The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1914-04-09
Japanese DomiCileS Are Buildings
Without Walls.
Sliding Panels and Windows of Paper
Are Used in Dwellings; FImsy
Character of Habitations OF
the Flowery Kingdom.

The paint pot is virtually banlsheu
from .Japan. That is the first thing
you aotice as you approach the coast
for tie first adventurous fishing boat
you pass is built, it would seem, OF
about half a dozen broad, implanted
deal planks. So with the sampans
that cluster round your ship as soon
as the anchor is dropped! they are all
nature colored undecorated and I'M
defaced by single lick of the paint
brush. So with the houses OF the
first Japanese streets you enter; they
are weathered to the silver gray or
implanted pine. Such color as there
is proceeds from the innumeraDie
strips of calico, inscribed with huge
hieroglyphics, which flap perpendicu-
larly or horizontally before every
house.
House construction becomes very
much clearer when we think OF the
partitions as consisting not of screens
but of sliding panels. Nor is 1t true
that the Japanese house is not divided
into rooms. The line of demarcation
between room and room is definitely
fixed by the grooves in which the
panels slide. There is even a solid
and permanent boundary; for the
panels are only some five feet nine
inches in height, whereas the height
of the room is generally about eight
feet. SO that from twenty to thirty
inches of fixed partition fill the space
between the panels and the ceiling.
1t is true that when all the panels
are drawn back whole floor of
house becomes virtually one large
room, but this is almost as true OF
some English and many American
houses when all the folding or slid
ing doors are open.
Looking now at the Japanese house
at large, one can easily define It's
dominant characteristic. 1t is house
without walls; it is a roof raised on
wooden uprights over a wooden plat
form some eighteen inches above the
ground, which forms the main, and
in 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 Euro
pean houses is occupied by walls and
windows is here given over to sliding
panels of a 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 "amado,"
slides away every morning into cup
board boxes so disposed that dozen
'amado" slip into them with perfect
ease and can be slipped out again
at night with minimum of exertion.
And what of the inner casing? 1t
likewise consists of sliding panels
placed some two or three feet behind
the outer casing, which space of two
or three feet forms a sort of veranda
for lower story, or balcony for an
upper story. But these inner panels,
called "shoji," are entirely different
from the "amado," and are the pecu-
liar characteristic of Japanese archl-
lecture. 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 transparent, paper admits
light, while it secures privacy; though
secure is perhaps hardly the word
for privacy which an inquisitive
baby's fingers can destroy.
The reader may now understand,
perhaps, the toylike fragility of the
Japanese house. Save it's roof and it's
floors, there is scarcely anything solid
or immovable 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 removed, one panel is
generally slipped behind another, so
that, to all intents and purposes, the
building is wall-less as bandstand, or
as a dolls house with the front un-
hooked