Key Pages:
13 Things 2008
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
So why am I asking this stupid question?
The Japanese are a sedentary civilization, and have been one for over two thousand years. They have not been constantly on the move across their small island chain. The heavy wood content of traditional Japanese houses suggests that timber was not in too short supply for the construction of furniture.
Yet for most of those two thousand years chair-sitting was not the behavioral norm. If chair use is common and dominant in Japan today, that makes asking why chairs were not widely used prior to the modern era all the more interesting.