Chashitsu

What a chashitsu is

A chashitsu is a building or room for the tea ceremony. Its size is given in mats, and records use that measure directly, describing rooms of four and a half mats or of three mats with a shortened one added.

The Insū entry for the former Murayama Residence in Hyogo Prefecture names two rooms, one of three mats plus a short mat and one of four and a half.

The variety of openings is characteristic. The Tamura Residence tea room in Kyoto, from the late Edo period, is described as a single-storey timber building with a pyramidal roof of thatch and pantile, its four-and-a-half-mat room given a wet veranda and a noble's entrance on the south, a crawl-in door on the west with a Shitaji-mado above it, paper screens to the east for the view, a service opening into the lean-to on the north, and a tiled preparation room projecting to the west.

Each of those openings has a role. One admits a guest of rank standing upright, another obliges everyone to stoop, a third serves the host, and the preparation room is where utensils are made ready.

Buildings that travel

Because they are small and can be taken apart and rebuilt, tea rooms move more often than most buildings. The Obaian in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, dates from the mid-Edo period and is described as having been moved from a house in Imai, Kashihara, to a private estate in Odawara, and then to its present site. An eight-mat room adjoins a three-mat tea room, with a service area and preparation room behind.

The tea house at Chikushi Jogakuen in Fukuoka Prefecture, built in 1940, is described as placing a four-and-a-half-mat tea room to the north and a six-mat preparation room to the south, with an alcove using a shortened mat and a sunken brazier in the preparation room as well. The service space is the larger of the two.

The manner of the tea room later spread into ordinary reception rooms, producing Sukiya-zukuri. Bark-edged posts, natural logs and earthen walls all began here.