ABSTRACT
This circumstance is reflected in how traditional farmhouse designs exhibit a variety in detail that might otherwise be dubbed extraordinary in a country of limited total extent and extremely limited arable space.61 But there is an underlying theme with distinctive Japanese modalities within a more general pattern Richard Beck has reflected on (see Chapter 2). It concerns coping with the climatic challenge inherent in a locale within temperate latitudes but on the eastward (basically, the leeward) periphery of a large continental mass. The rub is a big temperature contrast between high summer and deep winter, coupled with the fact that much of Japan’s rain falls in the summer months, thereby aggravating thermal stress. Compare two sites at between 36 and 40°N: the one Miyako, on the Pacific coast of Honshu, and the other Gibraltar. The range in monthly mean temperature (January to August) in Miyako has lately been 41°F; in Gibraltar it has been 20°F. Then again, 31 per cent of the year’s rain at Miyako falls between June and August inclusive, whereas in Gibraltar not two per cent does.62
