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Every Japanese homecoming happens in the same square metre: the genkan, the sunken threshold where shoes come off and the day is left outside. You call tadaima — I'm home — and the house answers okaeri — welcome back. It is the smallest liturgy in the language, performed millions of times a night. This design is that square metre, painted in the matte mineral pigments of nihonga: the dark-stained step, the pale stone, deep shadow up the hallway, and three pairs of shoes — one of them a child's, left facing the wrong way, because children never turn their shoes to face the door and mothers never stop turning them back. For anyone who has lived in a Japanese home, and for anyone still homesick for a doorway where somebody answered.
$35.00