Obviously sleeping on a hard floor, on a mat seems uncomfortable to my Western lifestyle. I’ve done it many, many times on backpacking trips. I’d estimate 175 nights throughout my 30 years of backpacking.
The biggest drawback is bugs and critters. I’ve woken abruptly with ants, beetles, roaches, and the occasional inquisitive rat on me.
Bugs and rats invade homes too. You’re safer 20 inches off the floor in a bed.
Traditionally, homes in Japan did not have dedicated sleeping rooms. The place where you slept was converted to another purpose during the day. Unlike beds, mats are easily moved and stored out of the way. The aesthetic likely followed the efficiency.
Thank you
What about drafts? I was taught that one of the reasons our beds are raised was to keep us above the cold drafts that cling near the floors.
I spent an academic year living in Japa with a family, and slept in a Japanese style tatami room; it was a dedicated bedroom that also had a desk and a wardrobe in it.
First, the floor: tatami mats are not hard, nor are they soft. There is a little give in it as a surface, because it is made of rice straw and covered with a softer woven grass covering. The tatami’s relative give is one reason they don’t wear shoes indoors; the other main reason, I think, is for cleanliness, not tracking outside dirt into the house.
Then, the futon: I had a foam pad, maybe a couple of inches thick, above that was a thick stuffed cotton layer, then a sheet over that, on which I would lie. On top of me was a somewhat different stuffed cotton futon, in a removable cover.
I think I had some of the best nights’ sleep I have ever had on that futon on a tatami floor. I didn’t toss and turn, I didn’t wake up much, and I always felt refreshed in the morning. I never worried about critters, and i don’t recall ever suffering from drafts.
No holes in the walls, no drafts.
Japanese construction, as I understand it, has always focused on speed and ease of repair instead of robustness. It’s easy to poke a hole in a paper window but just as easy to patch over. A broken glass window is hard to fix without getting an entirely new pane.
Likewise, when your house starts to fall apart you tear it down and put up a new one. You don’t let it slowly develop cracks and holes over the course of decades, you just level and rebuild.
Even today, Japanese real estate law and pricing is all structured with the idea that a house is a depreciating asset that falls apart. At some point, you can’t sell it unless you tear down and rebuild. All houses should be new and in good condition.
I don’t think a mat like the one pictured is usually what people sleep directly on. Looks more like the mat to go under the futon?
The Japanese floor bed setup, known as a futon bedding system, includes several components: a shikibuton mattress, a tatami mat (or alternative firm mat like a coconut coir bed rug), a kakebuton (comforter), and a pillow. This arrangement is ideal for those seeking a minimalist, space-saving sleep solution. Since the entire setup is lightweight and foldable, it allows for easy storage, making it practical for small living spaces. Many Japanese households still use this system, appreciating its simplicity, air circulation, and the cleanliness benefits of airing out bedding regularly.
These are futons plus mats
I had a mat plus a futon.
That said, the mat was probably 2 inches thick and the futon maybe an inch and a half.
The things that I’ve seen called a “futon” in the US bear no relation to what they have in Japan. (Probably around 6 inches thick.) Though, maybe that’s because I was a young lad in an apartment. Maybe there are bigger, thicker options for established families in houses.
I slept on a futon on the floor for many years. I had a very small space and appreciated being able to fold my bed away when I needed room for bigger homework projects or to have someone over. No draft noted. I’d still sleep on a futon on the floor, but my lovely wife doesn’t care for that.
I suspect the major reason is that it is easier to get out of bed than get off the floor.
I’ve seen YouTube videos of Japanese timber beams. The joints are incredibly straight and tight. Can’t even fit an old, manila file folder thickness of cardboard in the crack.
Odd design. Strong timber frame and lightweight screen walls. But, it’s worked well for thousands of years in Japan.
The Japanese must keep their joint and ligament flexibility well into old age. Squatting over a toilet hole, and getting up and down off floor mats is a workout.
I used to sleep on a floor mattress. But I cannot get up from that position any longer.
I’ve never slept in a Japanese home, but I’ve slept on many futons in nice Japanese inns and once at a high-end hotel in Nikko. They were always pretty thin. Like Roderick_Femm, that futon in Nikko was possibly the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.
You do not even have to move the mat, especially if we are talking about a room whose floor is completely tiled with mats. You can sleep on a futon, and note that if the Japanese futons seem thin there is nothing stopping you from piling up three of them—in any case, you are super comfy.
I see some comments implying it is harder to get up or harder on the joints, but that seems like something that would have been tested in a study?
Which raises the question of how many Japanese homes are being built with tatami flooring
Judging by this, not many. And even then, it’ll only be one room in an otherwise-Western home:
Many new construction Japanese apartments have no washitsu at all, instead using linoleum or hardwood floors.
Both of my apartments in Japan were like that. One tatami mat room, others normal hardwood floor.
And you see a lot of old people who spent their lives sitting on the floor and now can’t straighten up any more when they walk, so it has its down sides.
But that’s all passé now. By far the majority of home interiors built in the past 50 years are taken over by western furniture; larger modern homes and apartments may have one tatami room, often for sleeping in. Certainly squat toilets are very rare these days, except possibly in the country. For one thing, they work a lot better when you are wearing kimono or yukata rather than western clothes, especially for men. Then think about the ubiquitous Washlet bidet attachments, which only fit on western style toilets. So I’m afraid your picture of life in Japanese houses is somewhat dated.
If you do this multiple times a day as part of living your life throughout your life it is much less of a work-out. The old “if you don’t use it you lose it” thing. I’ve heard that the old age scenario of “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” is much rarer in Japan than the US because of the life-long habit of getting down on the floor to sleep and up off of it again to get on with your day.
My great grandmother was like that - she could only stand up straight if she had something to prop herself up, whether it was her walking stick, the back of a chair, or anything else handy, even me - but that wasn’t because she lived her life sitting/sleeping on the floor. It was from a life of tending rice, stooped over, knee-deep in a flooded field, planting and tending rice shoots. In that much water, you can’t really squat or kneel, so you bend over at the waist. Spend hours every day bent over like that and it becomes your default posture. It’s very common in the countryside, much less so of city dwellers.