Doma

What a doma is

A doma is the part of a house left unfloored at ground level. It is used in outdoor footwear, for cooking, farm work or trade, and it stands opposite the raised Zashiki.

In farmhouses it can shape the whole plan. The Watanabe Residence in Fukushima Prefecture, from the later Edo period, is described as an L-shaped house of the kind known locally as a key house, with the block containing the rooms and the block containing the earthen floor set at right angles, framed largely in chestnut.

It tends to sit at the lower end. The Sakai brewery main house in Nagano Prefecture has its earthen floor at the southern, lower end; the Yoshida Residence in Niigata Prefecture, built in 1883, places it north of a tall fifteen-mat hall with the rooms and an earth-floored veranda to the south.

The Takigawa Residence in Aichi Prefecture, built in 1814, is described as centred on two adjoining reception rooms with a Nando behind and, to the east, a kitchen and an earthen floor with a large Irori. Hearths are often cut in this space.

The townhouse passage

In a Machiya the earth-floored strip running from front to back is called a Toriniwa. The Masujin sake shop in Niigata Prefecture has a twelve-mat room and such a passage behind the shop. It is a kind of earthen floor, but as the spine of the townhouse plan it carries its own name.

Records often pair the earthen floor with the raised floor. A phrase giving the north as earthen and the south as raised tells you the interior splits into two levels.

On site, look at the floor level. A lower area of packed earth continuing inside is the feature; the threshold beam where boards or mats begin marks the boundary.