Nihon Minka-en – Susan Spann, Adventure, Mystery, and Mountains

Hearths, Tables, and Samurai Welcome Feasts

Susan Spann Blog September 15, 2017November 8, 2017irori, Japan, Nihon Minka-en, photography

My newest Hiro Hattori novel, BETRAYAL AT IGA, features a welcome feast gone horribly wrong. In medieval Japan (and in traditional homes to this day) the tables looked quite different from the ones in Western homes. While Europeans used waist-high tables and sat in elevated chairs, Japanese tables looked like this: People knelt (or sometimes sat cross-legged) on cushions placed directly on the floor. In poorer homes, or on occasions when formal tables were not used, families ate while sitting or kneeling around the irori, a sunken hearth with a bed of fine dirt or sand upon which fires were kindled. The irori was also used to heat the

Japan’s Open-Air Folk Museum: Nihon Minka-En

Susan Spann Blog June 24, 2017November 8, 2017architecture, folk village, houses, Japan, Japanese houses, Nihon Minka-en, research

This morning, I visited a site that will doubtless feature fairly heavily here on the blog in the weeks to come: an open-air folk museum south of Tokyo, called Nihon Minka-En. (The name translates to “Japan Folk Museum”)