. It is six feet long by three wide; this measure is not always exact, but may vary by an inch or more in either direction. When a house is newly built, the mat-maker comes to make mats to fit the rooms in it. But in spite of the variation, the size of a room is always given in the number of mats it holds, so that we never know the exact dimensions of a room. The smallest room has two mats, that is, is about six feet square; the next smallest is three-matted, or three yards by two. Four-matted rooms are sometimes to be found; but such rooms are unshapely, being four yards long by two wide. A room with four and a half mats is three yards square and has the half mat, which is a yard square, in the centre. The next size is six-matted, or four yards by three and is followed by the eight-matted, or four yards square. The ten-matted room is five yards by four and the twelve-matted is six yards by four. It is only in large houses that there are rooms with fifteen or more mats. In some restaurants and story-tellers’ halls we come upon rooms with a hundred mats. Some rooms have five or seven mats; but they are really of six or eight mats with the space of one mat occupied by a closet or an alcove. It will thus be seen that in most rooms the length is either equal to the breadth or at most only half as much again. This tends to make the proportion between the two somewhat monotonous.

The commonest rooms are those with four and a half, six, or eight mats, that is to say, rooms which are three or four yards square or four yards by three. Such rooms would be very small in a house built in European style; there would hardly be elbow-room and one could not move an inch without knocking down some piece of furniture. But in a Japanese room there is but little furniture, and certainly none that one could bring down by knocking against it with the exception, perhaps, of the screen. Our rooms look very bare to foreigners and appear to lack comfort to those who have lived in European apartments; but from the Japanese’s point of view, rooms furnished in the approved European style suffer from excess of furniture and partake too much of the nature of a curiosity shop or a museum. This may be going too far; but there is undoubtedly something repugnant to the Japanese canons of taste to find all the art treasures of the house exhibited from day to day on the walls or in the corners of the rooms to which guests have access. The absence of movable furniture in a Japanese room, by allowing more free space, makes it look larger than a European room of the same size. We squat on the mats, and our line of vision, being consequently much lower than if we sat in a chair, gives the room a further appearance of greater size. The illusion is kept up by the lowness of the ceiling, which though seldom more than eight or nine feet high, seems to be loftier as we squat under it.

The size of a mat being, as already stated, roughly six feet by three, the yard has naturally become the unit by which other parts of a room or a house are measured. Thus, the sliding-doors are usually a yard wide. As these doors are always in pairs and move in two grooves each at top and bottom, there are a pair in grooves six feet long and two pairs in those of twelve feet; but in grooves nine feet in length there are either a pair or two, commonly the latter, in which case the sliding-doors are each three-quarters of a yard wide. The sliding-doors are of two kinds: the _shoji_, or paper sliding-doors, which are partitions admitting light, and the _fusuma_ (also called _karakami_), or screen sliding-doors, which merely serve as partitions. The _shoji_ consists of a wooden frame, an inch or more in thickness, with thinner cross and vertical pieces forming lattices about nine inches wide by five high. It is covered on the outside with thin rice-paper, which admits light but is not transparent. It is of use when there is light on one side as at the verandah or window or where a room or a passage would be too dark if _fusuma_ were put up. The _fusuma_ consists of a wooden frame with a few pieces within, which is pasted over on both sides with thick paper and covered with ornamental paper. It is quite opaque. The frame and lattices of the _shoji_ are of plain white wood; but the frame of the _fusuma_ is often varnished, though it may also be left plain. The _fusuma_ has a small hollow handle, a few feet from the floor, which is sometimes highly ornamented.

The verandah is also usually three feet wide. It consists generally of long narrow planks ranged parallel to the grooves of the sliding-doors, though it is sometimes made up of wider pieces set at right angles to them. In the former case the planks, as they age, shrink and leave cracks between, which admit light when the outer doors or shutters are closed in the daytime. Bamboos are sometimes laid between the pieces to cover the shrinkage. The shutters run in grooves on the outer edge of the verandah. They are also three feet wide and kept in a receptacle at the end of the groove. The last one only is usually bolted. There are similar shutters at all the windows, which are also provided with paper sliding-doors and lattices or bars as precautions against house-breaking. When a verandah runs along more than one room, there are pillars on its outer edge just inside the groove of the shutters and opposite the pillars dividing the rooms. All sets of sliding-doors need a pillar to close against at either end.

