Some notes on Heian architecture and its effects on everyday life

[rushthatspeaks]

I thought I'd add a couple of notes on architecture and palace layout. Sources and bibliography available on request, but be aware that I essentially majored in this sort of thing and therefore decided not to start reccing Japanese architecture books without anyone asking because I would be totally unable to stop

Comments

[rushthatspeaks]

According to my Japanese Architecture class notes, measurement of rooms by the number of tatami mats they could contain is the earliest form of standardized measurement used in building in Japan. The Kyoto palace certainly has tatami floor divisions-- in woven rice straw with wooden frames-- and is not supposed to have gone major structural renovation since the Heian era, though of course everything's been replaced with exact copies multiple times over the centuries as things like the rice straw wear out. I'll double-check to see what source I got the notes from, but I'm pretty sure tatami were that early, especially since they come into play in the architecture of tea-ceremony and moon-viewing houses.

[rushthatspeaks]

I dug into it a little more on JAAP (the Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System): we're both right. Tatami did not come in structurally, i.e. were not built into the floor, until after the Muromachi period, but it is the word used for the straw mats the nobility used in the Heian, which were mobile and carried around as part of the household furnishings-- and were of a standardized size, as according to my notes ('Japanese Architecture and Planning', Dr. Carola Hein, Bryn Mawr College spring 2000-- still can't find the damn book ref so am assuming these were lecture notes). She makes a lot out of this being the first system of standardization and the first step up from dirt floors and the fact that the measurements are slightly different in Kyoto from other regions because it was the capital.

Here's the JAAP link on tatami: JAAP.

[telophase]

Morris says that tatami mats were later, and that the floors were bare. If so, I expect it's possible that tatami mats were later made to whatever measure the Heian architects used.