A small, round shoji window in the tokonoma shed a mysterious glow on its hanging scroll, the painting an ink sketch of a Zen monk fording a shallow stream.
Directly behind it, on the left, was a tokonoma art alcove, built next to a set of sliding doors.
Twice after this, coats hung on a peg near the tokonoma were found almost immediately lying on the floor at some distance, one having been pulled from its peg with such force as partly to tear it.
Whether he also thought that the spirits were as happy holding their ghost-parties round the tokonoma as they would be if they were at rest, he did not say, as such thoughts would be contrary to all Japanese ideas on the subject.
It had hung there at the tokonoma since he could remember.
The mood in this room was all Zen, from the calligraphic scroll hanging in the tokonoma art alcove to the ceremonial flower arrangements and the single cup shared in a sober ritual.
The tokonoma and chigai-dana are separated by a thin dividing wall whose outer edge is fronted by a single polished post, the toko- bashira, a natural tree trunk stripped of its bark to reveal its gnarled surface texture.
The tokonoma has a small shoji- covered window at one side which illuminates a hanging scroll, and there is usually an incense burner (in recognition of its original monastic function) or a simple flower arrangement on its floor.
In Chinese Ch'an monasteries the tokonoma was a special shrine before which monks burned incense, drank ceremonial tea, and contemplated religious artwork.
The wide room was unchanged but for an unusually elaborate flower-composition in the tokonoma (recess).
The tokonoma is a very quaint feature of a Japanese house.
The Emperor, of course, never comes, and so the tokonoma is no more than a name.
In the tokonoma hangs a kakemon,--a wonderful writing by an ancient monk dealing with the evanescence of all earthly things.
The pillar of the tokonoma should be of a different kind of wood from the other pillars, in order to break any suggestion of monotony in the room.
Again, if you go into a noon-tea on some irritatingly hot summer day, you may discover in the darkened coolness of the tokonoma a single lily in a hanging vase; dripping with dew, it seems to smile at the foolishness of life.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "tokonoma" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
