Zashiki

What a zashiki is

A zashiki is a room floored with Tatami on the raised part of a house. The word covers any such room, but records use it above all for the room where guests are received, fitted with a Tokonoma and Ranma and placed at the upper end.

It stands opposite the Doma. The Watanabe Residence in Fukushima Prefecture sets its room block and its earth-floored block at right angles, and the Yoshida Residence in Niigata Prefecture puts the earthen floor north of its hall and the rooms to the south.

It comes with an anteroom. The Takigawa Residence in Aichi Prefecture, built in 1814, is centred on two adjoining reception rooms with a Nando behind. The Kofutei at Chikushi Jogakuen in Fukuoka Prefecture, built in 1955, is described as a ten-mat main room and fifteen-mat anteroom ringed by a veranda under a lean-to, with a three-mat Chashitsu, a store room and an entrance attached, in an open Shoin-zukuri free of ornament.

The Fukuda Residence in Kochi Prefecture, built in 1924, is described as eight rooms in three ranks organised around a twelve-and-a-half-mat reception room in the south-east corner. The plan starts from that room.

A wing of its own

In large houses the reception rooms form a separate block. The Sato Residence in Akita Prefecture, built in 1900, is recorded as an Important Cultural Property whose Insū entry lists counting-house, kitchen, store-room and reception blocks. The Sakai brewery main house projects a reception wing from the centre of its rear.

Because the room carries the standing of the house, the markers of rank gather there: a Gō-tenjō, Nageshi, prized timbers. Main room and anteroom often differ in ceiling type to show the gap in rank between them.

Records distinguish the main reception room, the rear reception room and the reception wing. The first is the highest-ranking room, the second one placed towards the back, the third a building in its own right.