Houses where the sleeping place is a fitted berth rather than a room, and where washing, bathing and sitting happen on floors the whole house uses. Most stand in Japan, and most stand within a few minutes of a station.
A berth of this kind is enclosed but not separate. It has a shell, a mattress, a light and a screen at the opening, and it stops there: the shell carries no plumbing, no window and no lock, because it is not a room and was never meant to pass for one. What it offers is a boundary you can draw around yourself in a house full of strangers.
The form was worked out in Osaka at the end of the nineteen-seventies and has changed less than might be expected.1 Later houses widened the shell, raised the partition or traded the moulded unit for a fitted compartment, but the arrangement held: a stack of berths along a corridor, and everything that needs a drain kept elsewhere.
The house that began the form, opened in Umeda in 1979 to a design by Kisho Kurokawa, and still receiving guests. Its berths are moulded units in two tiers along a corridor, with a bathing floor below. The operator states that it takes men only.
SleepingMoulded berths in two tiers; bathing floor held in common
Such houses stand near stations because they answer a station's problem. Somebody has missed the last train, arrived before a room is free, or wants a night between two journeys without taking a room for a day they will not use. A berth a few minutes from the concourse is the shape that answer takes.2
Proximity also decides the plan. Land near a terminus is narrow and expensive, so the house grows upward: sleeping on several floors, washing gathered on one, an entrance no wider than a shopfront. The visitor who expects a lobby finds a lift and a floor number instead.3
A short walk from the station concourse, on floors given over entirely to sleeping and washing. Berths are moulded shells closed by a screen, reached from separated floors for men and women, with showers and lockers gathered on a floor of their own.
SleepingMoulded shell with screen; showers and lockers on a separate floor
Compartments here are larger than a moulded berth and the operator calls them cabins: a bed, a low stand, a curtain at door height, open above the partition. The house stands near Shijo, in the middle of the city grid. Published material states that it receives women only.
SleepingCabin compartment above bed height; bathing rooms held in common
Which is why the shared floors, not the berth, decide what a night in such a house is like. The bathing room, the row of washbasins, the lockers, the drying space, the lounge with its long table: these hold everything the shell leaves out, and their condition is the real measure of the house. A house with a generous washing floor forgives a narrow berth. The reverse is not true.4
A minute or two from Ueno station, this house puts two kinds of lodging under one roof: bunk berths in shared rooms and small private rooms, some with a shower of their own. A floor is reserved for women. Whether any berth is a moulded capsule is not confirmed.
SleepingBunk berths in shared rooms and small private rooms; washing floors held in common
A screen is not a wall, and every house of this kind runs on an understanding about noise. Voices drop after a certain hour, luggage is opened in the locker room rather than beside the berth, and alarms are set to wake one person and not a corridor. The rule is rarely posted in those words, but it is the reason the arrangement holds together.5
Sleeping places are cut into a wall of plywood shelving on an upper floor of a commercial building near Ikebukuro station, so that a berth is entered from behind the books. Washing rooms and a lounge stand apart from the shelving.
SleepingBerth set within shelving; washing rooms and lounge held in common
Descriptions here come from what operators publish and from open reference material, read on the date given in each note. Houses of this kind change their arrangements often. Nothing on this page is a reservation, a recommendation or a statement of availability, and anything that matters to a stay should be settled with the house itself.