{"id":158,"date":"2026-10-06T08:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/?p=158"},"modified":"2026-10-08T07:47:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T22:47:52","slug":"room-hunting-then-and-now-edo-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"How Big Was a One-Room Home in Edo? | Room Hunting, Then and Now: Edo \u2463"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"How
Photo: light falling into a tatami room (Fumiaki Hayashi \/ Unsplash). For illustration. The red stamp, which reads \u4e5d\u5c3a\u4e8c\u9593 (kushaku-niken<\/em>), is also an illustration.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is the English edition of our Japanese series \u300c\u304a\u90e8\u5c4b\u63a2\u3057\u4eca\u3080\u304b\u3057\u300d (Room Hunting, Then and Now). \u65e5\u672c\u8a9e\u7248\u306f\u3053\u3061\u3089<\/a> \uff0f All English articles<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the last article I asked how many tatami mats\u2019 worth of space a nagaya<\/em> room had. Here is the answer first: six. But it was not a six-mat room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The password is \u201ckushaku-niken\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The smallest unit in the back-alley row houses where ordinary Edo townspeople lived was called kushaku-niken<\/em>, literally \u201cnine shaku<\/em> by two ken<\/em>.\u201d The dictionary gives it as about 2.7 meters wide and about 3.6 meters deep, \u201cthe smallest dwelling size of the Edo period\u201d (Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multiply that out and you get about 10 square meters. In tatami mats, that is six.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The phrase already appears in a book of comic stories from 1773, as \u201ca kushaku-niken<\/em> back-alley home.\u201d It was everyday shorthand for a tiny house even then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six mats in area, but only about four of floor<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Open the door and you step first into an earthen-floor area. This was the kitchen, with a water jar, a sink and a cooking stove. The living room, which doubled as the bedroom, was the four-odd mats of tatami behind it (Shinpan Edo no Kakeibo<\/em>, supervised by Isoda Michifumi).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s Japanese listing terms it is a \u201c1K.\u201d Except the kitchen comes before you take your shoes off. Lay out the bedding and there is hardly any floor left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Then: a tatami room in an old Japanese house (Photo: Se. Tsuchiya \/ Unsplash). For illustration; this is not an actual nagaya room.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

No bath. Shared well, shared toilet<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now the facilities. According to the same book, at the end of the alley there was a shared well, shared toilets and a rubbish pit. There was no bath in the room. Edo people went to the public bathhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written as a listing, it would read: \u201c1K, about 10 m\u00b2, no bath, shared toilet, shared well.\u201d If I put that ad out today, I do not think the phone would ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 40% of today\u2019s guideline<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Japan\u2019s government sets a \u201cminimum housing area standard,\u201d a guideline for the space needed for a healthy and decent life. For a person living alone it is 25 square meters. A kushaku-niken<\/em> is only about 40% of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at it another way, though, and the picture shifts a little. The bath was at the bathhouse. The water was at the well. People shared what lay outside the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I once wrote on this blog (in Japanese) about treating the whole neighborhood as your living room, and not judging a home by floor area alone. It turns out Edo people were doing exactly that long ago. They beat me to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Now: a one-room apartment (Photo: Stephen Pontes \/ Unsplash).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A note on sources: I confirmed the size in dictionaries, and the layout and facilities through an article presenting the book\u2019s content. Row houses had larger units too; the kushaku-niken<\/em> was the smallest type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next time: the rent. How much do you think this room cost per month?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking for a home in Sapporo?<\/strong>
Message us on LINE: https:\/\/line.me\/ti\/p\/u2qP4VZ5ZU<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please note:<\/strong> Lease contracts and the legally required explanation of important matters (j\u016by\u014d jik\u014d setsumei<\/em>) are provided in Japanese.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The smallest Edo row-house unit was about 10 square meters: six tatami mats, no bath, shared well and toilet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286,"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iiie-r5.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}