Japanese Kitchen - Shoinzukuri and The Kitchen

Shoinzukuri and The Kitchen

Shoinzukuri became the standard style of building a house beginning in 13th century and it was revolutionary for combining fire (stove) and water (well and drain) 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 (母屋) or the main building, it was connected by a corridor and existed inside one of many sub-buildings. However, it did have a kamado, a irori, a well, and a sunokoyuka in the same room.

In the Edo period (1603 to 1868), daidokoro came to mean "kitchen" and became an integrated part of the house. It was, however, more common to call it katte (勝手) which is used to mean the "back door." The pantry room was called ozenntate (御膳立). 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.