What jōdan-no-ma means
A jōdan-no-ma is a room, or the inner part of a room, whose floor is raised a step above the rooms around it. It was provided as the seat of a person of high rank at audiences, the floor height expressing the difference in status between those present. In large shoin-style interiors the formal fixtures, the Tokonoma, staggered shelves, built-in desk and ornamental doorway, are typically concentrated in the jōdan-no-ma.
Beyond castles and palaces, such rooms appear in the houses of old families, such as village headmen and post-station honjin, who might receive lords or officials. In houses they range from a raised section one or two mats deep at the back of a reception room to a whole room built at the higher level.
Reading the records and the building
Records describe rooms made into or attached as a jōdan-no-ma. The main house of the former Nagashima family in Kumagaya, Saitama, a family of village headmen, has a corner reception room west of its four-room core made into a jōdan-no-ma, conveying the family's standing. The inner reception wing of the Arai family in Izumisano, Osaka, centres on a room of about fifteen mats with a jōdan-no-ma attached and a ten-mat anteroom. The main house of the former Aikawa family in Isesaki, Gunma, lines up an entry room, a middle room and an eight-mat jōdan-no-ma in an L, with a one-bay Irigawa of tatami along the south of the raised room.
Floor heights and fixtures were sometimes altered later. The first floor of the keep of Inuyama Castle, a National Treasure, has a jōdan-no-ma with an oshiita alcove, staggered shelves and ornamental doorway, but its floor was originally boarded at the same level as the rest, and the raising of the floor and the fixtures date from around 1804-1818. Articles should distinguish the present state from the original.
References
- 旧長島家住宅主屋｜国指定文化財等データベース（文化庁）
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00014738
- 新井家住宅奥座敷｜国指定文化財等データベース（文化庁）
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00001201
- 旧相川家住宅主屋｜国指定文化財等データベース（文化庁）
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00015406
- 犬山城天守｜文化遺産オンライン
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/200169
Last verified: 2026.09.27