Minka - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

are private residences constructed in any one of several traditional Japanese building styles

Japanese architecture

' originated in prehistoric times with simple pit-houses and stores that were adapted to a hunter-gatherer population. Influence from Han Dynasty China via Korea saw the introduction of more complex grain stores and ceremonial burial chambers....

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In the context of the four divisions of society

Four divisions of society

The four divisions of society refers to the model of society in ancient China and was a meritocratic social class system in China, and other subsequently influenced Confucian societies. The four castes—gentry, farmers, artisans and merchants—are combined to form the term Shìnónggōngshāng...

, minka were the dwellings of farmers, artisans, and merchants (i.e., the three non-samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

caste

Caste

Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...

s), but this connotation no longer exists in the modern Japanese language, and any traditional Japanese style residence of an appropriate age could be referred to as minka.

Types of Minka

Minka come in wide range of styles and sizes, largely as a result of differing geographic and climatic conditions as well as the lifestyle of the inhabitants, but most generally fall into one of two major classifications: farm houses and town houses . There is also a subclass of the farm house style found in fishing villages, which is called .

Minka are generally treated as historic landmark

Landmark

This is a list of landmarks around the world.Landmarks may be split into two categories - natural phenomena and man-made features, like buildings, bridges, statues, public squares and so forth...

s, and many have been designated for preservation by local municipalities or the national government. Of particular note is the so called , which is preserved in two villages in central Japan, Shirakawa

Shirakawa, Gifu (village)

is a village located in Ōno District, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. It is best known for being the site of Shirakawa-gō, a small, traditional village showcasing a style of buildings called gasshō-zukuri....

in Gifu Prefecture

Gifu Prefecture

is a prefecture located in the Chūbu region of central Japan. Its capital is the city of Gifu.Located in the center of Japan, it has long played an important part as the crossroads of Japan, connecting the east to the west through such routes as the Nakasendō...

and Gokayama

Gokayama

Gokayama is a village within the city of Nanto in Toyama Prefecture. Its very traditional gasshō-zukuri style homes make it a nearly unique site, and is regarded a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with the village of Shirakawa-gō in the Gifu Prefecture...

in Toyama Prefecture

Toyama Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Hokuriku region on Honshū island. The capital is the city of Toyama.Toyama is the leading industrial prefecture on the Japan Sea coast, and has the industrial advantage of cheap electricity due to abundant water resources....

, that together have been designated a World Heritage Site

World Heritage Site

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...

by UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

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The tremendous regional variation of minka has also been preserved in parks such as Nihon Minka-en

Nihon Minka-en

is a park in the Park of Tama-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. On display in the park is a collection of 20 traditional from various parts of Japan, especially thatched-roofed houses from eastern Japan. Of these, nine have received the designation of Important Cultural Assets from the...

in Kawasaki

Kawasaki, Kanagawa

is a city located in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, between Tokyo and Yokohama. It is the 9th most populated city in Japan and one of the main cities forming the Greater Tokyo Area and Keihin Industrial Area....

, where examples from around Japan are kept on display.

Overall construction

The central concept in the design and construction of minka is the use of cheap and readily available materials. Farmers could not afford to import anything expensive or difficult to come by into their small villages. Thus, nōka are generally made almost exclusively from wood, bamboo, clay and various kinds of grasses and straw. The base skeletal structure of the home, roof, walls, and support columns are made from wood. External walls were often completed with the addition of bamboo and clay; internal walls were not fixed, and consisted of sliding wood lattice doors, or wood-and-paper screens called fusuma
Fusuma
In Japanese architecture, fusuma are vertical rectangular panels which can slide from side to side to redefine spaces within a room, or act as doors. They typically measure about wide by tall, the same size as a tatami mat, and are two or three centimeters thick...

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Grass and straw are used for the roofing thatch, and for mushiro and tatami

Tatami

A is a type of mat used as a flooring material in traditional Japanese-style rooms. Traditionally made of rice straw to form the core , with a covering of woven soft rush straw, tatami are made in standard sizes, with the length exactly twice the width...

mats placed on the floor. Sometimes baked-clay roofing tiles were used in addition to thatch. Stone was sometimes used to strengthen or establish foundations but is not employed for the home itself.

