“It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards.”
—The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard (1844).

My parents left Japan when I was five-years old. So I never really developed the kinds of childhood memories of the country that internalize a culture. As far as I knew, “Yunaide Sudaitsu” was just another city a few hours away by flying bus. But I did leave with a few comforting visceral memories, especially that of falling asleep to the sweet smell of soft rushes.

When I was three years old, my family moved from an apartment in central Tokyo into a small house in the hills to the west. It was an older house, at least by Japanese standards… where three decades usually defines the lifespan of most construction. Nowadays, it’s long since gone, and redevelopment has left little recognizable of my childhood neighborhood.

Among the things my parents did to make our new residence into a “home” was to have the floors of most of its spaces covered in new “tatami”. Where square yards are a measure peculiar to areas of soft flooring in the US, Japanese room sizes are still often given in “tatamis”, or rectangles of about 3-feet by 6-feet (0.9 by 1.8 meters). The term refers to the dimensions of a type of thick (over an inch, or around 3 cm) floor mat that may weigh as much as 45-pounds (20-kilos) each when new.

Tatami add cushioning and insulation to a finished wood floor, or to a raised platform called a “tatami-doko”. They aren’t necessarily required as a floor covering. But since they’re traditional, rooms within Japanese homes were usually dimensioned to accommodate some number of tatami mats, sometimes finishing with a half-mat. The particular layout of the mats can even have a meaning, especially with regard to the positioning of guests in social spaces.

In nicer homes, a fabric edging might include the patterns of a family crest. Consequently, one never steps on the edges of a tatami out of respect. But this is also done to preserve the integrity of the mat itself. And since shoes are never worn inside a Japanese home, well-made tatami can last for many years. But they do eventually wear out, and replacing them can be a big event.

Tatami are labor-intensive products, and consequently expensive. Covering the floor of an about 9-foot by 9-foot space with four whole and one half tatami might cost the equivalent of from $500 to around four times that amount for something high quality. A 12-by-12 foot room where guests may be seated would require 8 tatamis, costing perhaps $2500 for something of socially presentable quality. But there’s a pleasantly special characteristic of new tatami.

Tatami were traditionally made from woven rice straw, and covered with a tight a warp of hemp or cotton that would bind a weft of “igusa”, a soft rush plant that has been used in Japan for more than a thousand years. And it was the fresh scent of igusa peculiar to new tatami that worked its way into my memories of childhood. Hot afternoons falling asleep upon their accommodating coolness, the grassy fragrance became the comforting scent of “home”.

Efficiency has since replaced the woven rice-straw cores that once filled tatami with ones of Styrofoam, making contemporary mats lighter and less expensive. Regardless, tatami have become less frequent in modern homes. They aren’t really appropriate to modern kitchen designs. And it became more convenient to equip living-rooms with rugs that could be electrically heated during the winters. Gradually, only certain spaces within newer homes and apartments would be designated as “tatami rooms”.

I suppose that it was inevitable that tatami would eventually become anachronisms, consigned to historical memory in much the same way as vinyl records or newspapers. This year, most new homes in the Tokyo area stopped being built with any accommodations for tatami. It seems that heated rugs and floors and more Western furnishings have rendered them superfluous.

In another generation, the lament of those who recall a hot day’s forgiving sleep to the sweet scent of soft rushes will mean little to Japanese who know only of “tatami” as another artifact of history. Like samurai armor and kimono, it will remain visibly “Japanese”, but absent the visceral connection to a culture.