The Microcosm of Floor Plans

About 20 years ago, I tried getting a certification as a Feng Shui appraiser. It started when I was thinking about moving, and an acquaintance who held the certification suggested I study it. 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?

Feng Shui does relate to floor plans, but it looks at things 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 an orientation 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. While it serves as a network hub, its position is better suited for learning self-expression rather than 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 quality of the direction; the compatibility between the resident's date of birth and the year the building was constructed also matters, and the energy changes every few decades. Since you have to combine all those factors, it's quite a tedious task that requires a lot of time and effort (laughs).

Speaking of Feng Shui, Dr. Copa is quite famous.

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 physiognomy) rather than Chinese-derived Feng Shui. Concepts like Kimon (demon gate) and Ura-kimon (back demon gate) are also unique to Japan. I feel that Japanese Kaso is what happened when the topographical ideas of Feng Shui were applied 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" (Floor Plan Notebook) published by 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, many publishers put out books on floor plans, but I suppose floor plans have a way of stimulating people's imagination.

Certainly, there's something about them that makes you imagine the life of another family—what kind of life you would have if you lived in that house.

Exactly. When you look at a floor plan, you start to 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 sales job at a housing manufacturer. It was exactly the job of creating floor plans for people's dream 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 formal drawings (design documents), so it's not illegal, but the original floor plan is often conceived 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 during 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, it was fascinating—everyone had their own way of drawing, with some people drawing in the furniture layout and others following the typical style you'd see in a real estate advertisement.

Even among my customers from my salesman days, many people would draw their own plans and say, "I thought of something like this." I feel the reason anyone can draw them is due to 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 real estate ads.

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

For people working in architecture, floor plans contain very little information. That's probably why they allow for so much imagination. What's interesting about "Madori no Techo" is that you, Sato-san, don't over-explain things. There's room left for the reader to fantasize, and it's fun that your own fantasies are included too. It also sparks the imagination regarding the relationship with neighboring units and common areas. Because there's no site plan, it encourages all sorts of imaginings 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 pumped up?

Floor plans also have information that gets dropped through abstraction, don't they?

Yes. Conversely, I think it's definitely true that the small amount of information is exactly what stimulates the imagination.

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

Thank you. "Sodanshitsu" was written in the form of me answering consultations from fictional consulters. I should have actually solicited real 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" fictional?

The floor plans themselves are real. However, I couldn't find floor plans with as much impact as the ones in "Techo," so I added a generous topping of fantasy.

Right now, a real estate mystery book called "Hen na Ie" (The Strange House) published by Asuka Shinsha is selling well. That's also a story that expands on 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 to real estate agents trying to collect floor plans (madori) in Madrid.

Was that not a pun?

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

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

Yes. In Spanish real estate agents, there were 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 building age was more important than the floor plan. The reason floor plans are emphasized in Japan might be because "weird" floor plans exist for various reasons, especially in urban areas. Does the concept of a floor plan exist in China, the home of Feng Shui?

In China, the orientation of the bedroom and entrance is considered very important, but I don't feel there is 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.

No matter what anyone says, 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 left out.

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 everywhere else. As a result, you get a streetscape with no sense of unity. 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?

For apartment and condominium floor plans, you're reading something that's already been decided. In the case of custom-built homes, you have to 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 a floor plan was strictly a pastime for the wealthy.

I see.

While farmhouse dwellings have had fixed floor plan patterns 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 that were unfamiliar to Japanese people at the time. Therefore, information like floor plans became necessary to grasp the general feel of them.

It was an era when the image of a Western-style house wasn't yet 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've heard there was a period when many such books were published.

For example, during the housing shortage 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) (Figure 1). Since everyone had to build a house, many floor plan stylebooks appeared.

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

In the 1950s, floor plans began appearing in elementary and junior high school textbooks. Improving housing was a critical issue back then. I suppose that if people wanted to improve their own living environments through their own efforts, they needed the ability to read floor plans and identify problems. Surprisingly, floor plans were also featured in science, social studies, and mathematics textbooks.

So, home-building was a major issue for every household. That's very practical.

These textbooks were actively produced 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. It had become an era where they couldn't build the kind of houses they had envisioned.

So only the skills for drawing and deciphering floor plans ended up being accumulated.

Besides textbooks, 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 an information magazine regarding domestic sex life, 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 "mixed-residence families" where multiple households lived in a single house. As people sought floor plans that could maintain privacy and allow for a sex life even in those situations, information on floor plans became necessary.

You can really 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 popularized. For example, the "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, you could buy a full set of blueprints, which also served as the attachment for applying for a loan from the Housing Loan Corporation. Back then, it was quite a high hurdle to have an architect draw up plans for you.

I once researched the history of floor plans for a workshop. In the Edo period and mid-Meiji period, 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 edges, 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 was popularization, people couldn't build grand houses, so I think they became generalized as scaled-down versions of wealthy people's homes. Pre-war mansions were basically Japanese-style houses, but it seems they used Western-style sections 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 style of noble people was imitated in scaled-down versions and began to be incorporated into the reception areas of commoners' housing. The general trend was likely that Western-style rooms as a status symbol became integrated, and gradually the entire house became Westernized.

