The Microcosm of Floor Plans

About 20 years ago, I tried getting a qualification as a Feng Shui appraiser. It started when an acquaintance who held the qualification suggested I study it while I was thinking about moving. I studied it thinking it might be useful for choosing a home.

I imagine many elements are involved in Feng Shui, but what are the particularly important ones among them?

Feng Shui relates to floor plans, but it's something viewed on a slightly larger scale. For example, the energy of the land, the topography, and the location of the building.

The Old University Library on Mita Campus is located in the northeast of the campus, which corresponds to the direction that satisfies an inquisitive mind for study and research. Also, the New Library is in the east, an orientation that signifies information, communication, and potential for development.

That's perfect for a library.

Indeed. The Media Center (library) at Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC), where the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies you graduated from is located, is relatively close to the center of the campus and serves as a network hub. It could be said to be in a position better suited for learning self-expression rather than for concentrated study.

It certainly felt that way. That's very persuasive.

Did you ever think about making appraising your job?

For now, it remains a personal hobby. This is because when appraising, it's not just about the good or bad of the directions; the compatibility between the resident's date of birth and the year the building was constructed also matters, and that energy changes once every few decades. Since you have to combine all those factors, it's quite a tedious task that requires time and effort (laughs).

Speaking of Feng Shui, Dr. Copa is famous, isn't he?

Yes. He used to say it's good to place gold or yellow items on the west side, but that seems to place more emphasis on Japanese Kaso (house divination) rather than Chinese-derived Feng Shui. Concepts like Kimon (the demon gate) and Ura-kimon are also unique to Japan. I feel that Japanese Kaso might be the application of topographical ideas from Feng Shui to floor plans.

Collecting floor plans has been a hobby of mine for a long time, and while I was a student at the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, I created a free paper called "Madori Tsushin" (Floor Plan Newsletter). That caught an editor's eye, and in April 2003, it became a book titled "Madori no Techo" (Little More). Perhaps because I had stayed back for half a year and was barely still a student, it became an unexpected hit, and I started receiving requests to write columns about floor plans. I also spoke about floor plans several times at culture centers for the general public, and I was surprised at the time by how many people were interested in them.

So what you found interesting was actually interesting to everyone else too.

Some people sent in comments via reader cards saying things like, "I've loved looking at floor plans since I was a child," or "What do you think of this floor plan?" Nowadays, floor plan books are published by various publishers, so floor plans must have something that stimulates people's imagination.

Certainly, there is something that makes you imagine the life of another family. You wonder what kind of life you would have if you lived in that house.

Exactly. When you look at a floor plan, you feel like you could live there. There's also the fun of being able to look at it from a slightly superior perspective, thinking, "I couldn't possibly live in a place like this" (laughs).

After graduating from the Department of Architecture, I took a job in sales at a housing manufacturer. It was exactly the job of creating floor plans for people's homes. When I was a new employee, after returning to the sales office from field work, I had an assignment to copy floor plans from a plan collection to learn floor plan patterns. Even though I hated design and drafting classes as a student, it became a calming and enjoyable task after coming back exhausted from unfamiliar field work.

Were you the one thinking up the floor plans, Takeuchi-san? Wouldn't an architect usually draw them?

Actually, that's often not the case for detached houses. In many cases, a salesman who is practically an amateur creates the floor plan, and the house is built just like that. Of course, an architect turns it into a formal drawing (design documents), so it's not illegal, but the base floor plan is often thought up by the salesman.

Now that I've unexpectedly become a researcher, I'm interested in and researching what role floor plans and the methods for considering them have played in society within post-war home building.

The mysterious thing about floor plans is that even though no one is taught how to do it, everyone can draw them reasonably well. Previously, when I was in charge of a workshop at a certain culture center, I planned a project where people would try drawing their ideal floor plan. I had them draw freely within the framework of a small 9-tsubo house, and when I compiled them into a booklet, the drawing styles were unique to each person—some drew in furniture placement, while others followed typical styles that could be used in housing advertisements, which was very interesting.

Even among my customers from my salesman days, many people would draw their own and say, "I thought of something like this." I feel the reason anyone can draw them lies in the fact that there are many wooden houses in Japan. If you say a 6-tatami mat room, everyone can more or less imagine it, right?

