Genkan: Inside the Entrance of a Japanese House

The genkan, an airlock with no Western equivalent

The genkan (玄関, the entrance of a Japanese house) is the first room of the home and the only one left at ground level. You step in with your shoes on, take them off, then climb a step to reach the floor. Japanese does not say you enter a house: it says you agaru (上がる, go up). That step is a border, not a quirk of the floor plan.

The word comes from Zen Buddhism, where it named the gate of a monastery, the passage to deeper study. It spread to housing during the Edo period, first among warriors and merchants, then everywhere. No Japanese home lacks one, from a suburban studio to a mountain kominka (kominka, old farmhouse).

Three jobs that buyers underestimate

• Keeping outside outside. Dust, rain, mud and pollen stop at the lower floor. That is why Japanese flooring, usually pale wood or tatami (tatami, rice straw mat), stays clean without daily cleaning.
• Receiving people without letting them in. A courier, a neighbour, a meter reader, a contractor quoting a job: all of it happens standing in the genkan with the door open. It is a semi-public zone, which is why it is kept presentable even in a modest house.
• Storing the outdoors. Shoes, umbrellas, rain boots, walking sticks, golf clubs, a pushchair: genkan storage absorbs everything that never enters the living space.

For a foreign buyer, this airlock drives three costs that usually surface too late: damp at the low floor, the front door (often single-glazed aluminium, and sometimes subject to fire-rating rules) and the step itself, which turns into an obstacle with age. Our guide to buying property in Japan covers the overall method; this page covers the room, line by line. For the wider vocabulary, see Japanese house architecture styles.

Anatomy and vocabulary of a genkan

A Japanese listing, a contractor's quote or a condition report will describe the genkan with six or seven precise words. Knowing them changes a viewing: you stop seeing "an entrance" and start seeing parts, each with a price and a lifespan.

Part	What it is	What to check
tataki or doma (三和土 / 土間)	The lower floor at ground level: concrete, tile or traditional packed earth	Cracks, rising damp, slope towards the door, loose grout
agarikamachi (上がり框)	The horizontal timber edging the step, at the boundary of the raised floor	Blackened, split or spongy wood: the first place to rot
shikidai (式台)	A low intermediate step, inherited from receiving guests of rank	Rare in new builds, valuable in an old house: it halves the rise
getabako (下駄箱)	The shoe cabinet, named after wooden clogs	Rear ventilation, smell, wall fixing, real capacity
kutsuzuri (くつずり)	The sill under the door	Level difference outside and towards the tataki, weathertightness
genkan horu (玄関ホール)	The small hall above the step, distributing the rooms	Usable width, lighting, something to hold on to
shuzu in kuroku (シューズインクローク)	A walk-in shoe and gear closet at ground level	A genuine resale argument on the Japanese market

Four families of genkan, four budgets

The same word covers situations with different footprints, different faults and very different repair bills.

Property type	Typical lower floor	Typical step	Watch out for
Post-war detached house	1.5 to 3 sqm	15 to 25 cm	Solid timber kamachi, uninsulated slab, aluminium door
Condominium unit (manshon, mansion (condominium))	1 to 2 sqm	5 to 15 cm	The entrance door is common property: no individual replacement
Machiya (machiya, Kyoto townhouse)	3 to 10 sqm, sometimes a through corridor of packed earth	25 to 40 cm	Traditional earthen floor, rising damp, old sliding door
Kominka (kominka, old farmhouse)	5 to 20 sqm, often a large working doma	30 to 50 cm	Volume that is impossible to heat, post feet, termites

A kominka doma is not a defect: it is cheap usable space that converts into a workshop, a summer kitchen or a guest reception area. Browse what is currently listed among our kominka for sale in Japan and our machiya for sale in Kyoto: the genkan layout is almost always visible in the first photo.

What the genkan tells you about the house you are viewing

On a house that has been empty for years, the genkan is the best free indicator you have. It gathers everything that damages Japanese construction: water from outside, condensation from inside, timber in contact with the ground and no ventilation.

