The Asian connection to the floor is well known. Despite the linguistic, cultural and geographic diversity of Asian continent, the “floor culture” is common ground. Before you enter any traditional Asian home, you are politely asked to take your shoes off. It is not just about maintaining hygiene, but a mark of respect. Most Asian families eat, sleep, entertain guests, and even depart their loved ones with death rituals performed on the floor. South Korean families use the floor for sitting, eating, hanging out, watching television and sleeping, and have also adopted heated floors called ondol.
Even though chairs came relatively early to China (with folding stools brought in by nomadic tribes who used it to mount horses, and raised platform chairs came with emergence of Buddhism), China most definitely had a floor culture. Ancient Chinese used to kneel or sit cross-legged on woven mats surrounded by low tables. The Japanese, infact, learned making woven-mats from the Chinese, and adapted them into the more sophisticated tatami culture. Japanese kanji character which means floor or 床 (Toko/Yuka) could also mean bed, is an example of how intrinsic floors are to their lifestyle.
Traditional Japanese homes still have at least one washitsu (Japanese-style room), where the floor is covered with thick straw tatami mats, and there’s no furniture except a low table or cushions. For the Japanese, how you sit says more than what you speak, and so there’s a whole etiquette to sitting down called seiza (正座). Seiza is an integral part of Japanese martial arts, tea ceremonies, shodō (calligraphy), ikebana (flower arranging), as well as traditional performing arts, such as kabuki and sumo. Besides being space saving, floor seating also kept women in shape, and promoted a healthy birth canal, as they bent over to serve meals to their husbands.
