HOUSES: EXTERIOR.
Name-plates—Block-buildings—Gates—The exposure of
houses—Fires—House-breaking—Japanese houses in summer and
winter—Storms and earthquakes—House-building—The carpenter—The
garden.
We have already said that the complicated way of numbering streets and
the inclusion of a large group of buildings in one number make it hard
to find any particular house. They necessitate a dreary going to and
fro through a series of thoroughfares, which is very trying to one’s
temper and would in most cases oblige one after a long search to give
it up altogether, were it not for the circumstance that not only
shops and private offices, but also nearly every private house, has
a name-plate nailed over the front door or on the gate-post. If,
therefore, we can, in the course of our wanderings through a street,
alight upon the right number, we can generally find the house,
provided there are not too many with the same number. The name-plate
has usually inscribed on it the number of the house and the name of
its occupant, and his title if he is a peer. Besides the name-plate,
there is on the gate-post the brass-badge of the insurance company if
the house has been insured, to enable the company’s private firemen to
identify the house and give necessary assistance in case of a fire
in the neighbourhood. The gate-post has also the telephone-number
placarded in large figures for the telephone-rate collector’s
convenience.
Shops and most mercantile offices open directly upon the street; but
with respect to private houses there is no definite rule. Cheap houses
are built in long blocks; of these the worst description is to be
found in back courts; they are of one story, or if of two stories,
the second has a very low ceiling. They are usually in a dilapidated
condition and propped up on all sides; they are in fact our
slums. The smallest of these houses is only twelve feet by nine. A
block may be made up of a dozen such houses, six on either side with a
wall running through the middle from end to end. It is a peculiarity
of our tenement houses which have to be low on account of the
frequency of earthquakes that they are thus divided vertically
into narrow compartments and differ in this respect from the
many-storied houses in the West, which are divided horizontally and
occupied in flats. While the ground-rent is still comparatively low,
this habitation in transverse sections, so to speak, is feasible
for the poor; but even now, as the rent is steadily rising in all
quarters, the tendency is to drive these humble dwellers outside
the city limits. As it is, only in the poorer districts are these
miserable houses to be seen; for in the busier quarters the
ground-rent is already too high for them. But buildings in blocks are
not all of the poorest kind, though it must be admitted that dwelling
in a “long building,” as a block of this description is called,
implies on the face of it life on a humble scale. In the old times
well-to-do retainers, who had large houses of their own in the
country, lived when in Yedo in the “long buildings” surrounding their
lord’s mansion. Small shops are also built in blocks.
[Illustration: IN THE SLUMS.]
Though many private houses in the business quarters have no gates,
those of any pretensions in the residential districts where land is
naturally cheaper, are mostly provided with them. It is not usual for
professionals in humbler walks of life and for artisans to live within
a gate; but officials and others of some social standing prefer to
have one to their houses. Sometimes there is a single gate to a large
compound with a number of small houses in it; in such a case the
gate-post is studded with name-plates. Gates, too, vary in size and
form. The most modest are no more than low wicker-gates which can be
jumped over and offer no bar to intrusion. Others are of the same
make, but stand higher so that the interior can be seen only through
cracks. But the most common consist of two square posts with hinged
doors which meet in the middle and are kept shut by a cross-bar
passing through clamps on them. These gates may be of the cheapest
kind of wood, such as cryptomeria, or may be massive and of hard wood.
Another common kind has a roof over it with a single door which is
hinged on one post and fastened on to the other and provided with a
small sliding-door for daily use. The larger pair gates have also
small side-doors for use at night when they are themselves shut.
[Illustration: A HOUSE AND A GATE.]
