Tatami room

A room for entertaining guests, covered with tatami mats. The floors of ancient houses were wooden and people sat on round cushions or tatami mats, but in the late ancient period, tatami mats began to be used to cover the entire floor of small rooms, and from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period, tatami mats began to be used to cover the entire floor of rooms used for entertaining guests or as living rooms. In the late Middle Ages, toko and staggered shelves appeared, and these were gradually brought together in zashiki for decorative purposes, and in the early Edo period, zashiki decoration with a fixed format was created, with the toko and staggered shelves lined up at the front of the zashiki, with the toko facing the garden, an attached shoin adjacent to the toko facing the garden, and a chodai-gamae adjacent to the staggered shelves and facing the attached shoin. Zashiki decoration is the main decoration of zashiki, but when sukiya-style designs came to be used, it became common to omit elements other than the toko as appropriate. It is common for an antechamber (annual room) slightly narrower than the zashiki to be set up next to the zashiki, and the two rooms are separated by sliding doors, with a transom above them. The zashiki and the antechamber are often used together. The area around the zashiki is made up of sliding doors and walls, with the exception of the shoji screen between the veranda facing the garden. In the Edo period, the most prestigious zashiki rooms were decorated with gold and silver partition paintings, but in sukiya-style rooms, karakami paper is often used. The walls below the inner dimension are made of panels with the same structure as the sliding doors, and the small walls above the inner dimension were painted white clay, but in sukiya-style rooms, they are painted with colored clay. The ceiling is usually a ribbed ceiling, but in prestigious zashiki rooms, various types of coffered ceilings are used.

The zashiki of modern Japanese-style houses is a room that continues the Shoin-zukuri style from the Edo period, and was used as a guest room as well as the master's living room and bedroom. Because of this characteristic, the zashiki was a sunny room facing south, occupying the best location in the house, and a garden was created in front of it. Zashiki always had a tokonoma alcove, and often had staggered shelves, attached shoin, or flat shoin.

However, due to the lifestyle improvement movement that became popular around the Taisho period, the fact that the zashiki was not used for daily life and was located in the best place in the house became an issue, and after World War II, it became economically impossible to afford to create a room for entertaining guests, and it became common not to build zashiki.

[Hirai Sei]

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

畳を敷き詰めた接客用の部屋。古代住宅の床は板敷きで、円座や畳を敷いて座っていたが、古代末には狭い部屋で畳が敷き詰められるようになり、さらに中世末から近世初めに接客や居間に使われる部屋に畳が敷き詰められるようになった。中世後期には床・違い棚などが発生し、これらはしだいに装飾のために座敷に集められ、江戸時代初期には、座敷の正面に床と違い棚を、床を庭側にして並べ、床に接し庭に面して付書院を、違い棚に接し付書院に相対して帳台構(ちょうだいがまえ)を配する、一定の形式をもつ座敷飾りができあがった。座敷飾りは座敷の主要な装飾であるが、数寄屋(すきや)風の意匠が用いられるようになると、床以外の要素を適当に省略するのが一般的になる。座敷に続いて、座敷よりやや狭い次の間を設けるのが普通で、座敷と次の間は襖(ふすま)で仕切り、その上を欄間(らんま)とする。座敷と次の間は、続けて使うことが多い。座敷の周囲は、庭に面する縁側との間を障子とするほかは襖と壁で、江戸時代のもっとも格式の高い座敷では金碧(きんぺき)障壁画で飾られていたが、数寄屋風になると唐紙(からかみ)が多用される。内法(うちのり)以下の壁は襖と同じ構造のパネルの張付け壁、内法上の小壁は白土塗りであったが、数寄屋風になると色土壁になった。天井は棹縁(さおぶち)天井が普通であるが、格式の高い座敷では各種の格(ごう)天井が使われている。

　近代の和風住宅の座敷は、江戸時代以来の書院造の様式を継ぐ部屋で、接客の部屋であるとともに主人の居間であり寝室でもあった。このような性格から、座敷は南面する日当りのよい部屋で、家の中でいちばんよい場所を占め、その前に庭をつくった。座敷にはかならず床の間があり、違い棚や付書院や平書院がつけられることも多かった。

　しかし、大正ころから盛んになった生活改善運動により、日常生活の場でない座敷を家の中でいちばんよい場所にとることが問題にされ、第二次世界大戦後は、接客のための部屋をつくる余裕が経済的になくなり、座敷をつくらないのが普通になった。

［平井　聖］

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