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Diagram: Takahashi Toshikazu, from "The Construction of Gassho-style

Houses: A Record of Traditional Techniques in Shirakawa-go," published by Shirakawamura Board of Education / edited by the Folk Culture Imaging Institute.

During the Edo period (1603-1868), families in Shirakawa and the surrounding villages began to raise silkworms. In order to secure the large area needed for this, they built steeply pitched gabled roofs with long thick logs and used the giant attic space underneath the roof.

The farmhouses came to be called Gassho-style houses because their roofline resembles two hands brought together in prayer, a pose called gassho in Japanese. Both ends of the house have windows on the upper levels, allowing light and air to circulate into the rooms containing the silkworms.

The attic of the Gassho-style Wada House

The first floor of the house was traditionally used as living quarters and stables for the horses, cows, and other farm animals. There was a hearth in the center of the house, where meals were cooked and served. Until about 70 years ago, as many as 20 or 30 family members and lodgers helping out with the silkworm farming or other work lived together under one roof.

The first floor of Gassho-style houses is built by skilled carpenters, but the roof is assembled entirely by the villagers through the yui labor exchange system. All the village's houses face the same direction, with the long side paralleling the Sho River from north to south, so that gusts of wind go right through the house and do not knock it down. The structures can also absorb the shock of a major earthquake, since the roof is attached to the main part of the house with pegs set into 10-centimeter-deep holes located at the base of the roof's triangular frame.