Toriniwa

What a toriniwa is

A toriniwa is the earth-floored passage that runs from the street front through to the back of a Machiya. Its surface is walked on in outdoor footwear, and it serves as both a route through the house and a place to work. Japanese records use two names for it, and the wording favoured by the Agency for Cultural Affairs is the one built on the word for earthen floor.

The Nakamura Sotetsu Residence in Kyoto, built in 1854, is described as a townhouse with high walls to the south and west and a passage of this kind running through it. The description treats the passage as the element that defines the type.

Rooms are ranged along one or both sides. The Sasaki birthplace in Mie Prefecture is described as a house of twelve metres by ten with a low upper storey, its passage set along the southern edge and its raised floor divided into two rows of three rooms. The Kimura Residence in Shiga Prefecture has three rooms arranged along the passage.

The Mori Residence in Mie Prefecture is described as entered at the gable end, pantiled, with a frontage of about ten metres, a large main door at the front opening onto the passage, and two rows of rooms to the north of it.

Reading the plan

Locate the passage first and the rest of a townhouse plan becomes legible. On a narrow plot the passage runs along one edge and the rooms fill the remaining width, which is what descriptions mean by two rows of three rooms or three rooms along the passage.

The Masujin sake shop in Niigata Prefecture, built in 1934, is described as having a twelve-mat single-storey room and a passage behind the shop, with three rooms upstairs. The arrangement survived well into the modern period.

The passage also carries light and air. On a deep plot it connects front to back, and a small monitor roof on the ridge sometimes helps draw smoke and daylight through it.