Minka House

During the festival in Japan in 2001, the gardens of Kew acquired a Japanese wooden house called a Minka. The house is from around 1900 and comes from around the city of Okazaki. Japanese artisans disassembled it and then reassembled it on the grounds right next to the bamboo garden. The English added dried mud walls. Until the mid-twentieth century, most people in Japan including farmers and traders, lived in traditional wooden houses called minkas. Each house has a wooden stand but the panels are of mud and thatch. All of the materials needed to build the house could be found in the woods and the structure could withstand an earthquake.