January 9th (Wed.) 

Yasumi got a call from Danny Boy saying he was coming this weekend with a builder to see what work, if any, we want him to do on the house’s interior.
Bugger ! I have to really think where I’m going with this interior I thought. So I thought about it in the bath, one of my favourite thinking locations.
Now, one thing I’m sure about is we need more natural light in the house. Tanazawa quite rightly writes a stunning eulogy for the beauty of the dim Japanese interior in ‘In Praise of Light and Shadow’ but most people want to live their life in the sun, me included. To this end putting in a feature window in the Tokonoma has been a scheme from the start. The Tokonoma is a wide display alcove, generally constructed of the highest quality woods in the house. A scroll painting or calligraphy is hung there and an exquisite incense holder, ikebana or pot is placed on the wooden platform. In our case a small wall framed by a column made from a beautiful natural rippled wood divides the tokonoma from the narrow slot that is designed to house the family buddhist altar.

The Tokonoma can be seen on the left

with the column and niche for a

 family shrine beside it.

My eureka moment was since we have no plan to house a buddhist altar there knock out the small wall behind making that column an even more striking free standing feature. The tokonoma can then extend across behind the new free standing column with the window taking on whatever proportion seems pleasing, the light not boxed in by the
present wall and the freed up column being framed by light. The passage of time being measured by the passing of sunlight across the rippled woods surface. Also having decided the living room needs 2 areas of use this extended tokonoma will be a bridge between the 2 areas giving them dynamism.

Detail of the column with a door screen behind.

Finally, and best of all, the image of this element of free standing natural wood somehow was so interesting and set me thinking about it’s mirror, a resolute sister.
A refined single slender boughed tree standing in the centre of the space it’s silvery leaves gently whispering in the cool breeezes that flow through the house in summer. Beyond it a long train of gossamer silk wafting, half-concealing the space behind. It’s surface embossed, maybe the fleur-de-lys (I have some French ancestry) alternating with my wife’s Japanese crest to symbolise our 2 heritages combined in marriage.

My idea is to set into the floor an open fire place for the winter. In the summer this has boards over it and atop it is set a single potted trained tree. The space is a reception area extending from the entrance hall, it’s borders are framed by the tokonoma on one side and the aforesaid fabric screens on the living room side.

This idea of putting a living tree centrally in a house has so much resonance for me.
It brings to mind:

The ash tree bursting through Hunding’s house in Die Walkure.

Tolkein’s ‘White tree’ in the coutyard of the stewards of Minas Tirith.

A Spanish courtyard in Granada, borrowing from the Moors the idea of putting fresh fruit within the house.
(Those Arabs made it into the design again !) and in a similar vein,

the roof garden atop the tower of Burgess’s medieval fantasy, Cardiff Castle.

Above all it’s just so decadent and unusual !
Kind of like saying, ‘look we have so much space we can p#ss about with putting things that belong in the garden here’ Ha ha.