A washitsu (和室) is a traditional Japanese-style room. It has a floor of tatami mats and sliding paper doors, and it stays strikingly bare. A Western room revolves around fixed furniture. A washitsu is a calm, empty, flexible space, and its purpose changes during the day. It is a living room, a dining room and a bedroom in turn.
An empty, changing room
The key surface is the tatami floor. These firm mats of woven rush feel cool in summer and soft underfoot. You always step on them without shoes, and often without slippers too. The walls of the room are not solid but sliding panels. Opaque fusuma and translucent shōji slide open to join rooms together, and you can even lift them out completely. The room has few fixed pieces of furniture, so it can play many roles. A low table comes in for a meal, and cushions serve as seats. At night a futon lies right on the tatami, and in the morning it goes away again. The formal focus of a good washitsu is the tokonoma, an alcove in the wall with a hanging scroll and a seasonal flower.
Measured in mats
Tatami matter so much that they became the unit of the room itself. People describe a washitsu by the number of its mats: a "six-mat room" or an "eight-mat room." The mats follow set patterns. One layout brings luck for daily life, and a different one is for funerals. Even modern apartment listings still give room sizes in jō, or tatami units. Many homes today have only one washitsu, or none at all. Families keep it for guests, for tea or as a quiet, traditional corner among Western-style rooms.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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畳 (tatami / -jō): the woven floor mat, and also the counter for room size. A rokujō (六畳) room is a "six-mat" room.
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起きて半畳、寝て一畳 (okite hanjō, nete ichijō): "half a mat to sit up, one mat to lie down." A person needs very little to live. This proverb of modest contentment comes straight from the tatami.