Japanese Furniture

Traditional Japanese rooms are uniquely furnished with low furniture, sliding doors, folding partitions, alcoves, thick woven mats, and portable futon beddings. This Japanese furnishing style is known as "washitsu." The most distinctive of Japanese furniture is the presence of the tatami woven straw mats that cover the surface of a washitsu-style room’s flooring.

Color and patterns in Japanese rooms often take the form of standing or sliding screens. These partitions serve to provide privacy and separation from room to room while also creating a focal point. While standing or sliding screens can often be created simply with a grid-like wooden skeleton lined with paper, some are very intricately decorated wood panels with inlaid wood or mother of pearl. Artists and calligraphers also use the standing or sliding screen as a medium of expression with colossal landscape and nature paintings often featured on these paper screens.

As sitting on the tatami mat floor is most common in Japan, tables are built very low to suit the practice. Modern Japanese spaces are often very small as well, creating an emphasis on storage and putting things away when not in use. Japanese cabinets, desks, and cupboards usually feature many shelves in order to keep belongings out of sight.

Quick Facts

• Tatami mats are so common in Japan that they are often used to indicate the size of a room. In fact, the luck of a room is determined by how many mats can be placed in a room, and in a particular formation
• In samurai culture, the shogun’s room in a castle usually featured a very extravagant sliding screen. The sliding screen often depicted images that would reinforce the solitary wisdom of the shogun
• Traditional Japanese beds are often foldable futons that are kept in closets until bedtime. These futons are laid on the floor at night and packed away into a closet again in the morning