The existence of tatami is significant. Even now, notations like "Western-style room 7J" (7-jo/mats) are common in housing advertisements.

It owes a lot to wood construction and tatami in particular. Many people in sales at housing manufacturers come from liberal arts backgrounds, but with a little training, everyone becomes able to draw floor plans.

From the perspective of people working in architecture, floor plans contain little information. That's probably why they allow for such flights of fancy. What's interesting about "Madori no Techo" is that you, Sato-san, don't over-explain. It's fun because there's room left for the reader to fantasize, and your own fantasies are included too. It also sparks the imagination regarding the relationship with neighboring units and common areas. The lack of a site layout plan also encourages all sorts of imagining about what the surroundings are like.

Actually, back when I worked for a housing manufacturer, the thing that got customers most excited was the floor plan. They didn't get very excited looking at elevations or cross-sections.

Excitement... I understand that. I wonder why looking at a floor plan gets people so excited?

There is information that gets dropped when a floor plan is abstracted, isn't there?

Yes. Conversely, I think it's definitely true that the imagination is stimulated precisely because the amount of information is small.

I felt that floor plans are also excellent as communication tools when you published "Madori Sodanshitsu" (Floor Plan Consultation Room) (Pia) two years after "Madori no Techo." The naming transition from "Techo" (Notebook) to "Sodanshitsu" (Consultation Room) is brilliant.

Thank you. "Sodanshitsu" was written in the form of me answering questions from fictional consulters. Ideally, I should have actually solicited consultations, but if I had, the content would have become too serious, so I wrote it strictly as fiction.

It's a book that's fun to both look at and read.

I like the feeling of it being like a fantasy consultation. There are dialogues with floor plan experts in the middle, and I thought those were also very valuable stories.

I agree. Are the floor plans in "Sodanshitsu" fiction?

The floor plans themselves exist. However, since I couldn't gather floor plans with as much impact as those in "Techo," I added a generous topping of fantasy.

Right now, a real estate mystery book called "Hen na Ie" (The Strange House) (Asuka Shinsha) is selling well. This is also a story that expands fantasies based on floor plans, so they must have the power to stimulate the imagination even for non-experts.

Are floor plans unique to Japan? I ask because when I went to Spain for language training as a student, I went around real estate agents trying to collect floor plans (madori) in Madrid.

That wasn't just a pun?

It was a pun, of course (laughs). But the feel of the real estate agents was completely different from Japan.

Speaking of Japanese real estate agents, it's common to see floor plans plastered all over the window glass.

Yes. In Spanish real estate agents, there are only one or two simple panels on display. The word "madori" (floor plan) isn't even in the dictionary. When I told the shop staff that I was a Japanese student researching floor plans... they were quite bewildered (laughs). Since the framework of the buildings is mostly fixed, it seems floor plans aren't really needed in the first place. It appeared that text information like location and age of the building was prioritized over floor plans. The reason floor plans are emphasized in Japan might be because "weird" floor plans exist due to various circumstances, especially in urban areas. Does the concept of floor plans exist in China, the home of Feng Shui?

In China, the orientation of bedrooms and the entrance is considered very important, but I feel there isn't a tradition of thinking about floor plans in detail like in Japan.

People overseas don't seem to fuss over floor plans when choosing a house. If anything, they care about the interior decor.

In Japan, floor plans might actually hold too much sway.

When all is said and done, Japanese people really do love floor plans.

Interest in the exterior isn't as high as it is for floor plans, either.

Right, the perspective on the interior and exterior is often missing.

For the exterior, at most, people change the color or the direction of the roof because they don't want it to be the same as everyone else's. As a result, a streetscape without a sense of unity is created. But even there, you can catch a glimpse of Japan's floor-plan-centric values, which is interesting.

Japan has a history where the demand for detached houses increased during the period of high economic growth. I wonder if there's a culture of figuring out how to build on small plots of land and live comfortably. What do you think, Takeuchi-san?

Floor plans for apartments and condominiums are things you read that are already decided. In the case of custom-built homes, you think about the floor plan from scratch. After the war, partly due to government policy, an era began where ordinary people also built their own homes, and floor plans became widespread. Before the war, thinking about home building by spreading out floor plans was strictly a pastime for the wealthy.