After entering by the gate, we come to the porch; the distance
between them varies with the size and exposure of the house. It is not
true, as has been said by some writers on Japan, that in our houses
the parlour and the garden invariably occupy the rear while the
kitchen is in front. Their position depends upon the exposure of the
house. No people short of savages probably lead a more open-air
life than we do in our wooden houses. Our paper sliding-doors, which
are our only protection against wind and cold in winter, admit both
light and air; and we provide personally against the cold by wearing
wadded clothing and huddling over braziers, while in summer all the
sliding-doors are often removed to let the cool breeze blow through
the house. It becomes, then, an important matter in building or
selecting a house to see that its principal rooms are so arranged as
to get the warm rays of the sun in winter and the cool breezes in
summer. As both these are to be obtained from the south, the principal
rooms are made to expose their open side to that direction. In winter
the exposure of these rooms makes a vast difference in the consumption
of charcoal as the sun shining through the open side warms the rooms
more thoroughly than the braziers can do. Next to the south, the east
is the favourite direction, as the east wind coming over the Pacific
Ocean is milder than the north or west. The west wind, crossing as it
does the snowy ridges of Central Japan, is cold in winter while the
piercing rays of the westering sun make the rooms intolerably hot in
summer; and the north wind is cold in winter and in summer breezes
seldom come from that direction. In short, then, the principal rooms
face the south, if possible, or south-east, or sometimes the east. As
the garden is naturally in front of the principal rooms, its position
depends upon theirs, and it is made to lie, if possible, on the south
side of the house. If the gate is on the north side of the premises,
it is close to the house; but if it is on the south side, the garden
intervenes. It should, however, be stated that some people purposely
make their principal room face north; their reason is that if the
garden lay south of the house, the trees and plants in it would
display their north or rear side to those within, and they are
therefore willing to put up with the cold blasts from the north for
the pleasure of looking at the front and sunny side of their plants.
[Illustration: A ROOFED AND A PAIR GATE.]
Most houses in Japan are made of wood. In Tokyo only a little over
one-eighth of the houses are made of other materials, that is, of
brick, stone, or plaster, so that the capital may be said to be a city
of wooden houses. It is therefore, needless to add, often ravaged
by fire. In old Yedo fires were known as the “Flowers of Yedo,” being
as much among the great sights of the city as the cherry-blossoms on
the south-east bank of the River Sumida, the morning-glories of Iriya,
or the chrysanthemums of Dangozaka, for which Tokyo is still noted.
Under the feudal government occurred several fires which burnt
down tens of thousands of houses, and even under the new regime
disastrous fires are not unknown. On two occasions, in 1879 and
1881, over ten thousand houses were destroyed; but the last great
conflagration took place in 1892 when four thousand buildings were
devoured by the flames. Since then, though fires have been frequent
enough, their ravages have been more limited, thanks to a more
efficient system of fire-brigades and plentiful supply of water.
During the last few years the average number of houses annually
destroyed has been about seven hundred, which cover an area of seven
and a half acres; and as the total area of buildings in Tokyo is
three thousand seven hundred acres, the fires destroy every year one
five-hundredth part of the city. The actual loss of property is not so
great as might at first sight be supposed; for it is a notorious fact
that houses in Tokyo are not so carefully constructed as in Kyoto and
other cities, and the greater risks from fire incurred in the capital
discourage the building of costly houses unless they are to stand on
extensive grounds. Formerly it was calculated that the average life
of a house was about thirty years; but now the lesser frequency of
fires would give them a much longer lease. This is comforting to
house-owners; but it must be confessed that wooden houses more than
thirty years old are not pleasant to live in. The timber, unless
extremely well-seasoned, becomes warped and the pillars of the house
get out of the perpendicular, with the result that the sliding-doors
refuse to close flat upon them but leave a space at the top or bottom
through which the cold wind whistles at will in winter. This is the
case even with carefully-built houses, while in others the defects
are still more glaring. The jerry-builder’s hand is conspicuous in
