Having owned a few chair beds in my time, I had never bothered to think about them beyond the fact that you can sit on one, or you can sleep on it. That was all there was to it, or so I thought. There is actually a bit of history behind this style of furniture. When I was a kid we didn't have futons. We had sleeper sofas, but that was about it. After thinking about it for a while I became curious about this newly introduced style of furniture. It didn't come out of nowhere. It came from the Far East!
The word Futon is an actual Japanese word. It doesn't refer to chair beds in general. It actually refers to any bedding that can be folded. This can be fold-able mattresses but can also refer to a stack of quilts or some other material which serves the same purpose as a mattress (and can be folded). The concept behind the word also involves the room itself, and it's ability to be used as a bedroom at night and for another purpose during the day. This evolved in part due to the crowded nature of the island nation, which has a number of cultural practices that are very savvy regarding the use of space.
In Japan, these folding beds are so popular and integrated into the culture that they are often sold in stores called Futonya. These stores carry futons exclusively, and often have an enormous selection. Futons sold there are even usually sold as a package deal with two blankets and a plastic bead (or sometimes bean) filled pillow. They are designed and intended for use on floors called "Tatami", which is a specific type of flooring used only in Japan. It is not flooring in a western sense, but rather a specifically sized board (which varies depending on the part of the country you re in) traditionally made with a core of rice straw (or some more modern filler materials these days) which is placed on the unfinished (or even sometimes dirt) floor of a home.
In the west we have made the futon our own by adding in a fold-able bed frame. We don't tend to use them as primary bedding (well, maybe if you're in college) though, which is a big cultural difference from the original. We've found our own uses for it though, and futons will meet the future as our new chair beds that we've come to love.
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