Spring in a Snowy Country

第2話 The Kotatsu Era

There is always a boy and a girl in so-called yofuku（Western-style clothes） sitting under the kotatsu at my house in Tokyo. They sit there, not because it's very cold and unbearable, but because there's no other place to throw your feet up and loll around in the winter. This is why the inside of the kotatsu is usually ridiculously lukewarm. Whenever I get a little closer to there, I always remember something to do and leave. So I don't actually have a special need for it.

unbearable......（形）耐えられない、我慢できない

ridiculously......（副）馬鹿馬鹿しいほどに

lukewarm......（形）生ぬるい

Every time I see a kotatsu like this one, I feel like I'm looking at an era. Despite the fact that temperature is the primary requirement for a kotatsu, there was once a time when this preference was prevalent across most of the country, even though it has changed so much. Yet today it has become something of no consequence, and there are such widespread provinces where it remains only slightly due to the fact that strong opposition to it simply does not occur. At the same time, in about half of old Japan, the fire of the kotatsu are still strong and the need for it has not diminished one iota, but the kotatsu is certainly a product of its time, as a few minutes of reflection will show, and the snow countries in the Tohoku region have not had them since the so-called 807, when Sakanoue Tamuramaro conquered Akuro-oh.

requirement......（名）必要条件

preference......（名）好み

prevalent......（形）広まっている、広く行き渡っている

of no consequence......全く重大ではない

widespread......（形）広まった

province......（名）州、地方

slightly......（副）わずかに

conquer......（動）征服する

There is a theory that the two difficult kanji characters, kotatsu（炬燵）, were apparently invented by one of the Zen monks in Five Mountain System*. That may be correct, but the meaning of the word, more than the letters, is even more puzzling than the purpose of the kotatsu, and perhaps its history is difficult to reveal prior to the system's demise. But things like the name don't matter. More importantly, why was such a strange thing created, and when and by whom, but judging from mere common sense, it is clear that it could not have existed earlier than a futon cover.

puzzling......（形）不可解な

It was not until the Middle Ages that the futon became a type of bedding for the Japanese. As proof, this word also has a pronunciation around the Song dynasty of China, and there was no other unique Japanese language for it.

pronunciation......（名）発音

Song......（名）宋

The fusuma originally meant a large piece of clothing. A yobusuma is a wisteria-cloth bedding so large that it covers the whole body, which is thought to be the origin of the Yobusuma** of the youkai. All the ones used in the mountain village until recently had sleeves and collars. In a world with this form of fusuma, the kotatsu would never have developed. In other words, the kotatsu era was a new culture that was not written about in history textbooks, but it was not that old.

*Five Mountain System: A network of state-sponsored Chan (Zen) Buddhist temples created in China during the Southern Song. In Japan, "Five Mountain" temples were protected and controlled by the shogunate. In time, they became a sort of governmental bureaucracy that helped the Ashikaga shogunate stabilize the country during the Nanboku-chō period.

**Yobusuma: A type of yokai that looks like a flying squirrel.