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Few populaces have experienced the same degree of change in lifestyles that the Japanese have in the postwar era, and there seems little doubt that such changes have contributed to the transformations observed in the physique of the Japanese people.
One of the most obvious changes in recent decades is the switch from sitting on tatami mats to sitting in seats and chairs.
Japanese houses were traditionally built on stilts with raised floors, a design well suited to Japan's high humidity. And probably as a result of the floor being raised above the ground, people developed the habit of removing their footwear when stepping inside, and of sitting directly on the floor. In most countries, chairs are the normal means of sitting, and the practice of sitting directly on the floor is relatively uncommon.
Most ways of sitting on the floor require considerable bending of the knees and other leg joints, and it is quite conceivable that such bending had a detrimental influence on leg growth.
In postwar Japan, chairs rapidly became the standard means of sitting as in other countries. New houses being erected these days, especially in urban locations, rarely have more than one or two tatami rooms, which goes to show how firmly the chair habit has taken hold in Japan too. It is thought that this change in lifestyle has had a beneficial effect on the growth of leg bones, helping in the process to boost body height."The postwar decades could be characterized as a tug-of-war between life on the floor and life in the chair, and the use of chairs appears to have won," says Tetsuo Oki, a manager at house maker Sumitomo Forestry Co., Ltd., responsible for planning custom-built houses. "And as chairs have taken over, we have seen toilets and kitchens also become westernized, and Japanese home designers have come up with some western-like innovations to fit local needs. The Japanese home nevertheless retains a certain distinctiveness: It is still designed for people to take off their shoes on entering, and although sitting erect on the floor with one's legs folded underneath in formal Japanese seiza style has become less common, most houses are equipped with at least one tatami room, since questionnaire surveys show that many people find tatami more relaxing to sit or sprawl on than sofas. Japan's postwar housing has evolved to incorporate both traditional and western lifestyles, and such widespread mixing of the two could be regarded as a characteristically Japanese approach."
It would appear, in fact, that the "floor lifestyle" is making something of a comeback, a trend that has not gone unnoticed at Sumitomo Forestry, which is now incorporating traditional architectural elements in the development of new designs.
If changes in lifestyle and housing have contributed to improvement of physique, there are also examples of the opposite effect: better physiques changing the design of Japanese houses. For example, most Japanese cooking stoves of 20 years ago were 80 centimeters high apparently the ideal countertop height for a person who is 150 centimeters tall, but now their standard height is 85 centimeters. Door height too has risen from 182 centimeters in the 1980s to two meters now, and bathtubs are about 50 centimeters longer than they used to be. |
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| Tetsuo Oki, a manager of Sumitomo Forestry Co. |
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Life in the average Edo Period home of the common people.
(Photo courtesy of Edo-Tokyo Museum) |
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