Mojiko and Kokura: Finding Your Inner Garden with Tsuboniwa

Morning in the guest house is quiet enough to hear the ocean wind several blocks away as it rushes between the buildings and into the flat expanse of plazas. I slowly walk downstairs to drip a pot of coffee. A light rain goes tink-tink on the corrugated aluminum covering the side of the courtyard garden or tsuboniwa.

Suhee is still upstairs, finishing packing. I pick a seat for us next to the garden. Being a tsuboniwa however, all seats are really next to the garden.

Many people say that tsuboniwa — the tiny courtyard gardens often found in equally tiny urban Japanese homes — are beautiful.

On paper, they are just little vacant lots. Small rectangular shafts, deliberately cut out of the side of a home. These spaces are adorned with motifs from nature, perhaps some moss-covered stones, a lantern, a tree, some shrubs, maybe a water feature if you are feeling extravagant.

Cutting out a slice of an already small home, you lose something. Giving this slice over to nature, you gain something.

In practice then, Tsuboniwa are not just empty shafts, but glorious vertical columns of light, air, and green that — because of their central location in a house — bring certain qualities from the outside to the inside. They can be natural air-conditioners in summer, and calm miniature snowscapes in winter. Year-round they can transform what would be an enclosed part of the home into a portal, where our daily life can connect with nature. In a world where buildings are often designed to isolate us from nature, tsuboniwa reverse this trend, allowing buildings to literally embrace nature.

By the way, have you ever watched the dew-covered moss on a stone? As Suhee is still upstairs, I take time to do that. It goes well with a cup of coffee. I guess it would go well with most any beverage though. There is utility in this too. This scene and this moment somehow assures my heart. It feels like something is purified inside. Maybe in this sort of utility, is also part of the beauty people speak of when they speak of tsuboniwa — especially the kind found in an old Okiya geisha house like this one.

Though tsuboniwa are common features of both geisha houses and normal townhomes in Japan, this is not just a sentiment for the home.

Later, down the way in the bigger city of Kokura, Suhee brings us to the busy Uomachi shotengai. Being in a central business district, the shopping street here is typically alive. You might picture it like a highway of pedestrians, yet with hundreds of direct offramps where feet scurry into the shops and alleys. The action is endless and diverse.

Suhee stops to look at the map while I watch people. A few old ladies chat with vegetable shopkeepers, and lines of young and fashionable folks wait outside one of the hot lunch spots. Suddenly, Suhee tugs at my arm. She pulls us into a very narrow building where the scent of green tea slips around racks of cups and teapots. As we slide deeper into the shop, the noise from the shopping street fades away, replaced by a soft piano cover of Elton John’s Rocket Man, and the quiet clinking of stoneware. Curious music choice, but we’ll see where it goes.

We take a seat, facing another tiny outdoor garden.

For an hour we enjoy green tea and chatting, and the stress in our bodies melts into something. Did the tea dissolve it? Did it go into the air? Into stones outside, or the green leaves? It went somewhere, for sure, and it feels good. There have actually not been many extended moments of pure calm on this trip. In this one Suhee reads the poet Hiroshi Osada ( 長田弘 ). She tells me how, with few words, he takes us to versions of the world overflowing with beauty and meaning. Suhee translates a poem for me. It sparkles with the skill of a poet who is absolutely efficient at being aware of beauty, and turning it into words.

Suhee, the former book editor brings it home for me. “When you only have a few blank pages, what you put there matters.”

“Kind of like this garden?” I ask, as we both stare into the tiny green space.

“Hai. They could have put more seats here instead of a garden.” says Suhee.

“Or a parking spot.” I reply.

Suhee holds her teacup, looks at the fern outside. “But they chose a garden.” says Suhee.

I stand up, camera in hand, and take in the scene of Suhee and the tea shop tsuboniwa. “If you only have a small space, what you put there matters.” I click the shutter a few times. Suhee nods in approval. We sit for a few moments more and decide it’s time to go. Rocket Man has been on loop for an hour and we guess it is the shop’s way of saying “Hey, don’t overstay your welcome.”

Music choice aside, when you have a small space, it is clear that the utility of beauty becomes even more important. This tea shop, a businesses with a legacy dating back more than a century understands this well.

Of course it does. If it lasted this long, it must.

Traditional architecture in this part of the world — and really, vernacular architecture in general — tends to hold the view that if we are to be expected to put forth energy required to build something, both beauty and function should exist in the thing to be built. Otherwise, why bother?

Question: Where was the last place you noticed both function and beauty being executed as a rule? What do you think enabled it to happen?

Next Week: A surprise. This little travel series will pause and we’ll take a look at what has been going on with our DIY shop remodeling process here in Daejeon. Do you want to see plans and sketches, or photos of the place, or both?

Another Story: Many of you will not yet have read this essay below, from three years ago. It was at very beginning of The Possible City. In it, we briefly look at what scale, ownership, and love have to do with better cities.

SHORT #2: Ode to Small Buildings

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