Saturday, June 8, 2013

Japanese traditional culture ~20~tatami

This is renewed tatami.
Do you know "tatami"? Tatami is peculiar to Japanese culture.
You may have seen this kind of stuff if you've watch Judo.

  It is quite rare to renew tatami. Each tatami is not cheap. (The price depends on the
quality. Each tatami cost 10000yen)
  The history of tatami is very old. On wikipedia, it says the history goes back to
Heian period (1000 years ago). Each size is standardized. We express the  area of
the room by counting how many sheets tatami is laid out in the room.
Even western styled room, we do that. For example, if you can lay out 7 sheets
of tatami, you say "7 jou(畳)". This Chinese character 畳 means "tatami".

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Um, how wide/long is one 畳 in meters?
... and how do you clean it?

marimari said...

Shantal ForSD

910mm × 1820mm is general standard.
But according to Wikipedia, it says there are some kinds of standards in each region.
Usually, people clean tatami
by a vacuum-creaner.
I think most of Japanese vacuum-
cleaners are improved so they
can clean tatami well.