The smallest houses are those in the slums which have only three yards’ frontage and a depth of four yards. The entrance, the space for kitchen utensils and the sink, and perhaps a closet or cupboard would leave room for little more than three mats, on which the whole family live; but as children spend all their playtime outside and come in only for meals, it is at night that the house is crowded, and even then as they sleep higgledy-piggledy, a couple or so of children do not inconvenience their parents to any appreciable extent. A two-roomed house is common enough and is not confined to the slums. A childless old couple, when the wife has to do the household work, find such a house large enough for them. Artisans also live in them. Three-roomed houses, too, are very common. Houses built in blocks are oftenest of this size. They are made up of the porch, the sitting-room, and the parlour or drawing-room. These three rooms are the essential portions of a house; and larger houses merely add to them. A visitor calls at the porch, the paper sliding-door is opened, he is invited to come in, he leaves his hat and greatcoat in the porch, and enters the parlour. The master, or in his absence his wife, entertains him there, while the rest of the family remain in the sitting-room. In cold weather the sliding-doors between the two rooms are closed; but in summer they are kept open, or frequently doors with reed screens within the frames are used. These admit the breeze and let the people in the other room be seen; but the fiction of their invisibility is kept up and those in the inner room are not obliged to greet the visitor.

In a four-roomed house the fourth room may be the servant’s room, if one is kept, a toilet-room, or a reserve room without any definite purpose. A five-roomed house may be taken as the smallest in which a man of the middle class would live. One living in a smaller house may be reckoned among that class; but five rooms are perhaps the fewest in which one can live with comfort if there are not too many children or dependants. A servant would be kept and a room assigned to her, though it would not be exclusively her own as much household work would be done there. The fifth room would be the anteroom or a private room where the family effects, especially the wardrobe, would be kept. Houses with more rooms are pretty numerous; but probably ten rooms may be put as the limit for the middle class proper, if they do not indeed exceed its means. The average size for that class may be given as seven or eight rooms. In such a house there would be, in addition to the three rooms first mentioned, the anteroom, the servant’s room, the room for the wardrobe, and one between the sitting-room and the kitchen or back-entrance where inferior callers, such as tradesmen, artisans, servants’ relatives, or former dependants would be received. The eighth room, if there is one, may be reserved for the father or mother of the master or his wife, who may be staying with them, the master’s private room, the children’s study, or the student’s room. As the rooms, with the exception of the porch, parlour, and perhaps the servant’s room, are not built with a definite object in view, they can be used in any way. This is in a sense convenient; but it has also this disadvantage that the very indefiniteness of their object often makes them inconvenient for any purpose, for in many houses there are rooms which cannot be utilised, sometimes owing to their exposure which makes them too cold or too hot for comfort or too dark to work in, and sometimes by reason of their position which renders them good only for passages from one room to another.

Although, as has already been stated, there is no hard and fast rule for the disposition of the rooms, the commonest is perhaps the following:—At the front entrance there is the porch; the ground in front of it may be open with only a roof projecting over it, or it may be enclosed by latticed doors. In the open porch there is a stone step where the footgear are taken off before entering, while in the closed one there is a wooden ledge for stepping from the ground on to the mats. The porch itself, which would correspond to the hall in a European-built house, is of two or three mats; here the visitor leaves his hat, greatcoat, and other articles which he would not take into the parlour. On one side of the porch may be the student’s room if there is one at all and on the opposite side the porch opens upon the anteroom. The size of this room depends upon that of the parlour; sometimes it is of the same size, but more frequently smaller by two or more mats. Thus, if the parlour is of ten mats, the anteroom has eight; and if the former has eight mats as is oftenest the case, there are six in the other. The anteroom opens upon the same verandah as the parlour; and the two rooms are separated only by sliding-doors, so that these doors may, when necessary, be removed and the two rooms run into one. Such a room, which would have from fourteen to eighteen mats, would be large enough for most purposes. The anteroom thus opens upon the porch on one side, upon the verandah on another, and upon the parlour on the third, and on the fourth it usually communicates directly or indirectly with the servant’s room. In large houses, however, there is a separate passage from the kitchen to the porch. Thus, the room is open on all sides though there may sometimes be a bit of a wall by the doors from the porch and the kitchen. The room has little furniture, except, perhaps, one or two framed pictures or writings over the lintels of the doors; and in rare cases there is an alcove by the wall. Cushions for callers are usually kept in a corner of the anteroom.

