Japanese kitchen

The Japanese kitchen is the place where food is prepared in a Japanese house. Until the Meiji era, a kitchen was also called kamado and there are a number of sayings in the Japanese language that involve kamado as it was considered the symbol of a house. The term could even be used to mean "family" or "household". Separating a family was called kamado wo wakeru, or "divide the stove". Kamado wo yaburu means that the family was broken.

Early history

In the Jōmon period, from the 10,000 BC to 300 BC, people gathered into villages, where they lived in shallow pit-houses. These simple huts were between 10 and 30 square meters and had a hearth in the center. Early stoves were nothing more than a shallow pit, but they were soon surrounded by stones to catch the fire sparks. A bottomless clay vase soon replaced the stones as these became hot quickly and occupants had to be careful around a stove. This type of stove is called maiyōro. As the stove became safer, it was moved from the center of house to the side and, by the late Kofun period, almost all houses had a stove at one end of the house. Some rich families in the Kofun period built a separate house where cooking was done. In these houses, food was stored in sacks and pots in a hole dug on the floor. Houses were constructed near a river or a spring for easy access to water.
In the Yayoi period the cultivation of rice became widespread, and villages would be constructed near a marsh and a lowland. The water was muddy and asaido, which means a shallow well, were constructed. An asaido was filled with sand and pebbles through which the water flowed to filter out mud and larger organisms. Some villages stored food outside a house in a large storehouse.
The kitchen remained unchanged for over 500 years, between the Nara period in the 8th century until the Muromachi period. Kitchens were furnished with the following items:

Ashikanae or Ashimarokanae - A nine- or ten-legged iron pot.
Kakekanae or Kakemarokanae - An iron pot that was fitted over a stove. It had a "fringe" that let it hang on the stove and was used to boil cook rice into kayu.
Yukikamado - A pot, with a stove attached, that could be carried around
Koshiki - A wooden basket placed on top of a pot to steam cook rice.
Nabe - made of clay or of metal. Primarily used to make stews and a side dish as well as to boil water.
Sashinabe or Sasunabe - A small pot with a long handle used to warm sake in a bottle.
Hiraka or Hotogi - A large clay pot, larger than a nabe, used to boil water.
Kamado - Also called Mushikamado: the stove itself, constructed with stones, tiles, and clay.
Karakamado - A set of koshiki, kanahe, and kamado that can be carried around.
Takigi - In the Nara period, "薪" was read as "takigi" not "maki". Dried wood was used as fuel.
Oke - A tub or a pail in three sizes: large, medium, and small. A flat bottomed and shallow tub was also used.
Shaku - Also read as Hisago. A wooden ladle used to scoop cold and hot water from an oke.
Katana - A cooking knife and not a katana.
Kiritsukue or Sekki - A Manaita or a cutting board.
Fune - A large wooden tub used for washing.
Shitami - A coarse hemp cloth used to squeeze water out or to dry foods by spreading over it.
Kame - A large vase where foods were stored.

In the Heian period, the first usage of the precursor to "daidokoro", or pantry, was recorded. The imperial palace of Heian had four rooms dedicated to preparing foods, oni no ma, daibandokoro, asagarei no ma, and Ōidono. "Oni no ma" was the room used for checking for poison and tasting before serving. "Asagarei no ma" was the room for eating breakfast. "Ōidono" was the room to cook foods and was placed to the north and as far away as possible from living quarters. "Daibandokoro" was the room used to serve foods onto a daiban, a lacquered wooden table. Maid servants also ate and waited to serve meals in the daibandokoro.
In the Kamakura period, as the Shoinzukuri style of housing became common, the kitchen was gradually absorbed into the house. Until then, a kitchen was built as a separate house whenever possible to avoid smells and smoke, and to prevent possible kitchen fires from spreading to the primary residence. Kamakura era kitchens did not include essential kitchen furnishings, such as a sink or a well.

