Kazumi Numaguchi reached out and grabbed a handful of cogon grass (the Japanese name for this grass is kariyasu, which means “easy to cut”), then gently ran his sharp sickle across the stalk. The blades quickly fell away from the roots, and Kazumi Numaguchi shook them out and stacked them neatly in bundles. After a few hours, the cogon grass was gathered and tied into large bales, ready for transport down to the valley below, where next spring it will be used to thatch the roofs of one of the houses in Suganuma village.
The village is located in Toyama Prefecture, but is nestled deep in a valley surrounded by mountains. In contrast, 140km to the north, downtown Nagoya is lined with skyscrapers. Suganuma and its neighbour Ainokura are collectively known as Gokayama. Together, the two villages offer a rare glimpse of pre-industrial rural life in Japan, with their collection of pristine, quaint thatched-roof houses.
The Origin of the World's Most Beautiful Thatched Roofs
The tradition of thatching roofs in Japan dates back 5,000 years and has evolved into a unique architectural style. Thatched roof houses, called gassho-zukuri in Japanese, were not originally cozy farmhouses, but small factories that produced silk and gunpowder for the wealthiest families in the area. The wealth that these industries brought allowed people to build houses with soaring, imposing thatched roofs - the culmination of a thousand-year-old thatched roof tradition and considered some of the most beautiful thatched houses in the world.
Like all other indigenous architecture, the design of the Japanese thatched roof house has been constantly changing and improving over the centuries to adapt to and better suit the surrounding environment. The materials used include cedar wood, grass, straw and Japanese hazel, all of which are easily obtained in nature.
The unique feature of Japanese thatched roofs is that they have a steep slope, up to 60 degrees, which allows for easy drainage and limits the weight of accumulated snow in winter. And to minimize the risk of storm damage, the houses are oriented so that the gable roofs are in line with the prevailing wind direction. Village
Suganuma is located at a bend in the Sho River, so the angle of the houses is exactly along the river flow, in the direction of the wind. Some roofers in Gokayama still maintain the ancient craftsmanship, passed down through many generations.
Not only in Japan, but also in the world, there are some craftsmen who still have such traditional thatching techniques. On a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, there is a craftsman who still diligently pursues the art of thatching with seagrass. In the Western Isles of Scotland, the last craftsman who still holds the technique of thatching with marram grass uses a gasoline-powered lawn mower, not the traditional sickle, to cut and collect the grass.
Thatching in Japan has changed a lot, at least in its perception. Women, once forbidden from setting foot on roofs, now make up a significant proportion, about half of new apprentices.
Hiroe Toyohara volunteers with the Japan Thatching Culture Association. She asks college students to put down their phones and spend an afternoon mowing lawns with her, then learn how to thatch a roof. The work is done entirely by hand and requires the cooperation of many people.
“They are lacking these things in their daily lives,” Toyohara commented.
Many students consider thatching to be baeru (meaning suitable for posting on social media) and even emoi - a new word used to describe a scene that makes viewers emotional and nostalgic.
Thatched roofs were common and necessary in rural areas in Japan in the early 19th century. Until the 1940s, thatched roofs were the standard roofing material for houses in rural Japan. Unlike in Britain, thatched roofs began to disappear with industrialization and the advent of railways in the mid-19th century.
The decline and disappearance of thatched houses in Japan was even more rapid than in Britain. The mass migration to the cities that began in the 1950s, along with the rapid mechanisation of agriculture, saw the rural lifestyle associated with thatched houses rapidly disintegrate. The pace of the migration was described by the American writer Alex Kerr, who searched for homes in rural Japan in the 1960s in his book Lost Japan: “When you enter one of these houses, it seems as if no one is living there… yet everything is as it was: the newspaper is turned over on the table, the egg is fried in the pan, clothes and bed linen are untouched, even the toothbrush is in the sink.”
Tradition of mutual support
About 25km south of Gokayama is the equally famous Shirakawa-go. Today, it takes just 35 minutes to get there by car, but back in the day it was a difficult journey to get there. So visitors to Shirakawa-go will have a different feeling. There are 100 gassho-zukuri thatched houses here, five times as many as in Gokayama. And the houses here have sharper, more angular gable roofs, not as rounded as in Gokayama. The setting is quite similar, however: a wide valley surrounded by rolling mountains, but Shirakawa-go is arguably the most picturesque (or baeru, as it’s called in Japan). The village also has gift shops, a house museum, and even a Buddhist temple.
Mr. Oizumo Shingo is a monk who was also born in Shirakawa-go village. Like most of the villagers, he still maintains the tradition of thatching the roofs of the houses by hand.
During this process, the villagers have a habit of cooperating together, called yui in Japanese, which has been a tradition for many generations. In its simplest form, yui means: I will help thatch your roof and you help thatch mine. Thanks to this, the massive, towering thatched roofs of the villages of Gokayama and Shirakawa-go were replaced in just one day, with up to 200 villagers helping out, including amateur thatchers. No money changed hands, but each roof was recorded as a token of appreciation.
Today, Shirakawa-go is the only place in Japan where yui still exists. But these days, the activity only takes place every few years and is overseen by a team of professional roofers.
“Yui will always be our tradition,” affirmed monk Oizumo.