I see.

While farmhouse dwellings have had fixed floor plans for a long time, floor plans as we know them became popular with the Western-style houses and "culture houses" of the Taisho era. They were, so to speak, imported goods and were unfamiliar to Japanese people at the time. Therefore, information like floor plans became necessary to grasp the general feel.

It was an era when the image of a Western-style house wasn't shared among the general public.

Exactly. That said, Western-style houses were still the world of the wealthy. The recognition that a floor plan is something you create yourself spread to ordinary people after the war. Amidst a shortage of architects, everyone started drawing floor plans by imitating what they saw.

I hear there was a period when many such books were published.

For example, during the era of housing shortages immediately after the end of the war, major construction companies created case study collections like "Fukko Jutaku Kenchiku Zushu" (Collection of Reconstruction Housing Architectural Drawings) (Fig. 1). Since everyone had to build houses, many floor plan stylebooks appeared.

There must have been many people who dreamed while looking at these design collections.

In the 1950s, floor plans also appeared in elementary and junior high school textbooks. Improving housing was an important issue. If people were to improve their own living environments through their own efforts, they needed the ability to read floor plans and discover problems. Surprisingly, floor plans are also featured in science, social studies, and mathematics textbooks.

So, building a house was a major issue for every household. It's very practical.

These kinds of textbooks were produced in abundance in the 1950s, but sadly, by the time the generation that studied with them was ready to build their own homes, land prices had skyrocketed, making it an era where they couldn't build the houses they had envisioned.

So, only the skills for drawing and interpreting floor plans ended up accumulating.

Besides that, the ability to read and write floor plans was conveyed through various media after the war. A unique example is the magazine "Fufu Seikatsu" (Married Life). This was a sort of information magazine about sexual life within the home, and it sold incredibly well. Every issue featured a floor plan on the back cover. After the defeat in the war, there was an increase in "miscellaneous families" where multiple households lived together in one house. In such situations, as people sought floor plans that could maintain privacy and allow for a sexual life, information on floor plans became necessary.

One can see the struggles of households at that time.

In a collection of plans selected by the Government Housing Loan Corporation in 1951, exemplary floor plans were packaged and disseminated. For example, "15N6 type" referred to the 6th model of a 15-tsubo house with an entrance on the north side. By applying for this model number to the association, one could buy a complete set of blueprints, which also served as the attached documents for applying for a loan from the Housing Loan Corporation. At that time, having an architect draw up plans was quite a high hurdle.

I once researched the history of floor plans on my own for a workshop. In the Edo period and mid-Meiji period, it seems the style of partitioning with shoji and fusuma was common in both mansions and row houses. However, in the Taisho period, walls increased inside houses, and Western-style reception rooms began to be attached to the ends, like in "Culture Houses." After the war, the "grammar of floor plans" permeated through advertising, and floor plans became widespread—that is my hypothesis, but what do you think?

As you say, the popularization of floor plans progressed after the war. However, even though it's called popularization, since people couldn't build grand houses, I think it became generalized as a scaled-down version of a wealthy person's house. Pre-war mansions were basically Japanese-style houses, but it seems they used the Western-style section for receptions only when inviting superiors. This was largely because the lifestyle of the Emperor was proactively Westernized, and following that example, Western-style rooms increased in the homes of civilians as well.

I've heard examples of hotels and inns building Western-style wings specifically to welcome the Emperor.

The styles of noble people were imitated in scaled-down versions and came to be incorporated into the reception areas of commoners' housing. The Western-style room as a status symbol became integrated, and the general trend was likely the gradual Westernization of the entire house.

In condominiums built when I was a child, you often see Japanese-style rooms that look like they were just tacked on.

The desire for at least one Japanese-style room remains deep-rooted. In an era when Western style was rare, it became a status symbol, and once Western style became widespread, Japanese style sometimes became a new status symbol.

Around when did people in Japan start caring about Kaso (house divination) and Feng Shui?

Kaso was originally something people would have the village headman, priest, or shrine maiden look at. Judging the quality of a floor plan was also an important skill for them. After the war, as people were cut off from local ties, manuals for Kaso became sought after.