The timber of the kamachi

Press your thumb into the agarikamachi, then into the first 30 cm of floor behind it. Wood that gives, sounds hollow or has gone black points to an old leak or to shiroari (shiroari, subterranean termites). The genkan is their favourite way in: damp ground, timber in contact, darkness. Our article on termites in a Japanese timber house covers treatment and cost.

Smell and stains

A cellar smell in the genkan while the rest of the house is dry almost always means moisture rising through the low floor, or water that cannot drain away from the doorstep. Look at the base of the walls, the skirting and under the shoe cabinet: kabi (カビ, mould) starts there. The full subject is in our guide to damp and mould in a Japanese house.

The cold

Open the inner hall door in winter: in an uninsulated house the gap between genkan and living room is often 5 to 8 °C. The lower floor has no insulation, the door is aluminium, and the hall feeds cold air to the whole ground floor. Treat it with the rest of the envelope, as explained in insulating a Japanese house.

The viewing checklist

• Does the lower floor slope outwards, or does water sit against the sill?
• Is the kamachi level, or has the step dropped on one side?
• Does the door close without forcing? A stiff door suggests structural settlement.
• Is there a low ventilation grille, and is it blocked?
• How high is the step, measured with a tape, from tataki to floor?
• Is there any daylight, or do you need the light on at noon?

If you are buying remotely, these six points are exactly what to have filmed during a naiken, a remote property viewing, and they appear in our Japan property purchase checklist.

The front door: swing direction, fire rating and heat loss

A Japanese front door opens outwards. That is convention rather than law: an inward door would sweep the shoes lined up on the tataki, would need clearance the floor plan does not provide, and would let wind-driven typhoon rain inside. Many older houses use a hikido (引戸, sliding door) instead, which avoids all three problems and is coming back into fashion.

Fire zones: the constraint nobody anticipates

The kenchiku kijun-ho (kenchiku kijun-hō, Building Standards Act) defines boka chiiki (防火地域, fire prevention districts) and jun-boka chiiki (準防火地域, semi-fire prevention districts), which cover large parts of city centres and main road corridors. Inside them, openings exposed to fire spread must be certified fire-rated assemblies. In plain terms: replacing the front door of a townhouse is not a catalogue purchase, it needs an approved model, and certified solid timber doors are rare and expensive. Check the zoning before you budget. It appears in the municipal urban plan and in the juyo jiko setsumei, the mandatory disclosure statement.

In a condominium, the door is not yours

In a manshon, the entrance door is nearly always common property: you may repaint the inside face, not swap the unit. That is a structural difference from a detached house, in the same family as condominium fees in Japan.

The thermal bridge

Pre-2000 Japanese housing is dominated by single-glazed aluminium doors with no thermal break. Two answers exist: full removal, slower and dearer, or kaba koho (カバー工法, retrofit over the existing frame), which swaps the door in a day without touching the wall. The second slightly narrows the clear opening, by a few centimetres, which matters if you are aiming for wheelchair access.

What it costs to put a genkan right

These are the ranges observed on the Japanese renovation market, converted at the rate used when this article was written, 162 JPY per euro. They describe a detached-house genkan: a written quote is still essential, and regional gaps between a large city and a rural town are real.

Item	Range in yen	In euros	Note
Door replaced over the existing frame	¥300,000 to ¥600,000	1,850 to 3,700 €	One day on site, no masonry work
Door unit only, excluding fitting	¥150,000 to ¥350,000	930 to 2,160 €	Fitting: ¥50,000 to ¥100,000 (310 to 620 €)
Certified fire-rated model	Typically 20 to 40 % more	model dependent	Mandatory in fire districts, limited timber choice
Lower floor relaid (tile or polished concrete)	¥50,000 to ¥200,000	310 to 1,235 €	Depends on area and screed repair
Agarikamachi replaced, edge joists repaired	¥100,000 to ¥400,000	620 to 2,470 €	Depends on the joists underneath
Shoe cabinet or full-height storage	¥100,000 to ¥300,000	620 to 1,850 €	Bespoke joinery easily doubles this
Handrail, motion lighting, seat	¥30,000 to ¥120,000	185 to 740 €	The best comfort per yen in the whole room
Complete genkan renovation	¥500,000 to ¥1,500,000	3,090 to 9,260 €	Door, floor, step, storage, lighting

Measured against the price of a rural house these are modest sums: many properties in our catalogue sell for under $50,000 in Japan, so a fully rebuilt genkan is 6 to 19 % of the budget. The item fits naturally into the wider works plan described in our article on the cost of renovating a machiya or a kominka.

