JAPANESE CULTURE, EXPLAINED
正座
Seiza today usually means kneeling with the lower legs behind the body and the hips resting near the heels. It appears in etiquette and some traditional arts, alongside other ways of sitting.
The knees and lower legs rest on the floor, with the tops of the feet down and the hips on the heels. Cross-legged sitting instead brings the legs across the front. The Japan Seiza Association also places the hands on the thighs. Knee spacing and the overlap of toes can vary between conventions.
Sitting down: left knee, then right knee; flatten the feet and settle. All Japan Kendo Federation guide.
Rising: tuck the toes, lift the hips, step forward with the right foot and stand. This sequence belongs to the cited kendo guide.
In the federation’s 2018 kendo guide, lower the left knee, then the right; flatten the feet and settle onto the heels. To rise, keep both knees down, tuck the toes, lift the hips, then step right foot first. For zarei, incline from the hips with a straight back and lower both hands together. This connects sitting to bowing in practice; it is not a universal sequence across traditions.
The Edo-Tokyo Museum’s reference answer finds no settled origin date. Earlier texts may use seiza to mean the correct seat for their own period, including cross-legged or one-knee positions. The posture’s existence, formalisation and name must be distinguished.
Edo-Tokyo Museum presents a view that the kneeling posture became more widespread during the Genroku and Kyōhō eras of the Edo period. It also cites Kumakura Isao’s suggestion that an 1882 school text used the term in its modern sense, alongside a different account of later standardization. A dated use of the word is not an invention date for the posture, nor evidence that every region changed its habits at once.
Historian Tetsuya Nakajima notes that a 1915 Kōdōkan description of seated bowing did not specify which knee went down first. Kanō Jigorō’s 1931 account called for feet flat during formal kata bows but permitted tucked toes in ordinary randori practice to save time during practice. Formality, purpose and the time required could lead to different arrangements within the same institution. Today’s familiar sequence should not be projected unchanged into every earlier setting.
The Shōrōan Ogasawara school of sencha offers chair-and-table practice for people unable to sit in seiza. Kneeling is therefore not an unavoidable condition of every tea lesson; arrangements depend on the school and occasion.
The toes support the transition; the tops of the feet lie flat once seated.
Formal kata bowing and ordinary randori allowed different foot positions, linking the form to the purpose of the activity.
No. The sencha school described here offers chair-and-table practice; arrangements depend on the setting.
