A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume II

Synopsis

The rooms in Japanese houses have seldom more than one blank wall, which is plastered with clay of Ōsaka, a good fine sort, and so left bare, without any other ornament. It is so thin that the least kick would break it to pieces. On all other sides the room has either windows or folding-screens, which slide in grooves, as occasion requires. The lower groove is cut in a sill, which runs even with the mats, and the upper one in a beam, which comes down two or three feet from the ceiling.

The beams in which the grooves run are plastered with clay of Ōsaka. The ceiling, to show the curious running of the veins and grain of the wood, is sometimes only covered with a thin, slight layer of a transparent varnish. Sometimes they paste it over with the same sort of variously colored and flowered paper of which their screens are made. The paper windows, which let light into the room, have wooden shutters on both sides, taken off in the daytime, but put on at night.

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