Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1913-01-24
FRAGILE HOUSES.
Excepting Roof and Floors, Jap
anese Dwellings Are Unstable.
SLIDING PANELS FOR WALLS.
Windows Are Constructed Of Paper.
Structures That Are Put Together
Almost Like Dolls Houses and Easily
Blown Away.

STRUCTURES nat rNTo FuS ioSStheT
Almost Like Dolls Houses and Easily
Blown Away.
The paint pot is practically Danish.
ed from Japan. That is the first thing
you notice us you approach the coast,
for the first adventurous fishing boat
you pass is built, it would seem, OF
about half dozen broad, implanted
deal planks. SO with the sampans
that cluster around your ship as soon
as the anchor is dropped. They are
all nature colored undecorated and
undefaced by single lick of the paint
brush so with the houses Of the first
Japanese street you enter. They are
weathered to the silver gray of UNI
painted pine. Such color as there is
proceeds from the innumerable strips
Of Calico inscribed with huge hero
glyphics, which flap perpendicularly or
horizontally before every house.
House construction becomes very
much clearer, says the London News,
when we think of the partitions as
consisting, not of screens, but of slid
ing panels. Nor is it true that the
Japanese house is not divided into
rooms. The line Of denarcation be-
tween room and room is definitely fix.
ed by the grooves in which the panels
slide. There is even solid and per-
manent boundary, for the panels arc
only some five feet nine in height,
whereas the height of the room is gems
orally about eight feet, so that from
twenty to thirty inches of fixed parti-
ton fill the space between the panels
and the ceiling. 1t is true that when
all the panels are drawn back a whole
floor Of a house becomes practically
one large room. But this is almost as
true of some English and many Ameri-
can houses when all the folding or
| sliding doors are open
The Japanese house is without walls.
1t is a roof raised on wooden uprightS
over a wooden platform some eighteen
| inches above the ground, which forms
the main and i'll one story houses the
only floor The roof and the upper
floor or floors are supported entirely by
the beams which form the skeleton of
! the whole erection. The space which
in European houses is occupied by
walls and windows is here given over
to sliding panels of Il different sort
than those which form the partitions
| between rooms. Each house has an
outer and an inner casing. The outer
casing of wooden shutters called am
ado slides away every morning into
cupboard boxes, so disposed that doz-
ell amado slip into them with perfect
ease and can be slipped out again at
night with Il minimum Of eXertion.
And what of the inner casing? It
likewise consists of sliding panels
placed some two or three feet behind
the outer casing, which space of two
or three feet forms Il sort Of veranda
for lower story or balcony for an up4
per story But these inner panels,
called shoii, are entirely different from
the amado, and are the peculiar char
acteristic Of Japanese architecture.
They consist of light wooden frames,
over the rectangular panes Of which, SO
to speak, white paper is pasted in lieu
of glass. Translucent but not trans
parent, the paper admits light while it
secures privacy, though secure is per-
haps hardly the word for privacy
which an inquisitive baby's fingers can
destroy.
The reader may now understand, per-
haps, the toyliHe fragility of the Japa-
nese house. Save its roof and its floors
there is scarcely anything solid or inn
movable about it. When the amado
are slowed away for the day the walls
are literally Of white paper, and, though
these paper walls are seldom quite re-
moved, one panel is generally slipped
behind another, so that to all intentS
and purposes the building is as wall-lesS
as Il band stand or as a dolls house
with the front unlocked.