most houses to let, and the rent is high compared with the cost of
construction. The landlords protest that they have to charge a high
rent as whole blocks may be swept away in one night through malice
or stupidity. And there is something to be said for their argument,
especially as fire insurance is still far from universal, for it
is strange when one comes to think of it that there are not more
destructive fires. It is so easy to burn down a wooden house. A rag
soaked with kerosene is enough to destroy any number of houses
and is the favourite means with incendiaries who hope to steal
household goods which are brought out in confusion into the street
whenever there is a fire in the neighbourhood. Besides, a slight act
of carelessness or neglect may lead to a terrible conflagration; a
candle left too near a paper sliding-door was the origin of the great
fire of 1892 already mentioned. Similarly, a kerosene lamp or a
brazier overturned, a pinch of lighted tobacco or an unextinguished
cigar-end, an over-heated stove or a piece of red-hot charcoal dropped
on the floor, these are among the commonest causes of fires; and even
the cheap Japanese matches, of which as the splints are not dipped in
paraffin, at least half a dozen are needed to light a cigarette in the
open air, are responsible for as many fires every year. Since such
slight accidents may at any time lead to great disasters, the
inhabitants, as they go to bed, are never sure, especially in crowded
quarters, of still having a roof over their heads next morning. They
may be aroused from their slumbers by the dreaded triple peal of the
alarm-bell and find the neighbouring street or next door wrapped in
flames, and just manage to run out of their houses with nothing but
the clothes on their backs. We are, however, so used to the fire-alarm
that if the peals are double to indicate that the fire is in the next
district, we only get out of bed to look at it from idle curiosity and
turn in again unless our house is leeward of the burning district or
we have to run to the assistance of a friend there; and if the bell
gives only single peals, which signify that at least one district
intervenes between the burning street and the fire-lookout, we turn in
our beds and perhaps picture to ourselves the lively time they must be
having in that street. A fire is, on account of its uncertainty and
suddenness, only less feared than an earthquake, and the general
feeling among the citizens is that of insecurity.
There is, however, still another element of insecurity in wooden
houses. House-breaking is by no means difficult in Tokyo. In the
daytime the front entrance is generally closed with sliding-doors
which can, however, be gently opened and entered without attracting
notice unless some one happens to be in an adjoining room. The
kitchen door is usually kept open, and it is quite easy to sneak
into the kitchen and make away with food or utensils. Tradesmen,
rag-merchants, and hawkers come into the kitchen to ask for orders, to
buy waste-paper or broken crockery, or to sell their wares, so that
there is nothing unusual in finding strange men on the premises.
Sometimes these hawkers are really burglars in disguise come to
reconnoitre the house with a view to paying it a nocturnal visit.
At night, of course, the house is shut and the doors are bolted or
fastened with a ring and staple, but very seldom locked or chained.
As the doors are nothing more than wooden frames with horizontal
cross-bars, on which boards less than a quarter of an inch thick are
nailed, it would not be difficult to cut a hole with a chisel large
enough for the hand to reach the bolt or the staple or to clear the
whole space between the cross-bars for the body to pass through. But
quieter methods are generally preferred. Single burglars usually come
in by the skylight, closed at night by a small sliding-door, which
does duty as chimney in the kitchen, or crawl under the floor which
is some two feet from the ground, by tearing away the boarding under
the verandah and come up by carefully removing the loose plank of the
floor, under which fuel is kept in the kitchen. If the burglars are in
a gang, they naturally come in more boldly than these kitchen sneaks.
Once inside, the thief has the run of the house as all the rooms
communicate by sliding-doors and are never locked, and the whole
household is at his mercy. Since, then, houses are so easy of entry,
it might be supposed that burglaries are very frequent in Tokyo; that
such is not the case is probably due to the somewhat primitive methods
pursued by these gentry and to the effective detective system of the
police authorities. The strict police registration of every inhabitant
and the easy access of all the rooms in a house make concealment very
difficult, and the criminal is readily shadowed as he wanders from
place to place throughout the Empire.
[Illustration: DOOR-FASTENINGS.]
