Shikidai

What a shikidai is

A shikidai is a low boarded step set between the Doma of the entrance and the raised Zashiki beyond. Guests removed their footwear and stepped up here, and an entrance with one is named for it.

It is read as a mark of standing. The Sakai brewery main house in Nagano Prefecture, from the later Edo period, is described as a large thatched farmhouse of about 28 metres frontage with an earthen floor at the lower end and a reception wing projecting behind, and a two-bay step entrance at the upper end that displays the authority and standing of a village headman's family.

It belongs to the upper end of the house. The Okawa Residence in Tochigi Prefecture, from the early Meiji period, is described as having a step entrance at the upper western end and a weaving floor at the lower eastern end.

Guest buildings have them too. The guest wing of Fujiseitei in Shiga Prefecture, from about 1884, is entered through a six-mat step entrance, its twenty-four-mat room opening to the garden across a veranda.

Reading the record

A step of this kind means the household received guests formally. That is why the Sakai entry ties it to authority and standing, and why ordinary farmhouses do without one.

Where a record names the whole entrance for the step, the entrance as a whole is arranged around it, as distinct from an entrance stepped up directly from the earthen floor.

On site, look at the sequence of levels. A broad boarded step interposed between the earthen floor and the rooms is the feature.