Tsukeshoin

What a tsukeshoin is

A tsukeshoin is a built-in desk with a paper-screened window, projecting towards the veranda beside the Tokonoma. It began as a place to read and write and became one of the formal fittings of the Shoin-zukuri reception room.

Records name it together with the alcove and the shelving. The Kinoshita Residence in Saga Prefecture, built in 1889, is described as having an alcove, shelving and a study bay in its twelve-mat reception room, and is called an example of the large merchant house of the modern period. Those three together are the standard set.

It belongs to the highest-ranking room. Arisugawakan in Kyoto, from the early Meiji period, is described as placing a raised room with an alcove and a study bay beyond two halls, in a Meiji official residence that retains the character of a court noble's house.

Detail concentrates there. The main reception room of the Nagasaki Residence in Kagawa Prefecture, built in 1930, is described as showing delicate work in the transom of its study bay, in the screens of the wall above, and in the Ranma between rooms.

What to look for

It sits beside the alcove on the veranda side, stepping out from the wall with a paper screen above the desk. Light falls through that screen onto the writing surface, which makes the bay noticeably brighter than the rest of the wall.

Houses in Sukiya-zukuri leave it out or simplify it. Since that manner avoids the markers of rank, the presence of the bay is one way to tell the two traditions apart.

The Japanese word is sometimes shortened. Because the shorter form also names the architectural style and certain buildings, the fuller word is the safer one to use in writing.