I see. So people started performing Kaso divinations for themselves.

After Kaso became popular, books on Feng Shui began to be published in abundance around the 1990s. It was in 1993 that Dr. Copa started using "Feng Shui" in his book titles; before that, he used the term "Kaso." However, Kaso and Feng Shui are originally different things, aren't they?

That's right. Feng Shui has many schools, and each has a different way of thinking. In original Chinese Feng Shui, the orientation of graves was considered very important, and people prayed for the prosperity of their descendants by enshrining their ancestors in good locations. There are various ideas within Feng Shui regarding the position of graves and improving one's own house, and these differ by school.

Some schools look at the relationship between the birth year and the direction of the entrance, while others look at various types of 'qi' (energy) flying in from various directions over a 30-year cycle. Looking at forms is called "Luan Tou," and looking at qi is called "Li Qi." There is a major difference in which one is emphasized, and furthermore, derivative schools have emerged in various regions.

As times change, house construction changes, and within Feng Shui, the scale at which people can involve themselves likely changes in various ways. That's where schools that add arrangements appear. But the fundamental philosophy of original Feng Shui is to consider both the house where people live and the surrounding land within the context of the entire universe, right?

Exactly. But in reality, it's difficult to relate a house's floor plan to the universe.

As more people live in condominiums and apartments with fixed floor plans, a tendency appears to provide ways to become happy within an individual's reach, like Dr. Copa saying it's good to place something yellow at the entrance.

The 1990s, when Feng Shui began to become popular, was an era when it became difficult to have the dream of owning a home due to the economic downturn. I feel that Feng Shui matched the mood of the times as a way to grasp happiness within that context.

Feng Shui is a very complex world, isn't it? After I published "Madori no Techo" (Floor Plan Notebook), I was invited to write a book on Feng Shui and dabbled in it a bit, but I found it very specialized and difficult.

Looking at "Madori no Techo," I really wanted to hear the impressions of people living in floor plans so complex that the orientation cannot be determined.

Surprisingly, it might be a case of "home is where you make it." Is it possible to appraise Feng Shui based only on a floor plan?

If possible, I would want information such as the direction the road faces and what floor the room is on. If I see the floor number, the age of the building, the address... and then if I also know the resident's date of birth, I think I could divine something.

What about the shape of the room? Is it better for it to be square? In the floor plans collected in "Madori no Techo," there were quite a few strange rooms shaped like triangles or circles.

With irregular floor plans, missing directions often occur in the appraisal, and it can be seen as lacking luck in that orientation. Being square is quite important.

One of the reasons I gave up on Feng Shui was the thought that even the same room might be different depending on the person living there.

Exactly. That's why knowing the resident's date of birth makes divining their fortune more accurate.

Listening to you, Ms. Asao, I wondered if Feng Shui basically has the purpose of encouraging people. In comparison, Kaso tends to have more cases of saying "this is no good."

I've studied Kaso a bit through the books of the architect Kiyoshi Seike, and the conditions are very strict. What's good and what's bad is determined in great detail.

Have you ever seen a case that scores a perfect 100 and meets all the conditions?

No, I haven't.

Kiyoshi Seike's books use Kaso as a topic, but they are actually talking about residential planning. A Kaso practitioner might have different opinions on some points, but what's amazing about Professor Seike is that he knew that by incorporating the topic of Kaso, he could reach many readers even with specialized subjects. Of course, I believe he studied Kaso properly, but he wrote knowing that it's a case-by-case matter.

Indeed, unlike Feng Shui, Kaso might be a method of selection—deciding how to incorporate it.

Actually, I brought "my ideal floor plan" today because I wanted you to see it. It's something I created as a sample when I served as a workshop instructor (Figure 2). At the time, I was 34, and I set it as a house I would live in 20 years later. It's a two-story building located about 30 minutes or an hour by train from central Tokyo. The key point is that it has a small courtyard (tsubo-niwa). I drew it while thinking about things like wanting to take a bath while looking at the courtyard, or wanting the toilet to be spacious because I hate it being cramped when cleaning. What do you think? Please critique it!

I also think the bath and toilet should be large.

Toilets in rentals are usually cramped, so I thought if I built my own, I'd want it to be wide. Also, I want to store a lot of books.

