How Hard Was Housework with Hardly Any Appliances? A Mother's Day of Chores in Tokyo, 1957 #58

About seventy years ago in Tokyo, what was housework like in a home with no washing machine and no fridge? We follow Yoshie, a thirty-two-year-old mother of two, through one day in June 1957: washing machines in twenty homes out of a hundred and fridges in just three; rentan coal briquettes full of holes that kept a fire alive all night; the automatic electric rice cooker a small-workshop family spent three years perfecting; the washboard, which only reached Japan in the Meiji era; wringer rollers that cracked buttons; the vacuum cleaner that was one of the first 'Three Sacred Treasures'; araihari kimono washing with three hundred bamboo shinshi sticks; the tofu seller's horn, borrowed from horse-drawn coaches; the danchi 'dining kitchen' that separated eating from sleeping; and the sewing machine, found in three times as many homes as the washing machine. Note: Yoshie, her family and the details of her day, conversations and meals are a reconstruction based on historical sources and research. Names, feelings and details of the day include creative interpretation. Key sources: Cabinet Office (Japan) Consumer Confidence Survey, diffusion rates of major durable goods (1957) / Japanese Wikipedia (三種の神器 (電化製品), 炊飯器, 洗濯機, 洗濯板, 練炭, 冷蔵箱, 蠅帳, 掃除機, 雑巾, 洗張, 伸子, 豆腐, ちゃぶ台, ダイニングキッチン, 日本住宅公団, 団地, ミシン, 専業主婦, もはや戦後ではない) 0:00 Opening 0:38 A Little House Among the Fields 2:03 The First Fire of the Morning 3:51 Scrub, Scrub on the Washboard 5:24 Shopping Every Day 6:20 Cleaning and Stretching a Kimono 7:52 A Horn at Sunset 8:52 The Dining Room Becomes a Bedroom 10:01 After Everyone Is Asleep 11:18 Wrapping Up #HowDidPeopleLiveBackThen #Tokyo #JapaneseHistory #Housework #1950s #History #Appliances