The first time I saw Mitsuru Yokoyama’s tatami was a few years ago in the House of Hosoo, the atelier of a kimono silk company in Kyoto.
Traditionally, tatami floor coverings are a natural golden color, but these were pink and navy blue. They were so surprising, I took photographs that are still on my phone.
But that is how Mr. Yokoyama, one of the country’s handful of master makers, sees tatami — as a rainbow. “Colors have always been there,” he said in a recent interview, adding that, in Japan, “I think people just don’t try to use them in their interiors.”
With its fragrant grassy scent and elegant, minimalist look, tatami has become synonymous with Japanese floor coverings, particularly in tearooms and the traditional inns called ryokan. Even one of the Starbucks stores in Kyoto has tatami on its upper floor, probably the company’s only location in the world where patrons customarily take off their shoes before sipping their lattes.
For the past five years Mr. Yokoyama, now 46, has been creating tatami in his one-man design studio, called Yokoyama Tatami: Dyeing and then weaving grasses into the top covers, assembling the layers and then sewing them together by hand or machine. (A handmade tatami generally starts at about $1,000; the cost of machine-made ones varies widely.)
In Japan, some of Mr. Yokoyama’s work can be seen at the Ise Shrine, a Shinto complex that is about a two-hour drive southeast of Kyoto, and at Hosen-in, a Buddhist temple in Kyoto. He recently worked on tatami, as well as some furniture, for a new pop-up that the Danish superstar restaurant Noma is scheduled to open Oct. 8 in Kyoto; last year, he created wall panels in black, gray and pink for its initial pop-up. And he has outfitted private residences in locations including the United States, France, Switzerland, Italy and the United Arab Emirates.
Suzie Lucas, the interior design director at the Lucas design studio in Seattle, first came across Mr. Yokoyama’s tatami online and said she felt drawn to his designs, especially the black looks.
“I love that Mitsuru follows the traditional craft of tatami construction, but puts a modern aesthetic in terms of materials, color choices and edge detailing,” she wrote in an email, adding that she used his creations — in a grass green with a jade green edging — in a multipurpose meditation room that she designed for a home in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“Tatami makes you stop, slow down, and be a bit more mindful and careful when you enter a space with tatami,” she added.
“If you have shoes on, you must stop and remove your shoes. This alone makes your guests feel more comfortable and relaxed in a space.”
‘It’s a Dying Craft’
Born and raised in Tokyo, Mr. Yokoyama moved to New York in 2001 to study English and, a few years later, began backpacking around the world.
He tried returning to Japan in 2007, but said that he felt uncomfortable: “I don’t know why, I love Japan, but I couldn’t fit in the society. Then I left again for Australia.” In Brisbane, he worked as a shipbuilder and met his wife, Lauren.
“I lived overseas for a long time, and while people knew about Japanese culture, I felt like they didn’t know about it deeply enough,” Mr. Yokoyama said. “When it comes to Japanese culture, tatami, tea ceremony and ikebana often come to mind. I love tatami, and love working with my hands. That’s why I came to Kyoto, for tatami school.”
But in 2010, in conservative Kyoto, it was not all that easy to enroll in the Kyoto Tatami Technical School if you were not from a tatami-making family. “I was lucky,” he said. “At that time, the head of the tatami organization was very open-minded and told me I could get in.”
And now, he added, “it’s a dying craft, so they have to open up.”
Mr. Yokoyama followed the school’s four-year program, working in a tatami shop during the day and attending classes at night. He found an apprenticeship with a Kyoto family that had been making tatami for generations.
He now has two national licenses that authorize him to work on certain government-protected sites such as shrines and temples, and he also holds a license to teach, something he has thought about doing in the future.
And Mr. Yokoyama has been recognized in his field: In 2013, he won first prize in the annual Kyoto Tatami Competition, which is organized for students by the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Tatami Basics
The word tatami comes from the Japanese verb tatamu, meaning to fold or stack. It is said to have been used as floor covering in Japan since the Nara period (710-794), when it was a luxury item for the nobility and samurai.
In modern times, architects have used standard tatami sizes in designing homes and the term has become a unit of room measurement often used in real estate advertisements.
While many new homes in Japan have only wood floors, some have one tatami room, called washitsu (in English, Japanese-style room).
“Tatami has a distinctive smell. It’s a very calming scent,” Mr. Yokoyama said. “And it cleans the air.” (Tatami, which is hypoallergenic, is widely promoted in Japan as an air purifier that absorbs carbon monoxide and as an effective soundproofing tool.)