The step and ageing in place

The design guidance of the Kokudo kotsu-sho (Kokudo Kōtsū-shō, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism) for homes suited to older occupants targets near-flat door sills, in the order of 20 mm on the outside and 5 mm towards the lower floor, and an entrance step that can be crossed safely. Japanese accessible-renovation guides commonly use 18 cm as the ceiling in a house and 11 cm in an apartment. Three fixes exist when the rise is too high: add an intermediate shikidai, lay a platform step on the lower floor, or rebuild the kamachi lower. One caveat for non-resident owners: the home-modification grant under Japanese long-term care insurance (kaigo hoken, 介護保険, capped at ¥200,000 of works) is for a certified care-dependent occupant, not for a foreign landlord renovating before letting.

Worked example: the genkan of a 1979 akiya in Wakayama

Take a case typical of our catalogue: a 1979 house bought for ¥2,800,000 (17,280 €) in a coastal town of Wakayama, empty for four years, twelve minutes on foot from a station. Purchase costs in Japan stay under 6 % of the price, so under ¥168,000 (1,040 €) here. The genkan had 40 cm of blackened kamachi, a cracked lower floor and an original aluminium door that no longer closed properly.

Item	Amount	In euros
Door retrofitted over the existing frame	¥380,000	2,345 €
Lower floor relaid and tiled, slope corrected outwards	¥90,000	555 €
Agarikamachi replaced, two edge joists repaired	¥140,000	865 €
Preventive termite treatment around the lower floor	¥60,000	370 €
Ventilated shoe storage	¥120,000	740 €
Handrail and motion lighting	¥45,000	280 €
Total	¥835,000	5,155 €

That is 30 % of the purchase price, spent on the room a tenant, a traveller or a future buyer sees first. It is also what made the house lettable without touching the rest of the structure: the entrance, the bathroom and the roof are the three items that trigger a refusal to rent. To test a scenario on a real listing, our rental yield simulator works on the same basis, and properties in this bracket appear on our Wakayama prefecture property page.

Genkan and short-term rentals: the guest experience starts at the step

With a record 42.7 million visitors in 2025, short-term letting remains the main yield driver in Japan. The genkan is the one space every single guest crosses, suitcase in hand, often late at night and without speaking Japanese.

The signage duty you cannot skip

The jutaku shukuhaku jigyo-ho (jūtaku shukuhaku jigyō法, Private Lodging Business Act) requires the notified operator to display, somewhere visible to the public, an official-format sign identifying the notified dwelling and its manager. In practice it goes on the gate or on the genkan door, at around 1.2 m from the ground. Missing signage exposes the operator to an administrative fine of up to ¥300,000 (1,850 €). The full rules of the regime are in our article on the minpaku licence and the 180-night cap.

Four details that decide the review

• Two square metres of lower floor, minimum. Below that, two guests with suitcases cannot take their shoes off at the same time and the door hits the luggage.
• A bench or a shikidai. Taking off shoes standing up while holding a suitcase is the first failed moment of a stay, and one of the easiest bad reviews to avoid.
• Automatic lighting. Late arrivals are the norm, and a light switch nobody can find in the dark is a phone call at midnight.
• A discreet key box and a shoes-off pictogram. The habit is not obvious to Western guests, and one pair of outdoor shoes on tatami ruins the mat.

These details cost tens of thousands of yen and move the average rating, therefore the occupancy rate. The full cost stack is in our analysis of running an Airbnb in Japan, and properties suited to this use are gathered on our Japanese houses for short-term rental page.