It's surprisingly... you might be offended if I say this, but it's well-made (laughs).

The workroom is designed so you can see greenery, right?

Yes. I'd plant a plum, yuzu, or persimmon tree, and made it so I can drink beer on the veranda. I'm basically only thinking about eating or drinking (laughs).

You'd be living alone, right? Where is the bedroom?

On the second floor. I thought I'd lay out a futon on a 4.5-tatami mat area with a raised floor. I've made the space under the floor into storage for putting the futon away.

When you open the entrance, there's the LDK (Living/Dining/Kitchen), right?

I thought about putting a dining table there, but...

"LDK + private room" is a typical pattern when planning a house, and in this floor plan, the LDK is on the first floor. Will you use a table when eating? A kotatsu would be fine too, right?

I see, if I were to put a kotatsu, it would be on the second floor.

Mr. Sato, you're unconsciously distinguishing between Western and Japanese rooms and making it "LDK plus something," aren't you? Since there's a space for eating right after opening the entrance, for example, if someone came in while you were eating a mandarin orange at the kotatsu, it would feel a bit awkward. If this were a design class, I might ask, "Do you really want to live here?" (laughs).

That's tough! Even though I call it an LDK, it's quite cramped.

Typical examples represented by the LDK are so deep-rooted in Japanese housing that it's very difficult to freely think about the house you truly want to live in. When I was a salesman and was copying floor plans at the sales office, it was exactly an assignment to memorize those typical examples.

A common failure story is that even if you build a house with a 10-tatami living room, a spacious dining area, and a 4.5-tatami Japanese-style room to relax in, once you actually live there, you find the large living room to be too much, and as a result, the whole family ends up gathering in the small Japanese-style room.

If there's a kotatsu, people inevitably gather there.

Those typical floor plans are often seen in model homes. If those impressions are too strong, our own lives become bound by them.

Thinking about it that way, I have to admit the LDK part of my floor plan is rather haphazard. I thought about the bath with a view of the courtyard and the veranda where I can drink beer first, and then I just tacked on the LDK at the very end.

How is it from a Kaso perspective?

First of all, I was surprised that it's a perfect square. It's a shape seen in shrines and such, but not very common in detached houses.

That's true.

There are many water-related areas on the first floor, aren't there? It is better to place water areas in unlucky directions, but here there are water areas in every direction.

I was born in February 1980. In that case, which direction would be the unlucky one?

North, south, southeast, and east are likely good directions for you, so you might want to change where you sleep.

Compatibility with directions exists not only for the house but for you personally, Mr. Sato. If the house's good directions align with your own, it's very easy to design. However, if the house type and your birth date type differ, various adjustments become necessary.

So, during those adjustments, the orientation of the entrance and which way the street faces become important.

That's right.

I hear that plumbing and water areas are also important elements in Feng Shui. But as a housing manufacturer, isn't it troublesome when people make all sorts of demands regarding the plumbing?

Compared to the past, we can accommodate almost anything now. Of course, it's more rational to align the plumbing locations on the first and second floors, but even if we don't, construction costs don't rise that much.

It's often said that back when there was no custom of installing ventilation fans in toilets, toilets in apartments and condos always had to be adjacent to an exterior wall. Once ventilation fans could be installed, the position of the toilet could be decided freely. Advances in equipment increased the flexibility of floor plans, leading to an increase in layouts that enjoyed freedom, like the ones seen in "Madori no Techo" (Floor Plan Notebook).

So that kind of technological innovation was the background for the birth of unique floor plans.

I wonder if we won't see those strange floor plans like the ones from the bubble era anymore.

Since it becomes a factor in rising construction costs, differentiating through floor plans has become less common. Nowadays, many houses keep prices down by simplifying the floor plan, roof shape, and exterior design.

I've heard someone from the housing industry say that "floor plans will eventually disappear." They said that once we start thinking about living in three dimensions, 2D drawings will lose their meaning.

That's true. Housing exhibitions now offer services where you can experience things in VR. However, it seems that for the general public, it's still difficult to use, and at the end of the day, floor plans are still the easiest method of expression to understand.

I'm a fan of drawings too. I'm not even good at operating things like Google Earth. They don't stimulate my physical senses or imagination.