Tatami typically has three parts: omote (the woven top), doko (the base) and heri (fabric edging).
The top is made of igusa (a soft rush grass), almost all of which is grown around Kumamoto, a city on the island of Kyushu. (“I also started planting my own igusa on a farm in Kyushu,” Mr. Yokoyama said.)
When farmers harvest igusa, they soak it in mud and then dry it for hours in a special machine. “That’s what gives it the nice scent, and it also retains the color,” Mr. Yokoyama said, adding that it is sold in large rolls, similar to rolls of fabric.
(Covers also may be made of twisted washi, fibrous Japanese paper, which is stronger than woven igusa. Mr. Yokoyama recommended it be used in homes with children or for rooms where yoga is practiced. “It looks the same but there is no smell,” he said.)
And there is the base, traditionally made of rice straw, a byproduct of the rice harvest. “It makes sense because Japanese eat rice, and we don’t waste any parts,” he said.
The rice straw he uses comes from Hyogo, the prefecture just west of Kyoto, or Tohoku, the region north of Tokyo. When it arrives at Mr. Yokoyama’s workshop, “it’s like a big mat, then I cut it to the size I need.”
These days, bases of particle board (compressed wood chips) or polystyrene are often used instead of rice straw because they are cheaper and weigh less. But, Mr. Yokoyama said, “natural bases last longer” and offer environmental advantages.
Fabric edges, which are optional, are usually made of hemp or cotton. The material may be left plain, or may have traditional Japanese patterns silk-screened or embroidered onto it.
The total thickness of a tatami mat is usually about 1.2 inches to 2.4 inches, but can be as thin as about half an inch — or even thinner if there is no base.
As with nearly everything else, Kyoto and Tokyo do things differently: Kyoto tatami mats are about 75 inches by 38 inches while Tokyo’s are about 69 inches by 35 centimeters. (“There’s even a Nagoya size in between,” Mr. Yokoyama said).
As for houses outside of Japan, he customizes the size according to the interior design and then lets the clients know where to lay each piece, a bit like a puzzle. For significant commissions, however, he does the installations himself.
In the Workshop
From the beginnings of his business, Mr. Yokoyama lived and worked in Kyoto, but in late August he moved his home, workshop and gallery to Ohara, a village north of the city.
“While I want to protect my craft, it’s equally important that I’m not just solely focused on that,” he wrote in a recent email. “I also want to preserve the way we live as Japanese people, so to be in the country is important, participating in culture is part of being a traditional craftsman.
“So as a family we made a lifestyle choice to live in the countryside — it’s really inspiring for everyone to be close to nature.”
Mr. Yokoyama collaborates with a specialist who dyes the igusa, a process that can take anywhere from a week to a month. Chemical dyes are used, although Mr. Yokoyama has been experimenting with natural ones — “all colors are possible, except white,” he said. (He was describing the production process during my visit early this year to what was then his workshop space in Kyoto, although nothing, other than the location, has changed with his move to Ohara. The process, and even the positions of the machinery within his workshop, are much the same.)
Once the dyeing is finished, he works with weaving experts or uses a machine that he keeps at home to weave the igusa into a cover top. “Each tatami mat is made of 6,000 to 7,000 straws woven very tightly together,” he said. “That’s why it has such a smooth feel.”
The completed tops are brought back to the workshop, where he assembles the layers. Next comes the sewing, which he does by hand or with a narrow machine, about six and a half feet long, that sits in the middle of the workshop. “I have to sew the cover to the base,” he said, demonstrating with a thick iron needle and cotton thread to pierce the straw. “Nowadays it’s quicker with a machine. Back in the day, they had to do it all by hand.”
“Just by looking at the tatami stitching,” he said, “you can tell if it’s machine-sewn or hand-sewn.”
Mr. Yokoyama can produce 10 to 15 machine-sewn tatami mats a day; one or two if he is sewing by hand.
While he usually works alone, he has help from a part-time craftsman. And, he said, “I want an apprentice. And to train someone who wants to do it. So I’m looking for a woman, actually, because there’s not many women in the field.”
“People seem to think it’s a man’s job,” he added — and traditionally it was, as some of the materials and the finished mats are difficult to lift. “Young people are not as interested in the craft today. There’s not a lot of money involved. It’s hard. It’s heavy.”
Recently, Japanese designers and other artisans have begun to ask Mr. Yokoyama about collaborations.
“It’s very interesting, and I want to collaborate with them. Yes, my craft is dying and other crafts are dying too,” he said. “But if we work together, we can make them stronger.”
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