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House and Garden

Coming from homes designed to shut them off from the outside. Western visitors to Japan of a century or more ago were impressed. Light, airy and made of wood and paper, the traditional Japanese house merely enclosed the space outside, on to which it opened out. The furnishing was sparse, decoration minimal. From the veranda there was a landscape garden to contemplate, a pleasure more feasible now in the nearest park or temple precinct. Wooden houses and shops are becoming rare in modern Japan. Yet even in high-rise urban neighbourhoods, the past lives on often in the lacquerware and fine china the inhabitants reserve for special occasions, in the tatami matting, paper doors, screens and futon bedding. And out on the balconies, the gardens survive in the types of plants tended, and the proliferation of bonsai trees.