Tatami (modular rice-straw and rush mat)
Tatami (estera modular de paja de arroz y junco)
- Date
- c. century X (generalizado en los siglos XV-XVII) · confidence low
- Place
- Kyoto, Japan
- Credited to
- Japanese court and warrior society
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A thick mat of pressed rice straw covered in woven rush, of fixed proportions, used to cover the house floor. It serves as seat, bed and base, and its size came to define room dimensions.
Straw mats exist from the Nara period (the Kojiki, 712, mentions 'tatami'), but then they were laid loose for nobles; floors fully covered in tatami spread between the 15th and 17th centuries.
What it led to
- rooms measured in tatami and floor-level living
- shoin interior architecture and tea houses
- a unit of floor area in Japanese real estate (jō)