To this general insecurity from fire and burglary all wooden houses
are subject; but if we take into consideration the actual number of
homes which fall victims to them, we are compelled to conclude that
though the feeling of insecurity may always be present, the chances of
its being realised are somewhat remote, so that it is not so bad as it
looks in these respects to live in the wooden houses of Tokyo. Fires
are most frequent in winter from braziers being then in use and
kerosene lamps being in requisition for longer hours every evening,
and burglaries, too, increase in the same season from the sufferings
of the poor being intensified. But in the summer heat the Japanese
house is extremely pleasant. The whole house is open and lets the cool
breeze blow from end to end; bamboo screens are hung in front of the
verandah where it is exposed to the burning rays of the sun. On the
second story we sit in thin cotton garments and feel the breeze all
over the body, and look down upon the landscape garden before us
or beyond at the peerless Mount Fuji on the south-west or at Mount
Tsukuba on the northern edge of the Musashino plain. It is especially
enjoyable when fresh from a hot bath, we squat or loll on the mats,
fan in hand, and engage in desultory talk or in a quiet game until the
sun sinks and wine and fish are brought before us. The Japanese house
is an ideal summer villa when we can rest ourselves from the heat and
dust of the busy city. But in the city itself it is far otherwise. The
dust blows in with every gust, and the house, to be properly kept,
must be swept several times a day. The narrowness of the streets and
lowness of the ceilings give the shops in crowded quarters
insufficient light, though more than enough of dusty air. But in
winter we feel the inadequacy of wooden houses; it is next to
impossible to keep out the cold effectually; a room never gets
thoroughly warmed. The wind blows in through the crevices of the
sliding-doors, for the edges on which these doors meet are flat and
never dovetailed. The paper of the doors is porous, and through its
pores the air gets in; there is certainly this to be said for it that
in a Japanese room one need never fear asphyxiation, however much
charcoal may be burning in the braziers. These braziers are for
warming the hands and the face if one crouches over them; but for the
body, we get the warmth from the abundance of wadded clothing. We can
therefore keep fairly warm if we merely sit on the mats; but directly
we move or stand up, the cold attacks us. Most Japanese are, however,
used from childhood to these cold rooms and do not feel the chill.
Many of them think nothing of sitting for hours in a cold draught.
A Japanese wooden house looks pretty when new; but after some years
when the outside is weather-beaten, the pillars begin to warp and the
walls to crumble, its charms, too, are on the wane. A well-built house
may be comfortable for twenty or at most thirty years, after which it
is uninhabitable without considerable repairs. The few private houses
which still remain that were built before the Restoration are at best
rain-proof, and afford little protection against wind. There are
certainly public buildings, such as shrines and temples, which have
survived many centuries and are not unfrequently picturesque as they
peer through their groves; but a close inspection would soon reveal
the repairs they have undergone, pillars repainted, roofs retiled,
gable-ends regilt, and the interior generally renovated. There is
wanting in Japanese dwelling-houses that poetical charm which age
lends to brick and stone buildings in the West with their dark-stained
casements and ivy-mantled walls; and time which mellows and imparts a
deeper hue to stone dry-rots wood and saps it of its strength, and
long before storms make any impression upon brick, the frame-house
falls to the ground. But in Japan it is not merely wind and rain
that houses have to contend against; the earthquake is the foe that
makes them to totter. Every earthquake, by shaking them up, tends to
loosen the joints and disturb the equilibrium of the building; and as
a good many such shocks, about a hundred and fifty, occur in the
course of a year, their combined effect is by no means negligible.
Houses have therefore to be built with the possible effects of
earthquakes in view.
