It was the year 1612 and Japanese Emperor Makaturaki, known as Empy M for short, kept insisting that he was hearing strange noises in his room at night. He was convinced that they were coming from underneath the bed, though numerous inspections proved without a doubt that there was nothing there. He was tired and irritable as these noises, coupled with his intense suspicions of the underside of his handsome king size bed had kept him anxiously awake for nearly a week. He demanded that one of his many servants devise a solution for him, and quickly. Empy M didn’t like to threaten death but he would if it came down to it.
Luckily, one of his men was in the process of developing a space saving mattress that could simply roll out onto a tatami mat and roll back up in the morning. It was made from thick, comfortable cotton batting and, in those days, left absolutely no space between the floor and the bed. It was a dream come true for Empy M. Pleased as punch, he had his sleeping quarters prepared with this newly invented futon and readied himself for his first deep sleep in a week.
Unfortunately, Empy M didn’t last the night. Incidentally something really was in his room; however he was hiding in the closet, not under the bed. He was an assassin and had been attempting to poison Emperor Makaturaki for the past week, but developed an incessant case of hick-ups. These hick-ups are what caused Empy M’s debilitating paranoia and his inability to sleep prevented the assassin from quietly poisoning his victim and making a clean escape.
However, as soon as Empy M nestled into his new futon, his fiery anxieties were cooled, and he zonked out like a drunk baby as soon as his head touched the pillow. A whole week of restless sleep can really do a number on a guy, especially a busy emperor. The assassin took this rare, slumberous opportunity to deliver his lethal poison; just a drop in Empy M’s wide mouth, down his open snoring throat and that was that. Empy M was no longer.
The tale itself is certainly not one to be boastful of. If I were a futon mattress, I would be somewhat ashamed of my treacherous roots. But I am not a futon mattress and if I was I would be an inanimate object…so…there you go.
Most people find themselves a little wary of the futon mattress despite the fact that they are unaware of its scandalous beginnings. They have recollections of staying overnight at friends’ house or spending the weekend at hip Uncle Bernie’s and waking up with an aching spine and riddled with knots the size of cantaloupes. Fortunately those days are over. Today’s futon mattress is much different from how they were made in the 70s, the 80s, and even the 90s. And there are a multitude of options too; not just a fat slab of padding like they once were. Today you can get mattresses filled with memory foam, or mattresses reinforced with a cotton crown.
Futons are no longer something to dread, which is nice considering trips to hip Uncle Bernie’s have revealed themselves to be trips to my creepy, trying-too-hard Uncle Bernie’s and sleep is my only real escape from his never-ending acoustic renditions of Berlin’s 1987 mega hit, Take My Breath Away.
So there you have it. The very brief and very untrue history of futons.
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