Hako-kaidan

What a hako-kaidan is

A hako-kaidan is a staircase built over drawers and cupboards, so that the stair doubles as furniture and the same floor area serves twice.

Machiya use it. The Tsuzuki sake shop and house in Ehime Prefecture, built in 1887, is described as standing on the street with plastered gable ends and projecting Udatsu on both street-facing sides, its lattice fittings well preserved apart from an altered main doorway, with one of these staircases inside, a railed half of the upper floor towards the street making it open, and a generous upper storey height, which the entry calls a good example of a Meiji shop and dwelling.

The townhouse plot is narrow at the front and deep behind, and the Toriniwa takes a strip out of it, so the raised floor is limited. Little of it could be spared for a stair, which is the background to the form.

Where the upper storey is tall, the stair needs more treads. The entry mentions the generous storey height and the staircase together for that reason.

What to look for

It usually stands at the back of the earthen floor or the shop. Drawer fronts ranged along the side or beneath the treads, with pulls fitted, identify it. Some are fixed in place and some were built as movable chests.

Stairs to a Tsushi-nikai are steeper still, since there is little run available to reach a storey without standing height. Staircases of this kind are often too steep to be built under present regulations.

In townhouses open to visitors the stair may be roped off. Where the drawers still work, the double use of the structure can be seen directly.