Spring in a Snowy Country

第3話 The Wind, the Light and......

Anyway, I'm more interested in life before what should be called the kotatsu era than the kotatsu itself. In particular, it is worth considering the process of civilization that made this eccentric and leisurely method of retaining heat to its present perfected form.

eccentric......（形）奇妙な、奇抜な

leisurely......（形）のんびりした

retain......（動）保っている

I think the most primitive and mesmerizing power of fire was flame and light. Even when there is nothing to do, children try to burn things and play with them to appreciate the splendor of the flowers that suddenly bloom. It was even given approval that it was necessary to burn together bean casings and Japanese andromedas that bounced and crackled to chase away the dark anxiety. And yet now we had to make a clean break with all these old-fashioned pleasures in order to taste the gentle and elegant sentiments of the kotatsu.

primitive......（形）原始の

mesmerizing......（形）魅了させる

flame......（名）炎

splendor......（名）壮観さ、豪華さ

approval......（名）認可

casing......（名）莢

Japanese andromeda......（名）アシビ

bounce......（動）跳ねる

crackle......（動）パチパチ音を立てる

anxiety......（名）不安、懸念

sentiment......（名）情趣

In a world where people built houses and hung blinds long after they began to live in them, not necessarily in the olden days when they hid in the depths of cave holes, but in a world where they made the windows as high and small as possible and closed the doors and blocked up the walls in order to sum up and fear and defend against everything that came from outside, whether it was raining or wind, the fire in the hearth was really the only light in the house.

block up......塞ぐ

sum up......総括する

As the old waka poem says, "Moonlight can leak but rain can't," there was no previous way to distinguish only the light of the shining blue sky and let it into the interior [of the house].

leak......（動）漏れる

That it has come to the point where every room is as bright as it is today, and we no longer need the flame and light of the fire in the hearth to seek fire and light, is more appropriately attributed to the power of paper, the merit of shoji, rather than to the wisdom and wit of mere human beings, specifically.

appropriately......（副）適切に

attribute......（動）起因する

merit......（名）功績

wisdom......（名）知恵

Later, paper was gradually replaced by glass, and finally evolved into daytime electric lights, allowing people to move in the depths of any basement, which may not necessarily be a good thing. But the fact that we have given up the light of the fire that we had been using for at least a few decades, and that we are now free to control at will what we once worshipped, believed in and feared as Kojin-sama*, is, in short, all the new work of the kotatsu era and the acquisition of confident courage, and the kotatsu was, in that sense, one of the triumphal gateways of our national civilization.

replace......（動）取って代わる

at will......自由自在に

worship......（動）崇拝する

acquisition......（名）獲得

confident ......（形）自信に満ちた

triumphal......（形）勝利の

*Kojin-sama: The God of the Hearth.