The most obvious of the provisions against earthquake effects is the
small height of the houses. Most dwelling-houses in Tokyo have only
one or two stories; there are far more of the former than of the
latter; and even of the latter kind, the upper story is usually much
smaller than the lower. The floor stands about two feet from the
ground; the ceiling is eight or nine feet in height on the lower floor
and often less than eight feet on the upper. The outer walls sometimes
rest on a low stone course; but the verandah is supported by short
wooden pillars resting on stone slabs. The house, in fact, merely
stands on a few stone slabs and courses and can, as is indeed
sometimes done, be lifted bodily and removed to another site. Over the
verandah, if there is a story above, a small roof projects to prevent
the rain from blowing into, the rooms behind it. The housetop is never
flat, but has a great rough-hewn beam for roof-tree with rafters on
either side, which are covered with lath. Semicircular tiles are
laid over the roof-tree with a thick substratum of mortar, while the
slanting sides are covered with pantiles. The gutter is sometimes made
of copper, but more commonly of bamboo or tinplate. The roof is built
before the walls or the floor. First, the ground is levelled and the
stone foundation made for the pillars. Meanwhile the pillars, joists,
beams, and ties have been made, and are now set up and fitted. As soon
as the frame is built, the roof is put on and covered for the while
with matting so as to enable the workmen to work inside irrespectively
of the weather. The verandahs, floors, ceilings, and grooves for
sliding-doors are made. The carpenter’s work is then done; and the
tiler is called in for the roof-tiles, the plasterer for the walls,
and the joiner for the sliding-doors. The tiles are of a uniform size
and generally of the same shape. The walls are made with a lathing
or frame of slender bamboo, which is covered with clay and over it one
or more coatings of plaster. In some buildings the coatings of the
outer walls are replaced by clapboards, which are painted black if the
wood is of an inferior quality or too weather-beaten. The paper-hanger
is called in to paper the sliding-doors and the mat-maker comes to
cover the floor with mats. The house is then complete.
[Illustration: A HOUSE WITHOUT A GATE.]
In Japan there was neither an architect nor a builder as a distinct
calling. Even now, ordinary dwelling-houses are not built by either of
them; it is the carpenter who has charge of their construction. The
carpenter’s is a dignified craft; he is called in Japanese the “great
artificer,” and stands at the head of all artisans. In the building of
a house, a master carpenter is called in; he prepares the plans,
and if they are approved, he sets to work with his apprentices and
journeymen. The other artisans, the tiler, the plasterer, and the
joiner, work under him. He is not as a rule an educated man and knows
his trade from having worked at it from apprenticeship; and for his
diligence or intelligence he has been set up by his master, or it may
be that he has found a wealthy patron, or more probably, he comes of
a carpenter’s family and has succeeded his father. Making use only
of the knowledge acquired during his term of apprenticeship or
service as journeyman, the master carpenter has little occasion to
display his inventiveness or originality, for he need only follow the
time-honoured conventions which hold sway in his craft as in all other
arts and crafts of the country. Hence, monotony is a distinctive mark
of Japanese domestic architecture; there is a sameness of style in all
our dwelling-houses. The chief and perhaps the only point upon which
the carpenter has to bring his ingenuity to bear is the arrangement of
the rooms. If he has a large site to build on, he will spread out the
building so as to secure as much southerly or south-easterly exposure
as possible without counteracting inconveniences; but if the site is
confined, he has to change his plans accordingly. Much depends upon
the lie of the land. His object is to have no rooms that are useless
or inconvenient. This is not such an easy task as may appear at first
sight in a house in which, with one or two exceptions, the rooms
may be turned into any use; for the very indefiniteness of their
disposal makes the problem more difficult to solve than in the case of
a house in which a definite use is assigned to each room at the time
of erection.
[Illustration: A GARDEN.]
Convention also makes itself felt in the laying out of a Japanese
garden, though a greater latitude is allowed to the gardener’s
ingenuity. Still the principles remain unchanged. In a large garden
we usually find a pond, dry if no water is available, and surrounded
with rocks of various shapes, and a knoll or two behind the pond with
pines, maples, and other trees, and stone lanterns here and there. A
few flowering shrubs are in sight, but these are planted for a
season; thus, peonies, morning-glories, and chrysanthemums are removed
as soon as they fade, while corchoruses and hydrangeas are cut down
leaving only the roots behind. The chief features of the garden are
the evergreens like the pine, trees whose leaves crimson in autumn
like the maple, and above all, the flowering trees like the plum, the
cherry, and the peach. A landscape garden presents, when the trees are
not in blossom, a somewhat severe or solemn aspect; we do not expect
from it the gaiety which beds of flowers impart. Indeed, many European
flowering plants have of late been introduced, such as anemones,
cosmoses, geraniums, nasturtiums, tulips, crocuses, and begonias; but
they still look out of place in a Japanese garden. Roses are sometimes
planted, but they are almost scentless. The humidity of the climate
appears to militate against the perfume of flowers.