The parlour, the principal room of the house, is always kept tidy. It has an alcove, six feet long by three deep, consisting of a dais, a few inches high, of plain hard wood, which will bear polishing, though a thin matting is sometimes put over it. Not unfrequently, another piece of wood, generally square, forms the outer edge so that the thickness of the floor of the alcove can be concealed. The dais has a special ceiling of its own, or a bit of a wall, of plaster or wood, coming down over it a foot or more from the ceiling. On the dais is set a vase of porcelain or metal, bottle-shaped or flat, in which branches of a tree or shrubs in flower are put in, and on the wall is hung a _kakemono_, or scroll of picture or writing. These two constitute the main ornament of the room. New flowers are put in every few days and the _kakemono_ is changed from time to time. This is the peculiarity of the _kakemono_ as a piece of house decoration. We do not exhibit all our treasures in _kakemono_ at the same time, but hang them one, two, or three at a time according to the size of the alcove and the _kakemono_ themselves, so that the visitor calling at different seasons may delight his eyes with the sight of fresh pictures or writings each time he calls. The inmates, too, do not grow weary with gazing at the same pictures day after day, but enjoy the variety the seasons offer. To the Japanese it is a more artistic and pleasurable method of displaying his treasures than keeping them all, as it were, on permanent exhibition. The flowers, too, in the vases are arranged in an artistic style; their arrangement is an art which boasts many schools and professors and is considered an indispensable branch of a girl’s education. They are not thrown haphazard in a bundle into a vase and expected to give pleasure merely by the profusion of colours and forms, It may be a single stem or half a dozen with the flowers ranged in relation to one another after fixed canons of the art.

There are in the parlour as in the anteroom pictures or writings in frames over the lintels of the sliding-doors. On a line with the alcove and usually of the same length is another recess, with a small closet at the top or bottom where the _kakemono_ and their cases are generally kept. In this recess there are, also, a pair of shelves at different heights and coming out from opposite walls, the free ends of which overlap each other a few inches. On these shelves some ornaments, usually curios, are placed. When unoccupied, the room is kept clear of any other object. When a visitor calls, even the cushion is brought from the anteroom for him to sit on, and then a small cup of tea set before him and a brazier if it is cold and if warm, a _tabako-bon_. The cushion is round or square; that for summer is made of matting, hide, or a thin wadding of cotton in a cover of hempen cloth, while for winter use the wadding is much thicker and the cover is silk or cotton. It is about sixteen inches at the side if square. The brazier is of various shapes and makes. It may be a wooden box with an earthenware case inside or with a false bottom of copper, or it may be a glazed earthenware case alone; the wooden box may be plain with two holes for handles, or it may be elaborately latticed; and sometimes a brazier is made of the trunk of a tree cut with the outside rough-hewn or only barked and highly polished. The _tabako-bon_, or “tobacco-tray,” is a small open square or oblong box of sandal-wood or other hard wood, which holds a small china or metal pan, three-quarters full of ashes, with a few tiny pieces of live charcoal in the middle to light a pipe with, and beside it a small bamboo tube with a knot at the bottom for receiving tobacco-ashes.

The sitting-room has little furniture. An indispensable article in it is the brazier, usually oblong, with a set of three small drawers one under another at the side and two others side by side under the copper tray filled with ashes, on which charcoal is burnt inside an iron or clay trivet. On this trivet is set a kettle of iron or copper. The iron kettle is made of thick cast-iron and kept on the trivet so as always to have hot water ready for tea-making: and the copper kettle is used when we wish to boil water quickly. Beside the brazier is a small shelf or cabinet for tea-things. Behind the brazier is a cushion where the wife sits; this is her usual post. There is also a cushion on the other side or the brazier, where the husband or other members of the house may sit.

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.

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.

Sometimes a small square hearth is cut in the sitting-room or some other convenient room; and in cold season a wooden frame supported by four pillars is put over the hearth and covered with a large quilt. Live charcoal is put into the hearth and the family sit around it with their knees under the quilt or lie down with their feet stretched out to the hearth. At other seasons the wooden frame is removed and a small mat of the same size as the hearth is put over it. As the hearth cannot be moved about, most people prefer a portable foot-warmer, which is usually a square wooden box with openings at the top and sides; one of the sides slides open and through it an earthen pan of live charcoal is placed inside. A quilt is laid over it as in the case of the hearth. Another, made specially for putting in bed, is of earthenware with a rounded top, which takes some time to heat. As the ordinary cut charcoal is consumed too quickly, balls of charcoal dust are used in these foot-warmers.