Mairado

What a mairado is

A mairado is a sliding door of boards faced with thin horizontal battens at even intervals. The battens hold the boards flat and, in repetition, become the design.

Formal buildings range them round the outside. The black study at Ninnaji in Kyoto, built in 1910, is described as 15.5 by 11.7 metres, Irimoya-zukuri with Sangawara-buki, joined by Hiwadabuki corridors to the two neighbouring halls, six rooms in the abbot's-quarters plan with formal fittings in the west inner room, and doors of this kind all round, giving it the restrained exterior appropriate to an inward-facing Shoin-zukuri building.

That word restrained catches what the door does. It neither passes light like a paper screen nor reads as blank like a plain boarded door, but sits between the two.

Shrines use them as well. The stairway to the offering hall at Omi Jingu in Shiga Prefecture, built in 1944, rises from the passage behind the sacred dance hall to meet the original east door of this type.

At service gates

Gates use them too. The gate of the Kubo Residence in Kochi Prefecture, from the Taisho period, is described as standing on the south side of a shop and dwelling and giving onto the garden that leads to the field beyond, timber-framed, Kirizuma-zukuri and pantiled, its posts 1.9 metres apart, built on a sill over footing stones, with a single sliding door of this kind on the shop side and vertical boarding to the south. The entry calls it a plainly designed service gate.

A single sliding leaf is the mark of everyday use. Where a formal front gate carries substantial hinged doors, a service gate takes lighter fittings of this kind.

On site, look at the face of the door. Thin battens running horizontally at even intervals over boards identify it; battens running vertically belong to another type.