Classic Japanese houses are the envy of the world, or so the story goes. Frank Lloyd Wright was a big fan of the Imperial Villa of Katsura and the spare, simple beauty of the 17th century building inspired just about every minimalist modern house of the 1950s. You see samurais living in similar houses in Kurosawa movies. They evidently make great movie props and certainly influenced a lot of Hollywood-inspired designs. The problem, of course, is that classical Japanese houses that so inspired the Western modernists were about as convenient to live in as the beautiful glass boxes of Mies van der Rohe.
The floor plans were basically simple rectangles. People slept on futons that were stowed away in the morning, so that the sleeping quarters could be used for other purposes during the day. The rooms were separated by wood-and-paper screens that could be easily removed so that two or more rooms could be connected to create a larger hall. The rooms, therefore, were very flexible. It was convenient in the era when people held weddings, funerals, and all sorts of festivities and gatherings in the home. The down side was that there was not much audio privacy. And since the rooms were not separated by hallways, you often had to walk through rooms to get to other rooms.
Finer homes were made from a cluster of these rectangles joined by bridges, which helped a little in the privacy department. Often, a hallway that doubled as a porch circled the perimeter. But you still had to walk through other rooms to get to a room in the middle of the house. You can see such a house in Tom Cruise’s movie The Last Samurai. Now how could anybody have sex in this environment? The answer is “With permission from the master of the house.” If you slept in the same futon as someone else, someone was bound to know. There is much written about how the Japanese house evolved to accommodate the humid climate. That is true. The houses were intentionally constructed in this airy manner so that it could be dried out easily.
Such houses were inherited over generations and inhabited by large extended families. It was standard until the latter half of the 19th century. After the visit of Commodore Perry, Japan opened up to the outside world and began to modernize rapidly. A new educated middle class of teachers, engineers, accountants, and skilled workers of every kind left their ancestral homesteads and flocked to the cities. Smaller, more modern houses for nuclear families became necessary. These houses usually had a narrow hallway in the center of the house and smaller rooms separated by walls rather than screens. They were equipped with stoves for heating and cast iron pumps for the wells. Later they even had running water. Window glass became standard for the first time. You see a lot of these houses in movies directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Some of the houses had Western ornamentation such as stained glass and carved moldings, but of local design. The late 19th and early 20th centuries were the golden era of Japanese housing. Whether spare and simple or extravagantly ornamented, the houses of the era represented the best of the Japanese-Western hybrids. The few that remain standing should be treasured.
The fire bombings of the Second World War were very effective on Japanese houses made primarily of wood. Entire cities were leveled and there was a huge demand for new houses once the war was over. Unfortunately, post-war Japan had little foreign currency to buy imported materials, so the houses of this era had to make do with what materials that were available. Traditional building materials were in scarce supply. All sorts of new materials were given a try. Many of them disappeared with time. Others remained. Whether they stayed or not, the vast majority were of poor quality.
