How did they do washing stuff in old Japan?
June 17, 2019 9:13 PM Subscribe
Clothes and food stuff, specifically.
Okay, so you're Joe Late-Nineteenth-Century-Japan, and you live in Japan. Two questions:
1) How do you do your clothes-washing?
2) How do you wash your bowls and cutlery and such?
Especially relevant to me is how Joe would do either of these if, rather than living in a bustling city center, he lived somewhere out of the way, hermitesque, possibly with no quick/easy access to... I don't know. A river or stream or something? Like, can you just dig a well wherever? That can't be right, right?
Sorry. And thanks.
Okay, so you're Joe Late-Nineteenth-Century-Japan, and you live in Japan. Two questions:
1) How do you do your clothes-washing?
2) How do you wash your bowls and cutlery and such?
Especially relevant to me is how Joe would do either of these if, rather than living in a bustling city center, he lived somewhere out of the way, hermitesque, possibly with no quick/easy access to... I don't know. A river or stream or something? Like, can you just dig a well wherever? That can't be right, right?
Sorry. And thanks.
You might like this excerpt from the BBC series "Wild Japan" where they talk about the Kabata system. As I understand it, the "Kabata" are like outhouse rooms where there is a free flowing supply of water from the river. People use this water to keep some foods cool - and they also use it for washing up water. The Kabata also contain giant carp who eat up the stuff left in the water - cleaning it in the process. The water is then directed via the rice paddies back to the lake - but which time it is super-clean.
This is a very old system - and I guess pretty niche - but an interesting example.
posted by rongorongo at 5:57 AM on June 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
This is a very old system - and I guess pretty niche - but an interesting example.
posted by rongorongo at 5:57 AM on June 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
Of the several books on this topic, I enjoyed Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan the most. It is well written, although it focuses on life 200 years ago, and has a lot about other techniques of traditional Japanese living besides laundry and food prep. Highly recommended.
posted by seasparrow at 6:32 AM on June 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by seasparrow at 6:32 AM on June 18, 2019 [5 favorites]
Best answer: I don't know. A river or stream or something?
If you're away from a city center, it's pretty much this. The story of Momotaro starts with an old woman going out to the river to do laundry and finding a giant peach. In the version of the story I'm familiar with, she soaked the clothes in the river, scrubbed them on rocks, and then laid them out to dry in the sun.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:00 AM on June 18, 2019
If you're away from a city center, it's pretty much this. The story of Momotaro starts with an old woman going out to the river to do laundry and finding a giant peach. In the version of the story I'm familiar with, she soaked the clothes in the river, scrubbed them on rocks, and then laid them out to dry in the sun.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:00 AM on June 18, 2019
Best answer: Wherever Joe lived he would have to have a source of water or he could not live there. Larger bodies of water were cleaner than smaller ones, so if the only water available was a small stream Joe would dig a well. He'd have to, or the water might dry up when he needed it, or get so low and stagnant that it was unusable.
Washing dishes and utensils is dependent on their materials. We tend to forget this because now pretty much everything we put on the table is designed to be thrown into a machine and sanitized. Unfinished wooden dishes and utensils were never soaked as this destroyed them. They were normally wiped down with either a damp rag or something that would scrape any particles off. They were also seldom oiled because if the oil went rancid you could taste it but you couldn't get it out again.
Metal on the other hand was often oiled to keep it, and oil was sometimes used to clean it where we would use water, because if it was necessary to clean a metal tool or utensil it could often have boiling water poured over it, or through it and that was enough to remove the dirty or rancid oil residue. Boiling water would be used with iron because it would heat the metal up and then when it was poured off quickly the hot metal would dry almost instantly without time to rust.
Un-glazed crockery was also seldom soaked as it would take up the water and anything in the water and this would discolour it or change the flavour. It was also not used with oil for the same reason. But many household kept treen (woodenware) and unglazed crockery that had spoiled somewhat for use as a back up container where there would not be a flavour transfer, for example, for putting whole onions in it.
Glazed crockery was submersible and as a result could be gotten much cleaner than the unglazed crockery or the wooden utensils. When a wooden utensil got too rough it could be sanded and when that was no longer practical it would go into the fire.
For many types of washing you did not need a lot of water, so fetching water to the house was practical, and this was sometimes the only chore that gave lower status women or girls an excuse to leave the house. If you did not have a well on the property or piped in water, you had to go to the well or the river to bring it back. Wells were ordinarily cleaner, as rivers and streams could be used for sewers. All it took was for one person to get rid of a putrid carcass and the half the village could get seriously sick.
Laundry was difficult to do at home, since it required a lot of water, so frequently the laundry would be taken to the source of water, rather than the water fetched to the home. In urban areas many homes often did not have space to dry laundry, so the laundry would be dried where it was washed. Drying was often done by laying the fabric out on a slanted board as that meant it would dry without wrinkles. Pictures of Japanese people doing laundry are more likely to show the laundry being hung from a pole to dry, than from a rope.
Do an image search on Wabi Sabi images or Japanese prints and you should see pictures of people doing laundry or bathing which will give you some ideas of what it would have looked like.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:58 AM on June 18, 2019 [12 favorites]
Washing dishes and utensils is dependent on their materials. We tend to forget this because now pretty much everything we put on the table is designed to be thrown into a machine and sanitized. Unfinished wooden dishes and utensils were never soaked as this destroyed them. They were normally wiped down with either a damp rag or something that would scrape any particles off. They were also seldom oiled because if the oil went rancid you could taste it but you couldn't get it out again.
Metal on the other hand was often oiled to keep it, and oil was sometimes used to clean it where we would use water, because if it was necessary to clean a metal tool or utensil it could often have boiling water poured over it, or through it and that was enough to remove the dirty or rancid oil residue. Boiling water would be used with iron because it would heat the metal up and then when it was poured off quickly the hot metal would dry almost instantly without time to rust.
Un-glazed crockery was also seldom soaked as it would take up the water and anything in the water and this would discolour it or change the flavour. It was also not used with oil for the same reason. But many household kept treen (woodenware) and unglazed crockery that had spoiled somewhat for use as a back up container where there would not be a flavour transfer, for example, for putting whole onions in it.
Glazed crockery was submersible and as a result could be gotten much cleaner than the unglazed crockery or the wooden utensils. When a wooden utensil got too rough it could be sanded and when that was no longer practical it would go into the fire.
For many types of washing you did not need a lot of water, so fetching water to the house was practical, and this was sometimes the only chore that gave lower status women or girls an excuse to leave the house. If you did not have a well on the property or piped in water, you had to go to the well or the river to bring it back. Wells were ordinarily cleaner, as rivers and streams could be used for sewers. All it took was for one person to get rid of a putrid carcass and the half the village could get seriously sick.
Laundry was difficult to do at home, since it required a lot of water, so frequently the laundry would be taken to the source of water, rather than the water fetched to the home. In urban areas many homes often did not have space to dry laundry, so the laundry would be dried where it was washed. Drying was often done by laying the fabric out on a slanted board as that meant it would dry without wrinkles. Pictures of Japanese people doing laundry are more likely to show the laundry being hung from a pole to dry, than from a rope.
Do an image search on Wabi Sabi images or Japanese prints and you should see pictures of people doing laundry or bathing which will give you some ideas of what it would have looked like.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:58 AM on June 18, 2019 [12 favorites]
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Expensive, silk kimonos would be unsewn and each (long, rectangular-ish) piece would be washed separately. Then the kimono would be sewn together again. The seams in a kimono are straight, so it wasn't as difficult as deconstructing a Victorian gown would have been.
posted by sukeban at 10:25 PM on June 17, 2019 [3 favorites]