Machiyas in Kyoto

Kyoto is the most popular city for foreign sight-seeing travelers in Japan. But yet, the recent rapid increase in the number of visitors is gradually transforming the traditional townscape into a different aspect. The traditional townscape and atmosphere of Kyoto had been made by a lot of old houses,”machiya”s, temples and shrines, but many machiyas are being replaced by new hotels or new condominiums. It depends on the cause of increasing number of visitors, but on the contrary it is a cause of the disappointment for visitors who hoped to come into contact with the traditional atmosphere in the city.

So then I recommend that visitors who want to know an aspect of the citizens’ lives should visit machiyas. You can know an unknown world of interest.
Now, I will introduce a machiya which is open for viewing it in the center of the city.

A machiya of a Japanese traditional folding fans

Onishi-tune-shorten is a Japanese traditional folding fan merchant. The house is the typical machiya as a merchant, which contains a shop of folding fans and living rooms.

Firstly, the machiya in Kyoto has a narrow front and is a long deep house, which is called “unagi-no-nedoko”, meaning the bed of an eel. The reason for the shape of the house belongs to the governing policy of Hideyoshi Toyotomi in the latter half of the 16th century. He imposed on the citizens a land tax according to the individual frontage length of each house. Merchant citizens built machiyas like discomfiting Hideyoshi’s plan.
The climate of Kyoto is very severe, the summer is very hot and humid and the winter is very cold. The machiya is built based on the intentional planning for a comfortable time in summer.

Let’s start to visit the machiya of Onishi-tune-shorten in your imagination. Of course the machiya is built of wooden material and soil and papers, it may make you feel exotic and emotional.

Following the shop space there is a long corridor to the end of the house. Along the corridor there is a room for business, a room for living, a small garden, a tea ceremony room and other facility spaces for living, and from the business room the stairs with drawing boxes can lead you to the second floor. There is a kitchen in the corridor and the corridor is high because of defense against fire.

And now, I have to explain the magic of the intention of the comfortable time in summer. The picture above is a small garden which is called “hakoniwa”. While the air in the small garden is heated by the sun in summer, the hot air raises up to the sky. So then the thin air in the garden pulls the air from other rooms along with the high corridor. After all, the facility for cooling the people living there is the artificial breeze in the machiya.




Two special mentions of the machiya of Onishi-tune-shorten

I want to write two special mentions about the machiya of Onishi-tune-shoten. One is the strong intention of the female owner. In the circumstances where many people have been selling their machiyas or have been building new rental condominiums to get money, she decided to keep her machiya. She put a lot of money into her machiya to add a new facility to protect it against the earthquake. It cost more than many new house buildings. Her intention is in opposition to rational economic thinking, but she thought that there was significant value in this world rather than the economic value, and she believed that maintaining her machiya was valuable. While giving her opinion strongly she followed the unpredictable active motion of her grandson, who walked around the room, with her eyes. And her daughter (in other words his mother) tried to hold onto him. It added a humorous moment and invigorating energy into the earnest air. Just this is a living house.

The other is a new luxurious plan which was added to her machiya. Her machiya is built with a indulgence for wooden material by the first owner in the Meiji period. Many pillars were built from different kind of wood. In contract with them, she indulged in the soil wall. The shiny ocher wall in the picture above is the artificial wall which was made just by natural soil of special craft men’s hands. The purpose of the shiny wall is for lighting the garden by the reflected light of the moon. What wonderful luxury!






The four dimensional experience

You can enjoy tea with Japanese sweets at the tea ceremony room. In the room there is no electric light and it’s dim by a little light through the paper window, then you can experience the atmosphere of dark as the time of 5 centuries ago. It will make you quiet and tranquil.

This machiya is a long-time-accumulating facility. Each wooden material has long growing time, each elaboration in the rooms and gardens have super techniques by craft men’s long time experience. And this machiya itself has a long history.
In such a moment, if it rains suddenly, you can experience the supreme luxury of time-passing and share it with others. The sound of falling rain into the small garden reflecting walls and stones, which are a variety of large and small cobblestones and boulders, is deep and kind thanks to the various echoes. If you listen closely, you can notice that the falling rain sound which you ignore normally is so much beautiful on fresh emotion.
If you capture both of the long time streaming and a moment which nature makes, you would be a one-level-up person about Japanese beauty. To feel “time” with three dimensions is a supreme ability.