The evolution of Japanese sleeping spaces is perhaps counter-intuitive from a European perspective, where private, specialised bedrooms are seen as the natural developmental end-point. As we will see, in Japan, the general sequence of development has been: single-space dwellings → small, closet-like dedicated bedrooms → larger, more open multi-purpose rooms; and today, with the Westernisation of Japanese dwellings, a return to private, dedicated bedrooms; but this latter development is beyond our scope.

The first houses humans built were built as ‘lairs’. Of all the functions of a dwelling, its most important is as a sleeping place. Primitive Japanese houses were such enclosures: the whole interior was a single space, and the whole space was for sleeping. So long as a degree of inconvenience and discomfort can be endured, all activities other than sleeping can be undertaken outdoors, but for restful sleep, it is absolutely necessary to have a space with an enclosed perimeter, to protect the body against external attack, predation by wild animals, rain, and cold.

Around the Tempо̄ (天保) era (1831 - 1845), the Edo-period merchant and essayist Suzuki Bokushi (鈴木牧之, 1770 - 1842) travelled to Akiyama-gо̄ (秋山郷), a mountainous district straddling Nagano and Niigata Prefectures, an area of extremely remote rural villages where many old customs survived until relatively recently. Suzuki recorded his impressions in the best-seller Hokuetsu-seppu (北越雪譜, Hokuetsu Snow Notes), published in 1837. Hokuetsu (北越) refers to the west-coast ‘snow country’ (yuki-guni 雪国) region, roughly comprised of the current-day prefectures of Fukui, Ishikawa, Niigata, and Toyama. Suzuki writes:

“The people of Akiyama all sleep in their clothes. They have nothing in the way of bedding. On winter nights they build a big fire in the irori and sleep around it. When it is very cold, they gather straw from other places* and make bags with it to sleep in. Those with wives make bigger bags, and husband and wife go together into the same opening.”

*Farmers in this area practiced slash-and-burn cultivation, so had to source their straw from the plains (hirachi 平地).

As various other domestic activities were gradually brought inside, the first thing to be partitioned off from the rest of the space was the bedroom (shinshitsu 寝室, ‘sleep room’), though these rooms also functioned, sometimes primarily, as ‘safe rooms’ for the storage of valuables. In the Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, there is a minka from Akiyama-gо̄, the former Yamada family (Yamada-ke 山田家) residence. This L-plan (chūmon-zukuri 中門造り) dwelling, unlike the one described by Suzuki above, has a bedroom. It is a hiroma-type three-room layout (hiroma-gata san-madori (広間型三間取り), but the interior is largely open: the nakanoma and dei are only divided by sills, and the bedroom (heya へや), though enclosed with board walls, has a mat (mushiro 莚) hanging over it its entrance in place of a solid door. The dwelling itself has reed-thatched exterior walls, and there are no raised timber floor areas; the earth floor of this ‘earth-sitting dwelling’ (土座住まい) is spread thickly with reed heads and varieties of straw. While this minka is still fairly primitive, it at least has a bedroom with solid, carefully built walls, such that the room could have also been used to store valuables, with the addition of a proper door.

Exterior of the former Yamada (山田) family residence, built in 1776.

Interior view of the Yamada family residence, taken from the niwa looking across the living room (*naka-no-ma* なかのま) towards the bedroom (*heya* へや) on the left, with hanging mat over the entrance and high sill, and the open formal room (*dei* でい) on the right.

Plan of the former Yamada family residence. The bedroom (*heya*) へや) is at the top right.

Bedrooms of this type, which were still being used even into the 1970s in villages in remote or cold regions, were usually extremely ‘close’ and dark, with solid walls on all four sides, broken only by a small entrance. In warmer climates such as that of the Kinki region, they might have been relatively large, perhaps around six tatami mats in area (9.9 m²), but in cold regions like Tо̄hoku, many are as small as two mats (3.3 m²). Such small, dark sleeping closets were thought effective for peaceful rest, to prevent cold, and to protect against the danger presented by bandits and others.

The whole floor of the bedroom would be spread thickly with soft straw, or, in mountain villages, some variety of rice husk (ine-kara 稲殻 or fue-gara). So that this material would not spill out of the room, the entrance sill was set 20 cm or more above floor level, and had to be straddled to enter. In some areas, this high sill is called haji-kakushi (はじかくし, ‘shame/embarrassment hider’); in other areas it is called hako-doko (箱床 lit. ‘box floor’), because the bed entirely occupies the space within the four walls. Often people would sleep on a thin woven straw sleeping mat (ne-goza 寝ござ) or a large hemp ‘wrapping cloth’ (furoshiki 風呂敷) laid on top of the bedding material, but children and others might sleep burrowed directly into the compacted straw. The term ‘permanent bed’ (man-nen-doko 万年床, lit. ‘ten thousand year bed’) is used in Japan today to describe futon that are ‘unmade’, i.e. not stored away every morning as is proper, but left permanently on the floor, suggesting laziness. Obviously loose straw, let alone rice husks, cannot be practically taken up and stored away every day, especially when there is no storage facility, so the bedrooms described above were true man-nen-doko, without the negative connotations implied by the modern usage of the term.

People slept in these bedrooms completely naked (suppadaka 素裸), either covering their bodies with their day-clothes, or drawing over themselves a patchwork (boro-boro) blanket made of boro (襤褸), rags and ragged clothes, stitched together. This latter practice was common enough that there was even a trade in buying up boro in the Kansai region for bulk resale in the Kantо̄ region.

Even where households had some form of bedding (in the village Suzuki writes of there were two such houses), it was reserved for guests. Suzuki himself was given the use of this bedding when he stayed a night at one of these houses: a thick cloth (tafu 太布) woven from nettle (ira-kusa 刺草, Urtica thunbergiana), which he soon discovered still contained traces of the stinging hairs (ira 刺). Suzuki gives us his thoughts on this experience, writing:

“I slept on this bedding, but that lint found its way into the folds (suso 裾) [of my kimono], and also much into the lining (awase 袷); it is not something that should be near the body.”

From Kantо̄ to the Tо̄hoku region, there were forms of bedding that differed from the simple rectangular blankets found in Kansai: sleeved yogi (夜着 ‘night gown’) that resembled kimono (着物), and another type known as yo-busuma or yu-bushima (夜衾 ‘night fusuma’). Fusuma (衾), not to be confused with the homophonic fusuma (襖), the opaque sliding door panels of traditional Japanese homes, is a type of bedding used to cover the body, first recorded among the nobility of the Heian period (平安時代, 794 - 1185). Later yogi and yo-busuma used by common people were somewhat different to the original aristocratic versions, but retained the names.