Karel Bos

Hakokaidan or Kaidan-dansu: Japanese step-chest Karel Bos

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Art - Architecture / History of Construction, , language: English, abstract: The Japanese step-chest (kaidan-dansu or hakokaidan) is inextricably linked with the traditional 'machiya' in Kyoto. In contrast to the 'minka', which are farmhouses, fishermen's houses and mountain dwellings, the 'machiya' is a merchants' and craftsmen's town-house, specifically in Kyoto, also often called 'kyo-machiya'. Kyoto 'machiya' are traditional townhouses with distinctive Kyoto-style latticework doors and slatted second-story windows (fig. 1+2). Machiya are already depicted on 17th century screens and they were still built during the Taisho period and beyond until about 1936. These wooden houses, where merchants and artisans both lived and worked, provided a space in front for a store, in the middle for family quarters with small garden, and in the rear for workshops and warehouses. Many of them can still be seen in the Gion district and they came to be regarded as one of the typical traditional structures which characterise the ancient city of Kyoto. Kyoto, Japan's capital of traditional culture, is one of the few Japanese cities that was spared from the bombings of World War II, yet every year scores of 'machiya' are destroyed, victims of neglect and urban redevelopment, thus rapidly erasing the traditional urban fabric. Luckily civic groups in Kyoto are working hard to save the buildings that remain and to preserve this superb example of Kyoto vernacular architecture. Typically the 'machiya' has a narrow front of about 5.5 to 6.4 m (3 to 3.5 'ken') and a depth of around 20 m (11 'ken'). As homes were taxed according to the size of the street frontage, this design originated from economic necessity (fig. 16). However, as merchants became richer, they built larger 'machiya' and it is not unusual to find a frontage of 6 and 7 'ken' (12.7 m). The meaning of the modern concept of the 'module' has an exceptional antecedent in Japan, where for hu