Anatomy of a Tatami Room

Continued from Tatami 101.

On the day Wada-san was scheduled to work on our tatami mats, he came at exactly 8:30 a.m. He made markings on the old mats only intelligible to himself and removed all 6 mats in less than 10 minutes. He then left a pair of slippers for us to use to clean up the old insect repelling sheets and other debris.

The wood boards supporting the tatami mats were very rudimentary. For traditional Japanese houses, the tatami mat is the flooring. When the tatami mats were removed, there were entire gaps in the wood so much so that we could see the plants outside the house! Wada-san told us that in old days, houses were intentionally constructed as such to let the air circulate -- something that makes our house cool in the summer but too cold in the winter.

At 3:00 sharp, Wada-san came back. First, he laid out new sheets of insect repelling paper. There are huge gaps in between the wood boards and the sheets serve to discourage insects from crawling up.

Next, he brought in the new mats fitting them in with the precision of a master, using the force of his legs at times to flush them onto the wall.The last piece was the middle piece. After he fitted it in, he walked around a couple of times, feeling for something only he could discern, because, to our untrained eye, the tatami mats appeared perfect.

He went back to his truck and came back with scrap tatami. He went back to several spots on our flooring, checked again by thumping, and "corrected" places that were not perfectly level using strips of cut tatami only a millimeter thick! This was truly an artisan at work. Only after correcting the tatami in several spots was he satisfied with his work.

Our room smells tatami fragrant, and we are sleeping on perfectly taut tatami, with a weave so perfect it makes cleaning a dream. My partner and I asked ourselves, "Why didn't we do this sooner?"