On a crisp winter¡¯s day, Toshiyuki Namigai, who runs a tatami business in Tokyo, spreads out sheets of woven materials of varying thickness as he speaks with a regular customer ¡ª Anton Wormann, a Swedish entrepreneur who revives old, abandoned properties in Japan.

¡°The thicker the mats are, the more beautiful,¡± Namigai said, the samples in front of him showcasing a variety of densities and colors.

Sadly for Namigai, business has shrunk over the years. In his neighborhood in the capital¡¯s Sangenjaya district, the number of stores has decreased from 100 to 20 in the space of some 30 years. Nationwide, 26.9 million tatami mats were produced in 1996, but the figure plunged to 1.4 million in 2024, according to the farm ministry.

Now Namigai is finding a new market for the traditional Japanese flooring materials ¡ª a growing number of foreign clients, like Wormann, at home and abroad who appreciate tatami and want to see its craftsmanship preserved.

A stone¡¯s throw away from Namigai Tatami is one of Wormann¡¯s renovated properties, currently rented out to travelers. The near-century-old two-story home uses tatami as flooring upstairs, with timber floors and a Western-style open-plan kitchen downstairs.

¡°Traditional Japan is always going to be very fascinating to me, and that¡¯s why I like these older houses,¡± Wormann said. ¡°The way it smells, it feels ... it ages really nicely too. Since the beginning, we¡¯ve always built (properties) with tatami mats.¡±

But when Wormann removed tatami from three of the five rooms as part of his renovations, his Japanese and foreign friends had completely opposite responses.

¡°For my Japanese friends, that¡¯s two tatami rooms too many, but for my foreign friends, it¡¯s like, ¡®Why did you remove three tatami rooms?¡¯¡± he said bemused.

With tatami gaining popularity overseas, an increasing number of foreign buyers want to create their own Japanese living spaces abroad, appreciative of Japanese aesthetics.

Arno Suzuki, a professor of architectural design at Kyoto Tachibana University who has studied the use of tatami in Spain, Italy and France, described interest from Europeans in sleeping in a traditional Japanese style, on tatami and futon ¡ª sometimes as a health consideration for those with back pain.

Japanese aesthetics and minimal living have also grown in popularity as apartments in Europe have decreased in size.

This demographic, said Suzuki, is increasingly interested in quality, natural tatami ¡ª which is becoming more scarce amid a rise of synthetic tatami, viewed as easier to clean and more durable, and tatami made in China.

Made of tightly woven igusa grass, tatami mats were once ubiquitous in Japanese homes, used in basically all dry rooms and living spaces. But the Westernization of homes in Japan...