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

The desire to have at least one Japanese-style room is deep-rooted. In an era when Western style was rare, it became a status symbol; once Western style became common, Japanese style then 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 an important skill for them. After the war, as people were cut off from local ties, there was a demand for Kaso manuals.

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

After Kaso became widespread, books on Feng Shui began to appear frequently 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 fundamentally different things, aren't they?

That's right. Feng Shui has many schools, each with different ways 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 year of birth 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 shapes is called 'Luan Tou,' and looking at 'qi' is called 'Li Qi.' There is a major difference in which of these is emphasized, and schools derived from various regions have emerged.

As times change, house construction changes, and within Feng Shui, the scale at which people can intervene 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 apartments or condos with fixed floor plans, a trend 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 started becoming popular, was an era when it became harder to have the dream of owning a home due to the economic downturn. In that context, I feel Feng Shui matched the mood of the times as a way to grasp happiness.

Feng Shui is a very complex world. After I released "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 you can't even determine the cardinal directions.

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

If possible, I'd want information like which way 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 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 I collected for "Madori no Techo," there were quite a few strange rooms that were triangular or circular.

With irregular floor plans, directions often end up missing during appraisal, and it can be seen as lacking luck in that specific direction. 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 thought that Feng Shui basically has the purpose of cheering people up. In comparison, Kaso seems to have more cases of saying 'this is no good.'

I also 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 decided 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 hook, but they are actually talking about residential planning theory. A Kaso practitioner might have different opinions on some points, but what's amazing about Professor Seike is that he knew he could reach many readers even with specialized topics by incorporating the subject of Kaso. Of course, I'm sure 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 for you to see. It's something I made 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 house 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 making the toilet 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 wanted to make it spacious if I built it myself. Also, I want to store a lot of books.

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

I see you can see greenery from the workroom.

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

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

It's on the second floor. I'm thinking of laying 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 the futon.

So when you open the entrance, there's the LDK (Living/Dining/Kitchen).

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

The "LDK + private room" is a typical pattern when planning a house, and in this floor plan, the LDK is on the first floor. Do 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.

Sato-san, 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, if someone comes in while you're eating a mandarin orange at the kotatsu, for example, it would be 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 small.

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 office, it was exactly an assignment to memorize those typical examples.

A common failure story is building a house with a 10-tatami living room, a spacious dining area, and a 4.5-tatami Japanese-style room for relaxing, but once you actually live there, the large living room goes to waste, and as a result, the whole family ends up huddling together 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 the courtyard view and the balcony 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 for a detached house.

That's true.

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

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

Probably North, South, Southeast, and East are good directions for you, so you might want to change where you sleep.

Since there is a compatibility of directions not only for the house but for you personally, it is very easy to design if the house's good directions align with your own. However, if the house type and your birth date type differ, various adjustments become necessary.

So, when making 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 do almost anything now. Of course, it's more rational to align the plumbing positions on the first and second floors, but even if we don't, I don't think the construction costs increase 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. With the development of equipment, the degree of freedom in floor plans increased, and floor plans that enjoyed freedom—like those seen in "Madori no Techo" (Floor Plan Notebook)—began to increase.

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

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

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

I've heard someone from the housing industry say that "floor plans will eventually disappear." They said that once we start thinking about how to live in three dimensions, 2D drawings will become meaningless.

That's true. There are services like VR experiences at housing exhibitions. However, it seems they are still difficult for the general public to use, and after all is said and done, the floor plan still seems to be 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 find it very exciting to see things in 3D, as it feels too close to reality. The downside is that when you can experience it realistically, your dreams stop expanding.

Is Feng Shui still persistently popular today?

I think it is popular. Publications are still being released by various schools, and simplified versions are also being published.

Would a layperson 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 Star) among the books 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 "Sangen Kuin" (Three Cycles and Nine Periods), where the 1st through 9th fortunes circulate in order; 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, the luck of the same house will change significantly, and you'll have to adjust it once more.

Is the fortune that significant? For example, does it mean that if you used to put something yellow at the entrance, you now have to put 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 the fortune changes gradually, you could say it's a transition year. I like how the author of this book says not to stick to one school but to take the best of everything. As Mr. Takeuchi said, I think you should just use it to your own convenience to change your environment. If you try to do it strictly, house hunting will become a real struggle.

I feel like if I built a custom house 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 window of the north-facing study, which felt wonderful. Even if many guests came, she could host a banquet while looking at the garden, and she could store many books. It seemed ideal for a writer with a heavy workload and a wide circle of friends—the final form resulting from several trials and errors. I heard 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 thinking that if I lived near the sea I could drink beer while looking at the ocean every day, 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 a custom-built house, 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 template. 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 itself.

There is a new type of Feng Shui trending now called "Kinsa Gyokuseki" (Golden Chain and Jade Gate), and according to that, land that is low on the south side and high on the north side is a good condition.

Really!? 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 you said, Mr. Sato, 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 who has a wonderful lifestyle, and they said that as long as they have a "box" built for a house, that's enough. 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 know until you actually live there, so I feel like as long as there are windows and an entrance, it's better to change things here and there while living there to get closer to the ideal.

That's the interesting part. Your dreams expand just by looking at the floor plan, but then you live there and go, "Wait, what?"

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