Housing in Postwar Japan - A Social History by Waswo Ann

Author:Waswo, Ann
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-136-86090-4
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Figure 4.3 Plan of a 2DK unit built by the JHC in 1955

Source: as for Figure 4.2, p. 349.

Next to the bathroom is another innovation, a western-style “sit-down” flush toilet. The flush toilets in public housing projects and other multi-storied structures such as office buildings and department stores had been an adaptation of traditional design, over which users squatted, but the JHC opted for a radically new departure in this realm as well. Once again, what it commissioned for its projects soon became more widely available.

It was in the DK that the most celebrated and influential JHC innovations were located: a stainless steel sink unit with an integral work surface, and above the adjacent gas burners an extractor fan. Instead of a miscellany of fittings, there was one sleek kitchen area, with its surfaces at heights scientifically determined for efficient use and with useful storage below. No longer was it necessary to open a window in winter to rid the room of steam and fumes or to spend time and effort scouring the sink to rid it of stains. Family members could sit at the table while the housewife cooked and enjoy their meal in pleasant surroundings. Built-in cupboards above the table completed the design.

Other visible innovations included a single, sturdy cylinder lock on the entry door, which meant that the unit could be easily secured when the housewife went out on errands of one sort or another, and the steel construction of that door which, combined with the reinforced concrete shell of the building and its staircases, reduced the risk that a fire in one unit would spread to others. The need for someone to remain at home at all times as guardian (rusuban) to protect the family’s possessions from intruders or other crises had been virtually eliminated. A narrow balcony now extended the full length of the unit, with access to it from both the DK and one of the tatami-matted rooms by means of steelframed sliding glass doors.

As in the public housing unit examined earlier, there are two tatami-matted rooms, one with 4.5 mats and the other with 6. Their order is reversed in this particular model, with the 6-mat room located next to the DK and the balcony, but that was not always the case. What tenants were to discover was that these rooms, despite their familiar appearance, were actually smaller than their traditional counterparts because the mats themselves were some 10 per cent smaller than even the smallest tatami, the inaka-ma, then in widespread use. This was a by-product of metrification, a vital element in the modernization of construction methods in which the JHC played a leading role, rather than a deliberate attempt to deceive, but the epithet “danchi size” was to haunt JHC personnel for years. Their reliance on reinforced concrete for the shell of buildings, and later on pre-cast concrete slabs fixed to a steel frame, was to cause problems of condensation and mildew within dwelling units that had been unknown in drafty

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