Minka

Minka is a broad term for Japan’s traditional vernacular dwellings. It includes farmhouses, merchants’ townhouses and fishing households’ homes. A shrine, temple or castle has a different purpose; age alone does not make a building a minka.

In a sasu frame, paired inclined timbers rise from a transverse beam to support the ridge. Taruki construction, concentrated around Kansai, uses a different support: a short upright rests on a longitudinal timber beneath the ridge. Side posts joined by horizontal ties form a rectangular frame that stabilises it. This is not a single post rising from the ground. From the later Edo period, sasu framing increasingly replaced this regional system.

An earth-floored doma often adjoins a raised floor furnished with boards or mats. The doma accommodates tasks such as handling tools or cooking, but floor height does not create an absolute work–living boundary: a raised room can also contain an irori for cooking and warmth. Partitions and floor surfaces work together to organise activities.

A hall plan places a broad multipurpose hiroma beside the earth floor, with smaller rooms beyond it. A four-room plan divides the raised-floor area into four rooms. Some houses acquired this arrangement by partitioning an earlier hall, so present divisions may record alterations.

An irori is a sunken hearth used for heating and cooking. At the Emukai house, a broad shelf above it catches sparks and provides a place to dry wet objects. The arrangement combines fire management and drying above the hearth.

Thatch, shingles and tiles describe roof coverings. A gabled or hipped roof describes its shape. Keeping these two questions separate makes regional comparisons clearer: similar shapes can use different coverings, and thatch does not imply a gasshō frame.

In Shirakawa and Gokayama, the roof assembly sits above the lower post-and-beam frame. Paired inclined timbers create a tall triangular volume without central uprights blocking the loft, which can be divided into working levels for silkworm rearing. Gable windows admit light and air; slatted floors allow circulation. Cross-bracing in the roof plane strengthens the assembly along the ridge. The steep roof accommodates both snow and productive space.

Traditionally, carpenters built the lower frame and its joints, while households pooled labour through yui to prepare materials, assemble the roof and lay its covering. The early eighteenth-century Emukai house, moved from present-day Nanto in Toyama, used its second and third levels for work including sericulture. Its upper and lower spaces reflect both household activity and a division of construction skills.

The Yamashita house comes from Shirakawa in Gifu and dates to the early nineteenth century. Its stone-weighted shingle eaves differ from the Gokayama examples nearby. Its staircase belongs to a later period when the house served as a restaurant. A preserved house can contain several phases of use.

A machiya often presents a narrow frontage to the street, with rooms extending behind it and an earth-floored passage along one side. This arrangement connects work or trade at the front with living spaces deeper in the plot. Its constraints differ from those of a freestanding farmhouse.

JAANUS describes a broad shift from smaller openings in earlier houses towards larger openings and paired sliding doors from the mid-Edo period. Wealthier households added formal reception rooms and fittings such as alcoves. Regional traditions and household resources still shaped the result.

An inscription dates the Kitamura house to 1687. Its bamboo floor supported thick mats, and the building is comparatively open. The late seventeenth-century Kiyomiya house, also from Kanagawa, is much more enclosed. Their openings and enclosures offer a visible comparison within the same region and period.

At Miyama’s thatched village, residents harvest miscanthus from a shared thatching field. In the past, material was stored in attics and households arranged rethatching as roofs deteriorated, pooling labour through the local practice called tengori. Specialist thatchers now do most of this work. A long-lived house depends on renewed covering materials as well as its surviving frame.

The Miboro dam project prompted the Yamashita house’s removal from Shirakawa. It became a restaurant in Kawasaki before entering the museum in 1969. The museum retained it as a visitor rest area without returning every part to its earliest state; repeated moves had also made some original features uncertain. Alterations such as its staircase remain evidence of those later uses.