Fire and water

Stoves

The earliest dwellings in Japan used an open fire hearth for cooking. The first stove was recorded in the Kofun period, between the 3rd to 6th century. These stoves, called kamado, were typically made of clay and sand; they were fired through a hole in the front and had a hole in the top, into which a pot could be suspended from its rim. This type of stove remained in use for centuries to come, with only minor modifications. In the 14th century, in the Muromachi period, stoves with two holes were recorded in drawings. By the early 17th century, the beginning of the Edo period, large stoves with several cooking holes were common in the kitchens of the upper-class house as well as in large restaurants. It is believed these multiple hole types appeared earlier than recorded but were omitted from drawings of the time because inclusion of a single hole stove was sufficient to indicate a kitchen. The stove was low, meaning cooks had to squat to cook. In the larger kitchens, especially those of palaces and temples, raised kamado that could be operated while standing up were developed in the Edo period.
Irori appeared in the Kofun period and served as a secondary stove. A section of wooden panels were removed from the floor and a lacquered square wooden frame was fitted in the place. The frame was filled with sand and an iron hook was lowered from the ceiling. Foods were reheated or cooked over in an iron pot hung from a hook and the fire served as a heat source. This type of stove became common in multiple homes by the early Nara period and a smaller irori is the center piece of a tea house.
A third type of stove, a hibachi lit. "fire pot", appeared as late as the early Heian period but is likely to have been used earlier. A hibachi is a deep small pot half filled with sand and ash and a small fire was started in the pot. It was used as a safer form of heating equipment than was available previously and could be used to cook small morsels of food.

Water

Fire was a part of a kitchen from the start, but water was late in becoming a part.
In the Yayoi period, the cultivation of rice became widespread, and villages would be constructed near a marsh and a lowland. The water was muddy and asaido shallow wells, were constructed. An asaido was filled with sand and pebbles through which the water flowed to filter out mud and larger organisms. A deeper well was also dug and sometimes a hollowed log was inserted into the well to prevent the walls' collapse. A pot was used to scoop water.
It was not long before people started improving on these primitive wells. The area around a well was tiled with stones, then fune was invented. Wooden or bamboo shafts were used to carry water from nearby wells and springs to a fune, or it was manually filled by women. Water was carried from these fune to a water vase whence it was used. Sometimes a fune was made inside a house, but it did not have the function of a sink. It was used to collect and store water and nothing more. Fune later became a part of a Japanese garden.
The first time that a sink appeared in a drawing was in the Bokie written in the early Muromachi period. The kitchen of the Nanrou temple had a large sunokoyuka lit. drainboard floor, next to a stove with a water filled oke and hisyaku for washing. This sunokoyuka was made with split bamboo and water would drain through gaps between the canes. Even though in a number of places a sunokoyuka was made over a river and washing was done, to make a part of the kitchen floor into sunokoyuka to use as a drain was an innovation. This did not pose a health problem as kitchen scraps were meticulously collected and used to make a compost. Few Japanese ate meat due to the Emperor's decree in the 8th century and animals and birds were slaughtered away from a house. Until late Edo period, this type of kitchen was widely used.

Shoin-zukuri and the kitchen

became the standard style of building a house beginning in the 13th century and it was revolutionary for combining fire and water into a single place. It was still few steps short of a kitchen. In the early stage of Shoinzukuri style, instead of the kitchen being a room inside the omoya or the main building, it was connected by a corridor and existed inside one of multiple sub-buildings. However, it did have a kamado, a irori, a well, and a sunokoyuka in the same room.
In the Edo period, daidokoro came to mean "kitchen" and became an integrated part of the house. It was, however, more common to call it katte which is used to mean the "back door." The pantry room was called ozentate. Upper-class houses were well stocked and extremely large by today's standard. The country house of Tokugawa Mitsukuni, known as a gourmet of Edo period, had kitchen spaces at least 34 jyou or about 53 square metres. This is more than one-third of the entire house and does not include the sake storage room or the pantry. Some kitchens had running water by having bamboo shafts connected to the water source extend into the kitchen; users of less well equipped kitchens fetched water from a common well. A separate kitchen within the house had become customary and all but the smallest single-room houses had one.
Storage in kitchens was provided by mizuya tansu. These are Japanese style chests, often with a mix of compartments behind sliding doors and drawers of varying sizes. These are still available today as antiques, or altered reproductions tailored to a more modern/western style of kitchen.