Glossary

A red-brown pigment of iron oxide, applied to posts, lattices and other woodwork for colour and said to help preserve the wood; Fukiya in Takahashi, Okayama, is known as a centre of production.

A tuffaceous building stone quarried around Mount Nokogiri in southern Boso, Chiba; easy to work and fire-resistant, it was used for foundations, retaining walls, fences and storehouses.

A bowl-shaped hollow on the surface of a limestone plateau, formed where rock along the paths by which rainwater sinks underground is dissolved or where a cave below collapses; regarded as a basic element of karst landscape.

A coarse-grained plutonic rock of quartz, feldspar and mica; hard and barely absorbent, it is widely used for gateposts, stone walls, bridges, retaining walls and foundations, and is also called mikage-ishi.

The timber of the Japanese cypress, valued for durability and workability and long the leading wood for shrine and temple buildings and for carved Buddhist statues.

Karst terrain in which exposed limestone has been dissolved by rain, leaving remnant pillars and spires standing in ranks, like a flock of sheep or rows of gravestones.

Stone dressed with a squared face and tapering back for building walls, retaining walls and bridge abutments; uniform in size, it is laid in level or diagonal courses.

A deciduous tree of the elm family (Japanese zelkova) and its timber; hard and handsomely grained, it is widely used for shrine and temple posts, gates, veranda boards and alcove finishes. Some great trees are designated natural monuments.

Gold beaten to an extreme thinness, laid over lacquer to gild images and interiors, and recorded either as gilding or as gold leaf applied over lacquer.

A series of dish-shaped pools stepped one below another, each held in by a rim of calcium carbonate deposited from flowing water; common in limestone caves.

A limestone formed from Pleistocene coral reefs and found across the Ryukyu Islands, used for Okinawan walls, screens, castle ramparts and gardens, and responsible for coastal terraces and natural arches.

A welded tuff quarried mainly at Ishiyama in southern Sapporo, formed from pyroclastic flows of the Shikotsu volcano about 40,000 years ago; easy to cut and fire-resistant, it built much of Sapporo from the Meiji era on.

A tile scored with fine vertical grooves that scatter the light softly, widely used on building exteriors from the late Taisho into the early Showa period.

A bluish volcanic tuff quarried in the Asuwa Hills of Fukui City; easy to work, it was used for castle walls, stone roof tiles, monuments, gateposts and paving. It is no longer quarried.

A lime plaster mixed with binder and fibre, applied white or black, used on storehouse walls and worked into relief pictures.

A brick made chiefly from the slag left by iron smelting, set rather than kiln-fired and grey to grey-brown in colour; used from the Meiji to the Showa era, especially around northern Kyushu, and now rare.

A thick floor mat faced with woven rush, also used as the unit by which the size of a room is given, as in eight mats or four and a half.

The lime plaster traditionally used in Kochi Prefecture, applied thickly and valued for resisting rain; in a typhoon-prone region it finishes outer walls and eaves, often with rows of small drip tiles.

The refined sap of the lacquer tree, forming a hard and durable film used to finish images and interiors and as the ground for gold leaf.

Cedar boards whose surface has been charred; the carbonised layer is said to protect the wood from rain and sun, and the boards are used mainly in western Japan to clad the lower walls of storehouses and houses.

A light, pumiceous tuff quarried around Ōya in Utsunomiya, Tochigi; easy to cut and fire-resistant, it was widely used for storehouses, fences, retaining walls and exterior cladding.