I also don't get very excited when I see things in 3D; it feels too close to reality. The downside is that when you can experience it too realistically, your dreams stop expanding.

Is Feng Shui still persistently popular today?

I think it is popular. Publications from various schools are still coming out, and simplified versions are also being published.

Would an amateur like me be able to understand it nowadays?

I think simplified versions are trending because more people want to try it. The book I recently bought again allows you to divine houses and floor plans (Fig. 3). It seems you can even divine the position of your desk at work.

Maybe I'll start too. How does the "fortune" (kiun) you mentioned earlier change?

For example, in the school of Feng Shui called Xuan Kong Fei Xing (Flying Stars) found in the book I bought, one cycle is 180 years, and the fortune changes every 20 years. It's said the fortune will change again in February 2024. This is called "San Yuan Jiu Yun" (Three Cycles and Nine Periods), where the 1st through 9th fortunes circulate. The period from 2004 to 2023 corresponds to the 8th Period. When it enters the new 9th Period in February 2024, the lucky directions will change completely. Then, even for the same house, the luck will change significantly, and you'll have to adjust everything once more.

Is the fortune that significant? For instance, would it mean that if you used to place something yellow at the entrance, you'd now have to place something blue?

That's right. Since you can't change the position of the entrance, I think everyone deals with it as best they can.

So, is 2023 the year that concludes the 8th Period?

Since fortune changes gradually, it might be called a year of transition. What I like about the author of this book is that they suggest not sticking to one school but taking the best of everything. As Mr. Takeuchi said, I think you should just use it to your advantage to change your environment. If you try to do it perfectly, your house hunting will never end.

I feel like if I built a custom home about five times in my life, I could reach the ideal floor plan. The writer Nobuko Yoshiya built several houses during her lifetime, and when I looked at the drawings out of curiosity, the last house she built was indeed the best.

That was designed by Isoya Yoshida, who was known as a master of Sukiya architecture, right?

Yes. When I was allowed to tour the inside, the garden was very spacious, and there was a wisteria trellis outside the north-facing study window, which felt wonderful. Even if many guests came, they could have a banquet while looking at the garden, and there was plenty of storage for books. For a writer with a heavy workload and a wide circle of friends, it seemed ideal—the final form resulting from several houses of trial and error. It actually became her final residence.

That just shows how difficult it is to judge what is most necessary for yourself.

That's a level of enlightenment ordinary people can't easily reach. I've lived in rentals ever since I left my parents' home. I moved last year, and because I thought I could drink beer every day while looking at the sea if I lived near the coast, I compromised quite a bit on other conditions (laughs).

That's lovely.

It's an area with few rentals and high competition, so I decided on impulse as soon as I found an affordable property. As a result, there was almost no room to choose based on the floor plan...

But even with custom homes, there actually isn't that much room for consideration. If the site area, shape, and budget are fixed, you end up following a somewhat common pattern. It's more important to have a theme, like wanting to drink beer while looking at the sea.

That might be true. If there's something hard to use, I can just move again. Thinking about it that way, when it comes to actually living somewhere, external conditions might be a bigger motivation than the floor plan.

There's a new type of Feng Shui trending now called "Jin Suo Yu Guan" (Golden Lock and Jade Gate). According to it, land that is low on the south side and high on the north side is a good condition.

Is that so!? The place where I live is exactly that kind of terrain. Maybe I should start doing Feng Shui too...

It's fun. You should.

As Mr. Sato said, people rarely decide on a home because they fell in love with the floor plan. Rather, thinking about how you want to spend your time is probably more honest to yourself.

I found someone on Instagram with a wonderful lifestyle, and they said that for a house, they just need a "box" built. They said if they have a box, they can do whatever they want with the inside.

I understand, I feel the same way. I know I'm the one who drew the ideal floor plan, but that was just for work (laughs).

So that floor plan wasn't your ideal (laughs).

There are many things you don't understand until you actually live there, so I feel like as long as there are windows and an entrance, I can get closer to the ideal by changing things here and there while living in it.

That's the interesting part. Looking at just the floor plan makes your dreams expand, but then you live in it and go, "Wait, what?"

Maybe floor plans are best enjoyed while you're just looking at them.