Privacy
Although the Japanese house plan may lead to some ambiguity, Japanese architecture nevertheless attempts to protect a certain space from the exterior environment. And vague though it may be, there is still some kind of division between the two zones, determined primarily by whether one is wearing shoes or not.
The feeling that Japanese houses afford little or no privacy is due to the fact that, although the number of barriers is rich in variety, they remain thin and light. But this poses no problem to the Japanese, for there is a certain refinement about a soft, barely perceptible light seeping through a shoji paper door, or the sound of rain just on the other side of a latticed window. The ambiguity about the house is, indeed, pleasant.
In fact, privacy is preserved not physically but through distance, and Japanese refer to the most private part of the house, or the most sacred part of a shrine, as the "deep, inner recess." Unlike Western brick and stone design schemes which call for an interior and exterior consciously divided by walls, a hierarchy of space, as discussed in the Introduction, has emerged in Japan. The open space around the innermost, private bed
chamber is divided into several rooms by the use of movable partitions. From this innermost room is a continuum of space through the rest of the house to the area below the eaves, to the garden, and even beyond the garden in some cases when distant scenery is included as part of the overall design.
The Japanese house is surrounded by a "soft" natural barrier.
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