Seiza

To sit seiza-style, one must first be kneeling on the floor, folding one's legs underneath one's thighs, while resting the buttocks on the heels.

Some martial arts, notably kendō, aikidō, and iaidō, may prescribe up to two fist widths of distance between the knees for men.

There are codified traditional methods of entering and exiting the sitting position depending on occasion and type of clothing worn.

The development, in the Muromachi period, of Japanese architecture in which the floors were completely covered with tatami (thick straw mats), combined with the strict formalities of the ruling warrior class for which this style of architecture was principally designed, heralded the adoption of the sitting posture known today as seiza as the respectful way to sit.

By the middle of the Edo period, it had become a convention for samurai to sit in this manner when meeting authority figures such as the Shogun as a symbol of obedience and loyalty.

Those unfamiliar with seiza will likely find that maintaining it for more than a minute or two tends to lead to paresthesia, whereby the compression of the nerves causes a loss of their blood flow, with the accompanying "pins and needles" feeling, followed by painful burning sensations, and then eventually complete numbness in the legs.

They are folding stools, small enough to be carried in a handbag, which are placed between the feet and on which one rests the buttocks when sitting seiza-style.

A law that came into effect in April 2020 recognizes seiza for extended periods of time as a morally unacceptable form of punishment according to Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Seiza is also the traditional way of sitting while doing other arts such as shodō (calligraphy) and ikebana (flower arranging), though with the increasing use of western-style furniture it is not always necessary nowadays.

Many theatres for traditional performing arts such as kabuki and sumo still have audience seating sections where the spectators sit in seiza style.

In some schools of iaido, practitioners stand up to draw the sword and cut after momentarily assuming kiza, so as not to sprain the instep jumping up directly from seiza.