Product Description

If there is no place like home, there is certainly no home like a minka. Literally "houses of the people," these traditional farmhouses from Japan's premodern past might be more properly called "folk houses": The beauty of minka, like the beauty of all folk art, lies in the harmonious blending of form and material. In form, minka have evolved gradually, with numerous variations, from origins deep in Japan's prehistoric past. The building materials--earth, wood, and stone--come from the same mountains and forests that surround the houses. Traditional forms, readily available materials, and integration with nature--these are the distinguishing elements of the buildings that countless Japanese have called home for centuries.

Illustrated with more than 400 photographs and drawings, this book describes the basic external and internal features, the structure from foundation to roof truss, and the variety of minka styles. It is a virtual cornucopia of information, sure to delight anyone with an interest in architecture, art, or age-old lifestyles that are now on the wane.

The diversity of minka styles is particularly intriguing. In response to the demands of local geography, climate, and industry, every region of Japan has developed its own style. The multistory minka of northern Japan, with their steep thatched roofs and many small gable windows, were an adaptation to long winters and heavy snows as well as to the needs of silkworm cultivation. The minka of southern Japan are often a cluster of relatively small, low buildings with raised floors to maximize ventilation and minimize typhoon damage. As the reader of this book will soon discover, an exploration of minka styles becomes a journey through Japan as well as a capsule social history of this fascinating land. Almost half the book is devoted to a discussion of styles, from salient features and the reasons for their development to local variants. A detailed description of a representative extant minka is given for each major style.

An architect by profession, the author has spent half a century scouring Japan from the northern island of Hokkaido to the scattered islands south of Kyushu, studying, drawing, and photographing, in hope of blunting the onslaught of consumer culture that threatens these magnificent houses. This book, the first comprehensive account in English of the architecture and the major stylistic characteristics of minka, is a distillation of his vast knowledge and deep love for these traditional dwellings.

Previously published as Minka: Traditional Houses of Rural Japan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1791515 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 260 pages

From the Publisher
[An EXCERPT from Part II of the book]

The Evolution of Floor Plans

The floor plans (madori) typical of minka evolved from the division of a multi-purpose room into separate rooms or, alternatively, from the addition of rooms around this multi-purpose room. The process by which the primitive one-room dwelling evolved into the floor plans typical of minka today has traditionally been explained according to a long-established though perhaps simplistic theory, which I will review before presenting my own ideas.

The progression hypothesized by the established theory is shown in figure 88. The earliest dwelling is believed to have been an undifferentiated space that combined living quarters and a work area, the whole being either earth-floored or raised from the ground. Although the space was not physically divided, convenience and custom dictated a fixed pattern of use. The first de facto division was between the work area and the living area. The space nearest the entrance served as a work area and a storage place for agricultural and hunting equipment, while space to one side of the entrance was reserved for cooking. The opposite end of the house from the entrance consisted of a single room used for eating, sleeping, and relaxing. The part of this room nearest the entrance was used as a living area, the part adjacent to the cooking area became the dining area, and the part farthest from the entrance was the sleeping area. These fixed patterns of use, it is believed, prompted the development of partitions and led to the emergence of rooms with specialized functions. The first one-room house thus became inadequate as greater demands were put on available space.

Sleeping is one of the most important functions of a house. According to the accepted theory the sleeping area was the first part of the house to be actually partitioned off. A partition provided some protection against insects and wild animals, helped keep out the cold, and guaranteed a measure of privacy. The sleeping area was demarcated either by erecting a wall to separate it from the rest of the house used for living, or by building a new room onto the side of the house, in either case creating a two-room floor plan.

As life grew more complex it became necessary to have a formal room for entertaining guests. Thus the sleeping area was divided in two, resulting in what is called the hiroma-type floor plan. This consists of two rooms at one end and a large common room or living room (hiroma) in the center of the house. The emergence of the formal room as an independent space is thought to have gone hand in hand with the development of private sleeping quarters, so that at this stage the dwelling provided for all the basic functions of living. A sunken hearth was generally located in the multi-purpose room, and it was here that family meals were eaten and guests sometimes entertained. Because the hearth was situated roughly in the center of the house, it heated the entire building. This floor plan became the most widespread in regions with long cold winters.

The hiroma floor plan had the disadvantage, however, of exposing the private affairs of the household, even family meals, to view from the entrance. A vestibule where callers could be met and simple business affairs attended to was provided by adding a partition subdividing the hiroma. Sometimes this partition did not align with the partition between the formal room and bedroom behind the hiroma, resulting in a floor plan called the "non-aligned quadrant" (kuichigai yoma) plan; when it did align, the floor plan was called a "regular quadrant" (seikei yoma) plan. According to the established theory these two basic floor plans were the most convenient from the point of view of ceremonial use (weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies, communal gatherings) as well as for silkworm cultivation and other indoor farmwork, and in time became the norm in minka architecture.

In outline, this is how minka floor plans are generally believed to have developed. However, there is far more diversity in minka floor plans than this theory can account for. Here I would like to consider the development of minka floor plans from a somewhat different perspective.

Throughout the world, primitive dwellings had an undifferentiated interior space. Differences in structural materials and other factors meant that some were circular, others rectangular. Depending on the climate, some were built directly on the ground, while others were raised on stilts. But in all cases the primary function of the dwelling was that of a lair: a sheltered place for sleep and rest. Most other daily activities took place outdoors. In Japan the undifferentiated tateana pit dwelling is believed to have developed into a one-room dwelling consisting of an earth-floored work area and a living area with a raised floor, though the two areas were not partitioned. There are two possible explanations as to how this first division of interior space came about. One is that the part of the earth-floored dwelling set aside for sleeping was given an elevated floor. The other is that an earth-floored work area was added to an existing dwelling with a raised floor. I will not pursue this dichotomy of views, but will concentrate instead on the development of the raised portion of the dwelling.

The most plausible explanation of the evolution of partitioning, I believe, begins with a half-wall or a free-standing screen that protected the sleeping area from drafts and afforded some privacy. An extant example of this is seen in a minka in Hidakagun, Wakayama Prefecture (figs. 89, 90). This house has only a simple half wall that screens the sleeping area from the front of the house. This type of floor plan, I might point out, belongs to the same lineage as the floor plan characteristic of Shinto shrine architecture (fig. 89), which is believed to be the prototype of raised dwellings in Japan, and thus shows the room partition in its embryonic form.

Naturally, the half-wall was not an adequate room divider, so eventually a wall was added on the other side of the sleeping quarters, resulting for the first time in the creation of a separate room. This represented the beginning of a floor plan in the true sense.

About the Author
Chujji Kawashima (b.1912) is the author or coauthor of many books in Japanese on minka, including the award-winning Furusato no sumai (Hometown Dwellings) and the three-volume Horobiyuki minka (Vanishing Minka). Now retired, he was an executive of a leading Japanese firm of architects and builders. He is on the board of the Society for Japanese Folk Architecture.