Keywords
Architecture
Folk Dwellings
Lit. true second floor. A full-height upper floor, complete with living and reception rooms *zashiki 座敷, in a vernacular house *minka 民家. The honnikai first appeared as a feature of town houses *machiya 町家; well appointed upper-floor rooms seem to have been common in the larger town houses in Kyoto in the early Edo period. Thereafter they suffered an eclipse, but reemerged in the later Edo period, often at the rear of the house overlooking the garden. By the 18th century, a honnikai at the front was particularly associated with the pleasure quarters, like Kyoto's Shimabara 島原 where a surviving example is Sumiya 角屋.