Kotatsu and mikan; the warmth of a family called “danran”

Mikan, the mandarin orange, is the most popular fruit in winter in Japan. It has good sweet and adequate flavor which doesn’t obscure the taste of any other foods. For example, if you eat a mikan and drink a cup of Japanese green tea alternately, both of them can be your favorite. In addition, its weak acidity doesn’t stimulate your tongue so that you can eat any number of mikan. Moreover, the mikan has a lot of nutrition to prevent colds. Furthermore, the skin of the mikan is so thin that people can peel off by hand, and the size of a section of a mikan is similar to a larger piece of chocolate, it is easy to eat it. To sum up, the mikan is the best fruit for spending a luxurious time in winter.

Kotatsu

Kotatsu is a facility for keeping warm in a room in winter. The kotatsu is composed of a four-foot table with a electric heat source, a wide warm blanket and a table-board. You can warm yourself sticking your legs into the kotatsu. You can do anything in the kotatsu, eating, watching TV, enjoying your hobby, reading, studying, napping or communicating with your family or friends.
For Japanese people the situation of their legs being warmer than their heads is very comfortable, like in an open air bath. Inevitably, family members in a house gather around their kotatsu naturally.
In the case of my house, I made our living and dining rooms with wooden flooring not tatami, so I set a dining table with four chairs and a sofa. In the beginning, we, parents and two daughters, had dinner at the table and watched TV on the sofa. One winter day My wife and I bought a kotatsu and set it in front of TV. Then the magnetism of our kotatsu drew my children from the table and the sofa. I grumbled to my wife about their behavior and chided my children to eat dinner at the table at least, but they paid no attention to my directions and didn’t leave our kotatsu. Secondly, my wife moved to our kotatsu, my dignity as a father was broken, yet I alone ate dinner at the table while fighting back tears inside. Finally, I had no choice but to move to our kotatsu to communicate with them. I couldn’t help but make it a priority to have “danran”, good our familiarity with some chatting. In retrospect, that might be the magic of the kotatsu.

Japanese people spend a long time under the kotatsu, so the Kotatsu matches the mikan. The kotatsu with the mikan heals people, then the kotatsu transforms us to become still like kittens. And we spend a good familiar time with our family.

The origin of the kotatsu

The origin of the kotatsu goes back to the Muromachi period in the 15th century. The warming facility in a big house at that time was “irori”. The irori was set into wooden floors in the middle of the living room. It was square and had a fire kiln. People boiled water and foods and grilled fish at the irori, in addition, they ate foods and communicated around the irori. And somebody set a wide blanket with a table on the irori with warmth, then the original kotatsu was generated, and the kotatsu has had a long history for 7 centuries.

By the way, I think the origin of the kotatsu stems from the origin of the irori. Far ancient Japanese people during BC lived in “tateana-siki-jukyo” like the picture above. They lived in the house surrounding the fire in the middle of the ground. The fire was always the center of the house and of the family.

Looking back at the kotatsu, Present-day Japanese people don’t think the kotatsu is the center of the house and the family. Nonetheless, the history of the kotatsu, which stems from the fire of the tateana-shiki-jukyo via the irori for more than 10 thousand years, is buried in the Japanese genes. Then Japanese people love the kotatsu, children are drawn towards the kotatsu even if their parents chide them not to stay for long period under their kotatsu.