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Japanese Interior Design
Japanese interior design is unique in its
manner of providing tranquility and peace and a sense of calm
and visual artistry.
Natural Colors and Materials
Japanese architecture employs the use of raw materials,
which in turn give the room a quiet, subdued tonal sense.
The floor is laid with tatami that are generally a fragrant,
light green rush. Walls are made of paper, wood, or
natural colored clay, and the ceiling is constructed of wood
or bamboo. The colors that are commonly used tend to
be white or light brown, with materials that are organic in
nature and texture, with the use of matt textures rather
than gloss.
The Japanese floor
(tatami)
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 Dating back to primitive times, the floor in Japanese
architecture has remained the common surface of activity - for
sitting, living, and sleeping. Shoes are worn outside and let
at the doorstep upon entering the house.
Slipper socks, called tabi, are worn inside so that no outside
dirt or mud can be tracked onto the tatami.
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The tatami are comprised of thin mat of tightly woven
rushes on top of a coarser mat of about 2" thick of straw
tightly bound with cords. The upper mat is sewn to the
lower one with twine. They present an ideal flooring in
that they are neither too soft to walk upon, nor too hard to
lie down on.
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Whereas in most
other civilizations the floor is associated with dirt, in
Japan the floor of the house has the intimate qualities of
warmth and texture, and is as important as any other surface
plane in establishing the interior space.
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- Open Spaces
- Lacking in high
or overbearing furniture, spaces are clear, defined only by
textured planes whose materials manifest their own natural
personality: tatami in lustrous
tones of yellowish green, papered sliding screens, occasional
solid walls of plaster, richly polished woods and, when shoji
are removed, garden views that delight and calm the
senses.
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Japanese domestic architecture & tokonoma
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 Some
of the formative elements of Japanese domestic architecture,
which were stabilized at about the end of the fifteenth
century, made their appearance during the Kamakura Period.
One of these, derived from Zen Buddhist chapel dwellings, was
the
tokonoma. The tokonoma, found in almost every Japanese
house, is the focal point of the interior.
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- The tokonoma
developed from the private alter in a priest's house where a
low, narrow wood table with an incense burner, votive candles
and flower vessels were placed before a Buddhist scroll
painting hung on the wall. Eventually a built in alcove was
then devoted to this arrangement, where it is now the place in
the home used exclusively and solely for the display of
paintings and art objects.
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