Could there be a Japan without tatami? The troubled tatami makers are beginning to worry. Their business has been on a slow decline for decades, as new urbanites scurried into the industrial era–and small, high-rise apartments. Since 1980 tatami production has fallen by half, knocking roughly 8,000 craftsmen, half the nation’s total, out of business. But in the past few years Japan’s recession has dealt the trade a deadly blow. Since the mats are so durable, they fall to the bottom of the priority list in times of economic trouble. As business has dried up, in the last year, about 700 matmakers have called it quits, with no children or apprentices to carry on after them. This New Year season, sales are slower than ever. Says Masayoshi Arai, a tatami maker who keeps a Web site dedicated to tatami living: “We’re standing at a crucial point, where it will be decided whether the culture of living on tatami will remain or go.”
Tatamis are as ancient as Japanese culture. They first appeared around 1100 in the form of small round cushions to seat aristocrats. Later they were used during tea ceremonies, for audiences at No theater and as flooring in Shinto shrines. In the late 19th century tatamis showed up in ordinary homes, where they were used for sitting and sleeping. But tatamis aren’t made for cramped flats. A well-made mat, which weighs about 30 kilos, requires daily cleaning, frequent airing and re-covering every fifth year. In airtight apartment blocks the grass mats grow mold in the summer and breed ticks and mites. The average Japanese house now boasts just one tatami area, often a nook in a corner, for placement of the family altar. Consumers are more likely to spend their New Year’s bonuses at chic, Western furniture stores. “I’d like to be busier,” says Shigeyuki Naito, owner of a tiny tatami shop in Tokyo’s fashionable Ebisu district. “When I’m gone, it’ll be the end.”
The tatami trade is trying, grudgingly, to accommodate the trendy, consumer world. Tokyu Hands, a retail chain selling everything from bikes to camping gear, offers tatami dyed in a range of colors and patterns. One company markets a tatami mouse pad on the Internet. Tatami advocate Arai recommends hypoallergenic mats made with cores of cork, charcoal or Styrofoam to resist mold and repel insects. He says tatamis absorb carbon dioxide and–thanks to their soothing, tea-colored patina–reduce stress by slowing brain waves. That is, when you’re not stressed out, trying to clean and air the things.
