Where does Tatami (straw floor mats) come from?
Tatami come from Japan's old capitals, Nara and Kyoto. These floor mats, today firm pads under a woven rush cover, first appeared in the homes of nobles in the Heian period (794–1185), and Japanese rooms are still measured by how many mats they hold.
Mats you could fold
The name comes from the verb tatamu, 'to fold' or 'to pile', because early tatami were thin enough to fold up or stack when not in use. The ancient chronicle Kojiki already names several kinds, of sedge, hide and silk. The oldest surviving tatami, from the middle of the 8th century, is kept at Tōdaiji in Nara. In Heian noble houses the floors were wooden, and a few mats were laid out as seats or beds, a luxury reserved for the highest aristocrats.
From a few mats to whole rooms
From the late 12th century tatami became more common, and by about the 14th century they had thick cores of firmly packed straw. In the shoin style of the Muromachi period whole rooms came to be covered with mats, beginning with small ones. The tea ceremony carried tatami into townhouses, but ordinary people used them widely only from the mid-Edo period (1603–1868), and farming villages took them up only in the Meiji period (1868–1912).
Rooms measured in mats
A tatami is a 2:1 rectangle, usually about 91 by 182 cm, though sizes vary by region: the Kyoto size is the largest. Japanese-style rooms are typically 4.5, 6 or 8 mats, and tea rooms are often 4.5. A mat has a core about 5 cm thick, once compressed rice straw and now often foam or wood-chip board, a cover woven from igusa rush, and a cloth border. Yet demand for new covers fell from 45 million in 1993 to 14.9 million in 2012.
Sources: nippon.com ↗ · en.wikipedia.org ↗ · ja.wikipedia.org ↗
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