Common mistakes and expert advice

Mistakes that cost money

• Removing the step to "gain space". The rise keeps water and dust off the raised floor and gives the room its logic. A badly designed flat genkan sends rainwater onto the timber floor at the first typhoon.
• Tiling the lower floor without redoing the slope. New tiles hide the problem for six months, then the water pools in the same place and attacks the brand-new kamachi.
• Ordering a door without checking the fire zoning. The uncertified model arrives, gets fitted, and is non-compliant: putting it right costs twice the price.
• Sealing an old doma airtight. A traditional earthen floor breathes; capping it with a waterproof screed pushes the moisture into the post feet.
• Forgetting who owns the door in a condominium. The entrance door is common property and the management association will refuse an individual swap.
• Renovating the genkan last. It is the site access route, so it is always finished last, but it must be budgeted first.

Expert advice

• Measure the step with a tape during the viewing and write it down: that single number decides between a ¥40,000 shikidai and a ¥300,000 rebuild.
• Ask the contractor to price the door and the lower floor separately: the two have different lead times and different urgency, and one can wait a season.
• On a machiya or a kominka, have the post feet inspected at the same time as the kamachi: they fail from the same cause.
• A north-east facing genkan still worries some Japanese buyers, who see it as the kimon (鬼門, an unlucky direction). It says nothing about build quality, but it narrows the local buyer pool at resale: negotiate it going in, accept it going out.
• Photograph the genkan clean and well lit for the rental listing: it is the first image a Japanese guest looks at.

Conclusion: three square metres that carry a lot

In two to five square metres, the genkan concentrates nearly everything that separates a sound Japanese house from an expensive one: ground contact, water, timber, the door and accessibility. Reading it properly during a viewing takes no expertise and no equipment, only knowing where to put your thumb and your tape measure.

The housing census run by the Somu-sho tokei-kyoku (Sōmushō統計局, Statistics Bureau) counts around nine million vacant homes in Japan: supply is abundant, so selection is the whole game. A healthy genkan is not a charm criterion, it is a maintenance signal for the entire house. Browse our akiya listings for sale in Japan with that grid in mind, and if you would rather have a professional look at the property for you, our buyer support service in Japan starts with a first written exchange, with no commitment.

The same close reading applies to the formal room next door: see our guide to the tokonoma, the display alcove of a Japanese house.

Frequently asked questions

What is a genkan in a Japanese house?

It is the entrance airlock, left at ground level, where you take off your shoes before stepping up onto the raised floor. It also works as a semi-public reception area for deliveries and short visits, and as storage for everything that comes from outside.

Do you really have to take your shoes off in the genkan?

Yes, without exception, including at a contractor's office or a real estate agency. The rule is practical as much as cultural: pale timber floors and tatami mats do not survive soles and grit. Shoes are then turned to face the door.

How high is the entrance step in a Japanese house?

Expect 15 to 25 cm in a post-war detached house, 5 to 15 cm in an apartment and up to 40 or 50 cm in an old kominka. Japanese accessible-renovation guidance aims for a maximum of 18 cm in a house and 11 cm in an apartment.

Why do Japanese front doors open outwards?

It is practical convention rather than a legal rule: an inward door would sweep the shoes left on the lower floor, would need clearance the plan does not have, and would let typhoon rain in. Many older homes use a sliding door instead.

How much does a genkan renovation cost in Japan?

A full rebuild covering the door, lower floor, step, storage and lighting usually runs ¥500,000 to ¥1,500,000, or 3,090 to 9,260 €. Replacing only the door, retrofitted over the existing frame, is around ¥300,000 to ¥600,000 (1,850 to 3,700 €).

Can I replace the front door of a Japanese house myself?

In a detached house yes, subject to zoning: inside a fire or semi-fire prevention district the door must be a certified fire-rated model, which sharply limits the choice, especially in timber. In a condominium the entrance door is common property and individual replacement is refused.

Is a north-east facing genkan a problem?

Technically no. Culturally, the north-east is the kimon, traditionally seen as an unlucky direction, and some Japanese buyers still avoid it. It does not affect build quality but it can shrink the local buyer pool when you come to resell.

Does a short-term rental need a bigger genkan?

Two square metres of lower floor is a comfortable minimum for two guests to remove their shoes with luggage. Also plan a seat, automatic lighting, and the official sign required by the Private Lodging Business Act, displayed where the public can see it.