The material culture of the Japanese people continues to differ in its uniqueness, and despite numerous innovations, the traditional basis remains the dominant beginning. Next to giant skyscrapers, complex interweaving of modern highways for high-speed transport, the traditional culture of the Japanese people continues to live in the system of colossal metropolitan areas with their multi-million inhabitants.
As for traditional Japanese homes, they are made of bamboo and paper, as the Japanese say, and the traditional homes are now inhabited by rural populations. In many prefectural and county towns, traditional housing still occupies a significant place. Until recently, it was believed that every citizen's dream was to have their own house built according to traditional canons. Today, this dream becomes almost hopeless due to the high cost of land.
The Japanese traditional dwelling is a low-rise frame-and-pillar house, rectangular in plan; a one-storey, today more often than not two-storey, building with a massive roof, with one or three outer sliding walls. The main thing in the design of the Japanese house are support poles, which are installed on stone cushions or break into the ground. First they build a frame, then they erect a roof. Ceiling beams have an arched shape, which, like the elevation of the house itself above the ground (60-70 cm), protects the home from small tremors of earthquakes. The roof in a Japanese house - in the past straw, today usually tiled - is huge. It protects the house from the scorching rays of the sun, from heavy rainfall. The walls of the house turned to the street or to the roadway are permanent. The walls facing the courtyard of the estate, the garden, and the sliding walls. These outer sliding walls (amado) are made of hard wooden plates. In the hot season, the amado is removed completely. The partitions separating the veranda from the living rooms are called "Sedzi". Sedzhi frame and its grating are made of wood, and its upper part is glued with rice paper on the outside, which transmits light. The internal living space of the house is divided into rooms with the help of sliding walls - fusuma. The wooden frame and the fusum grid on both sides are covered with opaque dense paper. Sometimes the paper is fixed with bamboo strips in the lower part of the paper. Often on the paper is placed drawing. Often it is landscapes, flowers and birds, images of mountains.
Straight lines of the Japanese house, clear and clear division of internal premises give its shape a special harmony. Graphic drawing of the silhouette of the interior of the house is enhanced by a combination of dark wood and white paper. In this combination, as if the canons of monochrome ink painting have already been laid down. Wooden constructions of the house are never painted, they get their golden, dark golden, always glowing, warm shade - from time to time, from life, from the treatment of people who lived or are living in this house, their color is especially valued by the Japanese as a precious patina of time.
When entering a Japanese house, they must take off their shoes. Shoes are left on a special stone lying at the entrance. On the wooden floor of the veranda or rooms is now allowed to walk in slippers. But when you enter a room with tatami flooring, you must also take off your home shoes. Tatami are shields (mats) made of pressed rice straw and covered with yoke-sugar mats. On the edges of the tatami fixed with a special dense, more often black (but sometimes even colored) fabric.
There is almost no furniture in the Japanese house as such, dining tables, a few sitting cushions, hibachi roaster, shelves for books (tanas) are the decoration of the Japanese room. Household items, including bedding, are cleaned in built-in wardrobes, Japanese sit, rest, sleep, and spend their leisure time on tatami. Tatami is kept perfectly clean.
The Japanese house, with its sliding walls and inextricably linked to the garden, as well as the coolness of the tatami, has the main purpose of being a place of escape from the heat, from the scorching rays of the sun. Therefore, heating in a traditional Japanese home is given minimal importance, despite the fact that winter in Japan is cold.
There was no stone architecture in Japan at all, only walls and plinths were built of stone. Any palace differed from a peasant's house by area, number of rooms, quality of art decoration of details, but these basic details, elements of a building, principles and proportions of its construction were the same.
The high cost of land makes not only increase the number of storeys of construction, but also use underground space in two, three or more tiers - not only subway, passages and transport interchanges, garages and warehouses, but also entire blocks of shopping malls are located underground.