Around 1212, Kamo no Chōmei completed Hōjōki, An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut. The hut he describes measured one jō, about three meters, on each side, and was seven shaku, about two meters, high.
The pillars were joined with tenons, and the walls were held with latches. The hut stood on a base frame instead of posts set into the ground. An architectural study of the hut notes that this structure assumes the building will be moved. Its materials were carried on two oxcarts.
In a traditional Japanese house, fusuma and shōji are removable partitions. A booklet of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism on Japanese houses describes the tsuzukima, rooms that connect to form a hall. With good use of the partitions, it says, they can serve gatherings of every size, from many people to a few.
In a washitsu, a Japanese-style room, the same space changes its role through the day. A guide to the washitsu calls this its rational appeal: the room serves for meals, for rest and for sleep. In some inns, the futon is taken out of the oshiire, the closet, and laid out at night, then folded and put away in the morning.
A kotatsu is a low table with a heater under its top. A home improvement chain describes the models it sells: Fuyuba wa kotatsu to shite, natsuba wa tēburu to shite o-tsukai itadakemasu. “In winter it can be used as a kotatsu, in summer as a table.”
A kimono is cut entirely in straight lines from a single bolt of cloth, a tan. A study from Tokyo Kasei University quotes an older description: one bolt of cloth is used, and all of it is cut straight.
Because the pieces are straight, the seams can be unpicked. A paper in a journal of Otsuma Women’s University notes that this gives wide room for shitatenaoshi, remaking the garment.
From 1980 to 1984, Takara sold Diaclone, a toy series of its own. Takara Tomy calls it the origin of Transformers, the shape-changing robot toys sold around the world. The Transformers toys went on sale in the United States in 1984 and were followed by animation and comics that became great hits.
On March 3, 2017, Nintendo released the Nintendo Switch. It can be played in three ways. Connected to a television, it works like a home console. With the stand on its back raised, its own screen shows the game in places without a television. With the Joy-Con controllers attached to both sides, it is played like a handheld.
A sensu, a folding fan of paper on a frame of bamboo or wood, is light and small and can be folded into a bag. Its forerunner, the hiōgi, was made of thin plates of hinoki cypress. The oldest surviving hiōgi is said to carry a date of 877.
A chōchin, paper lantern, is made of bamboo strips and washi paper and is made to fold. According to tradition, the prototype of today’s folding lantern appeared in the Tenbun era, around 1532 to 1555.
A jūbako is a set of boxes that stack. Closed, it takes little space. Opened, it serves many dishes. In the Edo period, people often carried a sagejū to cherry-blossom viewing and to the theater. Its outer case had a handle and held the stacked boxes together with a sake flask, cups, small plates and chopsticks.
Honda launched the first Super Cub, the C100, in 1958. In October 2017, Honda announced that worldwide production of the Super Cub series had reached 100 million.
A Honda fact book for a later model speaks of owning the timeless Sūpā Kabu dezain, Super Cub design, and equates it with fuhensei, universality.