Imagine that it’s the late 1800′s, your an itinerant salesman, and you see a burgeoning market in small farming villages and also in the post towns along one of the five main traveling routes (the go-kaido), like the famous Tōkaidō road, or the Nakasendō. Now imagine that you need to carry your goods with you. What are you going to use? Luckily there is an answer to this dilemma; you would strap a nice gyosho bako to your back and march out there to prosperity.

Now obviously, depending on what you are selling, these chests could be very cumbersome. So to keep weight down you would choose a light weight wood in their construction, maybe some kiri (paulownia) or some sugi (cedar) would be prudent. And you might want to keep it simple and coat it with just some wiped laquer; its inexpensive and easy to repair. You definitely would also choose to keep the iron work to a minimum, that is, unless you were a metalsmith and needed to show off your best work. In terms of design, you had an infinite number of variations. One door, two doors, hinged or maybe drop-fit, and with as many drawers as necessary. Tall and narrow or short and squat, it’s up to you. Only one question remains, what product are you going to choose to make your destiny manifest?

Pictured is an 1880 circa gyosho bako made from hinoki (cypress) and sugi (cedar). As for the hardware, handles are in the warabite (bracken hand) style and the jomae (lockplates), with double kikuza-tegakejo (floriate button) latches, are nice and utilitarian. Two aspects of this piece I find interesting are the kendan buta (drop fit) doors and the two thicker strips of wood used for adding strength to the back where the straps are attached, I hadn’t seen that before. I don’t know about you, but I think I would hate to strap one of these on my back. That being said, I still think they are great, and historically, important as well. Definitely shows how Japan went from a totally agrarian economy during feudal times, to a more industrious one as the Shogunate’s grasp of the economy began to break down.

There are alot of nice tansu up for auction right now, so I might be posting alot about the ones that I find interesting. Here is one of them, a cha dansu from the Taisho era.

What I like about cha dansu is that some of them have chigai dana (staggered shelves), which I aesthetically love. As a big fan of architecture, I really like the Tokonoma (literally meaning bed-space), a distinct display area that evolved as an aspect of Shoin style architecture during the Muromachi period. The one side of the tokonoma held a hanging scroll and maybe some ikebana (flower arrangement), while the other side consisted of some storage space with built in cabinets and also some chigai dana. Cha dansu borrowed the chigai dana as a way to display some of the tea ceremony materials during the late Edo era.

This piece is constructed with keyaki, sugi, and hinoki, with two sets of hiki-do (sliding doors) and one kendan buta (drop fit door), fairly typical of the style. Another familiar trait is the lack of lockplates. This type of furniture was used during the offering of tea, which was a normal everyday hospitality for guests. If you had a little money, you might possess a cha dansu to add a little class to this polite exchange. What a nice way to display and store all your tea utensils.

For some reason I just love funa dansu, maybe its because my family had boats during my formative years, leaving me with an inherent penchant for all things nautical (might explain why I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific). Whatever it is, this piece just screams at me. One of the 12 typical variations of cho-baku funa dansu that arose during the Meiji era, this piece has everything you want. Ample hardware (the extra plating originally was used to help secure the sashimono (joinery) because the glue used at the time was unreliable, especially in an aquarian environment, but later was used more as a theft deterant), as well as having a Kendon-buta (drop-fit door)
hiding a Keyaki strong box with a Kiri document box inside (although Paulownia was used typically for these interior boxes, so maybe it’s mis-identified). With Kakute (square hand) style external handles and the single Hirute (leech hand) handle on the interior drawer, hidden by the drop-fit door, as well as all the keys for the exterior drawers (minus the one for the interior drawer), this piece is just amazing. And the price is equally so, listed at $16,800.00, this tansu could be in a museum, or better yet, my apartment (I wish).