SCALE AND FORM OF PLAN
Gassho-style houses, compared to typical farmhouses of other regions,
are quite large in scale. The average size of farmhouses in the
19th century was 3 to 3.5 ken (1 ken = around 1.8 meters) on the short side and 4 to 6 ken on the long side; by comparison, among Gassho-style houses the
smaller examples were 3.5 x 7 ken and the larger examples were 7 x 12 ken in size.
The large scale of Gassho-style houses was for a long time attributed
to the tradition of the extended family system, in which brothers,
sisters and the sisters' children live together with the head
of the household and the eldest son's family. However, it has
been confirmed that not all of the Gassho-style villages in this
area had extended family systems. Current theory therefore does
not rely solely on this point to explain the origin of this planning
trend.
Another, perhaps more reliable explanation is related to the need
to accommodate cottage-industry production, due to the difficulty
of surviving entirely on the poor agricultural yield in this area.
One such side industry was the production of materials used to
make gunpowder. As part of this process, large holes were dug
under the floor and filled with a mixture of grass, soil, cattle
manure and human waste which was left to decompose for two to
three years, after which the final processes of chemical extraction
and refinement were carried out. This kind of production required
a large floor area to maximize output. The other primary side
industry, that of silkworm production, also required a large amount
of space under the roof -- and as the size of the house was directly
related to production capacity, large houses were desirable for
optimum results. The interior of a typical Gassho-style house
is divided between an earthen-floored section and a raised-floor
section. The raised-floor area was generally composed of four
rooms: a living room, guest room, Buddhist altar room and sleeping
room. In the case of small houses, the living room and guest room
functions were often combined into a single room, and in large
houses there would be a second guest room for formal guests or
for ceremonies, as well as additional rooms for storage or other
functions.
In the composition of interior rooms there are no significant
differences between the Shirakawa-go and Gokayama houses. In the
location of the entrance and the composition of the earthen-floored
area, however, there are some distinct differences. In the Shirakawa
area the entrance is located on the long side of the building,
whereas in the houses of Gokayama the entrance is located in the
center of the gable end; furthermore, the gable ends of the Gokayama
houses have shed-roofed projections, while the Shirakawa houses
do not. Thus the differences in the building profiles of the Gassho-style
houses in these two nearby village areas give a clearly different
visual impression (Fig.1-1, 2). In Gokayama the earthen floor portion is composed of a kitchen
space and a stable, with stalls for both horses and cows. When
not in use for food preparation, the kitchen space is also used
for rice-threshing or for paper-making. In Shirakawa-go the kitchen
is in the raised-floor portion of the house, and the only function
contained in the earthen-floor area is the stable; thus the Shirakawa-go
houses have a correspondingly larger proportion of raised floor
area.
