Frames covered
with paper, called shoji, slide along these grooves and form the wall
between chamber and chamber. The front of the house is, as a rule, open to
the street, but if the owners wish for privacy they slide a paper screen
into position. At night wooden shutters, called amado, cover the screens.
Each shutter is held in place by the next, and the last shutter is fastened
by a wooden bolt.
The Japanese are very fond of fresh air and sunshine. Unless the day is too
wet or stormy, the front of the house always stands open. If the sun is
too strong a curtain is hung across for shade, and very often this curtain
bears a huge white symbol representing his name, just as an Englishman puts
his name on a brass plate on his front-door. The furniture in these houses
is very simple. The floor is covered with thick mats, which serve for
chairs and bed, as people both sit and sleep on them. For table a low stool
suffices, and for a young couple to set up housekeeping in Japan is a very
simple matter. As Mrs. Bishop, the well-known writer, remarks:
"Among the strong reasons for deprecating the adoption of foreign houses,
furniture, and modes of living by the Japanese, is that the expense
of living would be so largely, increased as to render early marriages
impossible. At present the requirements of a young couple in the poorer
classes are: a bare matted room (capable or not of division), two wooden
pillows, a few cotton futons (quilts), and a sliding panel, behind which
to conceal them in the daytime, a wooden rice bucket and ladle, a wooden
wash-bowl, an iron kettle, a hibachi (warming and cooking stove), a tray
or two, a teapot or two, two lacquer rice-bowls, a dinner box, a few china
cups, a few towels, a bamboo switch for sweeping, a tabako-bon (apparatus
for tobacco-smoking), an iron pot, and a few shelves let into a recess, all
of which can be purchased for something under L2.
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