As in other forms of traditional Japanese architecture, wooden columns support all the weight of the structure, so the walls are not load-bearing and can afford to have spaces left in them for windows or entryways. These openings would be covered with shoji
Shoji
In traditional Japanese architecture, a shōji is a door, window or room divider consisting of translucent paper over a frame of wood which holds together a lattice of wood or bamboo...

paper screens, and also with heavier wooden doors. The wooden columns and crossbeams, intricately interlocked without the use of nails, formed the skeletal structure.

Roofing

Gasshō-zukuri are perhaps most recognizable and distinguished for their high, peaked roofs. This serves somewhat as a substitute for a chimney, as mentioned above, and might also have allowed for extensive storage space. But the primary purpose of shaping minka roofs in this manner was to accommodate for the extensive precipitation experienced in many parts of Japan. A steeply peaked roof allows rain and snow to fall straight off it, preventing water from getting through the roof into the home, and to a lesser extent preventing the thatch itself from getting too wet and beginning to rot.

There are three basic styles of roofs, which bear strong similarities to roofs seen in other styles of Japanese architecture. Most machiya have gabled roofs, covered in shingles or tiles, and slanting down on either side of the house. Often, stones would be placed atop the shingles to prevent them from being blown away. By contrast, the majority of nōka have either thatched style hipped roofs, which slant down on four sides, or the more elaborate roof with multiple gables and a combination of thatched sections and shingled sections.

At the roof's peak and other places where roof sections came together, special roof caps would be needed. On tiled or shingled roofs, these treatments would consist simply of more shingles or tiles. These covers, particularly at the corners of the roof, would often serve as the only decoration on these simple homes; gargoyles or other figures carved in clay or other materials would often be placed here at the ends of the roof caps.

Farmhouse interior

The interior of a minka was generally divided into two sections: a floor of compacted earth, called , and a raised floor (generally around 20 inches (50 cm) above the level of the doma) covered in tatami or mushiro mats.

The doma was used for most cooking and farming-related tasks, and usually included a clay furnace-like oven called a , a wooden sink, food barrels, and a large jug to store water from an outside well. A large wooden door called an ōdo would serve as the front entrance to the building.

The raised floor often included a built-in hearth, called an . However, there was no chimney connecting directly from the hearth to the outside, only a small smoke vent in the roof would sometimes be present. Smoke would rise up into the area of the high and spacious roof; thus, the inhabitants of the home did not breathe in the smoke and soot, but it did blacken the thatch, which would have to be replaced fairly often.

Though there were many various possible arrangements of the rooms within a home, one of the most common, called , comprised four rooms in the raised floor portion of the house, adjacent to the doma. Although these four rooms could be partitioned, they were more or less communal space, since inhabitants had to pass through one room to get to another. Two of these rooms would be used for communal family activities, including the one with the irori hearth. Sometimes a small oil lamp would be used for light, but due to the cost of oil, more often the hearth would be the only artificial light in the home.

The family would gather around this hearth at mealtime, and sit in a prearranged order determined by social status within the family. The side furthest from the doma was called the yokoza and was where the head of the household would sit. Another side was for the housewife and other female family members, the third for male family members and guests, and the fourth side of the hearth was occupied by a pile of firewood.

The other rooms served as bedrooms and as space for entertaining guests, and would include a tokonoma
Tokonoma
Tokonoma , also referred to simply as toko, is a Japanese term generally referring to a built-in recessed space in a Japanese style reception room, in which items for artistic appreciation are displayed. In English, tokonoma is usually called alcove. The items usually displayed in a tokonoma are...

, an alcove still commonly found in modern Japanese homes, where flowers, scrolls, or other such things would be displayed. The bath and toilet were often built as separate structures, or as additions outside the main structure of the house but under the eaves of the roof.

Townhouses

Machiya
Machiya
' are traditional wooden townhouses found throughout Japan and typified in the historical capital of Kyoto. Machiya and nōka constitute the two categories of Japanese vernacular architecture known as minka...

were by necessity arranged somewhat differently from their rural cousins. The main structure, or , stood in front of an attached storehouse ( or a separated one called a . The doma generally extended from the front of the house back to the storehouse, and would have three or four adjacent rooms. The room closest to the street was used as a shop or to conduct business, and was called . The middle room was used as an office and to entertain guests. Meanwhile, the room closest to the rear of the home would look out upon the backyard garden, and would contain a tokonoma and be used for most of the family's daily activities.

Unlike nōka, machiya often had a second story, where the family would sleep. The second floor was also used to store items used on a more regular basis than those possessions kept in the storehouse in the back.

External links

The Herbert Offen Research Collection of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum