Kyoto’s Machiya: The Wooden Townhouses and How to Stay in One

The machiya is the traditional townhouse of Japan’s merchants and craftsmen. Kyoto’s version, the kyo-machiya, is the best known. The type goes back to the Heian period, when Kyoto was founded, and developed through the Edo and Meiji periods. Most of the houses that stand now date from the late nineteenth century to the decades before the Second World War, many of them built after the fire of 1864, which destroyed much of the centre.

The eel’s bed

A machiya stands directly on the street, wall to wall with its neighbours. The plot is narrow and deep: typically 5.4 to 6 metres wide and 20 metres or more from front to back. The people of Kyoto call it unagi no nedoko, an eel’s bed. The width of the street front was a measure of the owner’s wealth.

The plan follows from the plot. At the front is the mise no ma, the shop room, opening to the street through shutters or sliding panels. Along one side runs an earth-floored passage, the toriniwa, from the front door to the back of the house. The kitchen stood in this passage, under a tall void open to the roof that carried off smoke and let in light. The living rooms are raised on a timber floor beside it, one behind another, with the best room, the zashiki, at the back facing a garden. At the very rear, if the family could afford it, is a kura, a thick-walled storehouse for valuables.

Light and air

A house 20 metres deep with neighbours on both sides needs a way to breathe. The answer is the tsuboniwa, a courtyard garden of a few square metres set in the middle of the plan: a stone lantern, a basin, moss, a single maple or a clump of bamboo. A second garden usually lies behind the main room. In summer, when Kyoto is very hot, the difference in temperature between the two draws air through the house.

The household changed the interior with the season. In early summer the paper screens were taken out and replaced with screens of reed, and rattan mats were laid over the tatami. Sliding doors of paper, shoji and fusuma, allowed the rooms to be joined or divided as needed.

The street front

The facade is of dark timber and earthen plaster under a roof of grey tiles. The ground floor is screened by koshi, wooden lattices that let those inside see out while keeping the interior in shadow. The pattern of the lattice once indicated the trade: thread merchants, rice dealers and teahouses each had their own. The upper floor of older houses is low, with a slotted window in a plaster wall called mushiko mado, “insect-cage window”.

A shrinking stock

Machiya are expensive to maintain, awkward to heat and vulnerable to fire, and the land beneath them is valuable. A survey of the decade from 1993 to 2003 is usually cited as showing that more than 13 per cent of Kyoto’s machiya were demolished, replaced mainly by modern houses, apartment blocks and car parks. Many of the survivors have lost their original fronts.

Opinion has turned. A fund established in 2005 supports restoration, and the city has introduced protections for houses that contribute to the townscape. The more effective protection has been new uses. Machiya now house restaurants, cafes, galleries and shops, and a good number have been restored as accommodation.

Staying in one

A machiya stay is not a ryokan stay. The house is usually rented whole, often without staff or meals, by one party: a couple, a family or a group of friends. Restorations vary, but many keep the gardens, the timber and the paper screens and add modern kitchens, heating and bathrooms. Guests come and go with a key, and live for a few days on a residential street.

The advantages are space, privacy and the experience of the architecture itself, particularly the garden seen from the bath or the main room in the morning. The drawbacks are steep stairs, low door frames, thin walls and the absence of a front desk. Neighbours are close, and noise in the evening is not welcome.

For travellers

Choose by district. The grid of streets around Nishiki market and north towards the old imperial palace is the heartland of the merchant house. Gion and the lanes below Kiyomizu are prettier and busier. Some operators that manage several houses offer telephone support and help with luggage, which eases the practical difficulties. Japan’s rules for tourist accommodation have changed in recent years, so book only through an operator that can show it is licensed or registered, and check the current local rules.

A sound plan for a first visit to Kyoto is to split the stay: some nights in one of the hotels covered in our survey of the city’s new openings, and two or three in a machiya.