Showa, Men Had It Tough Too 8: The House I Was Born and Raised In (2)

This is the story of Tsugio (my father), who was born in a farming village in Kagoshima in the early Showa era and lived out his 82-year life there as a farmer. I will continue directly from the previous section ① regarding the house where he was born and raised.

It was quite a long time before a Goemon-style bathtub was placed in the corner of the kitchen to serve as a bathroom; around the time Tsugio was born, it is likely they were still "borrowing baths" from the neighbors. After all, in an era without running water or gas, drawing water from a well and "setting up" (heating) a bath was quite a labor, and it also required a large amount of firewood.

In the first place, not every house had a bath like they do today, and the daily life of commoners at the time, including those in urban areas, was to make do with a sponge bath. Even for farmers, firewood could only be used after they had cut down trees themselves, chopped or sawed them into appropriate sizes, and let them dry. Firewood that required such toil was prioritized first for cooking.

To the right of the entrance, after stepping into the dirt floor area, was a wooden sliding door that led to the barn. The barn had a large sliding door facing the garden so that it could be entered directly from the outside. The interior was about 15 tatami mats in size, and one could use a ladder to climb up to a mezzanine, what we would call a loft today.

The barn was called an "unmaya" (stable), and they actually kept a cow there. This was a place to store and keep farm tools like hoes and harvested crops, and it was also a place to do simple work on rainy days. In the mezzanine, where moisture could be avoided, they stored straw and light farm tools.

Because there were many gaps in the entrance and walls of the "unmaya," small animals could come and go freely. Seeds for grains and vegetables to be planted the following year were put in well-ventilated bags and hung from the pillars of the barn or from ropes dangling from the beams, which was also to keep them from being eaten by rats. Large snakes would sometimes live in the straw stored in the mezzanine, so Kichitaro and the others were cautious when taking out the straw.

The toilet, or rather the privy, was an "outdoor toilet" located outside the barn. To relieve oneself, one had to pass through the barn and go outside, meaning that in terms of location, the privy was situated at the very back of the property after entering from the "kadoguchi" (main gate). Incidentally, the privies of farmers at the time were almost all outside. This was also because night soil (human waste) was used as fertilizer.

Looking at a house with this layout from the "kadoguchi" side, a long garden stretched out in front, with a field on the right, and the house beyond a small thicket on the left. As you proceeded through the garden, the order was the veranda of the main house, the entrance, the barn, and then the privy beyond that.

Further beyond that was an entrance corresponding to a back gate called the "kidoguchi." This also led to a different slope, but it was a slope with the feel of a narrow mountain path that only one person could pass through at a time. A spring flowed right alongside it, and it was a dim, damp slope even during the day. I do not know why Kichitaro preferred to use this slope when he didn't have much luggage.

By the way, for a long time after Tsugio was born, tatami mats were not laid in each room of the main house; there were only straw mats woven from rice straw laid over the floorboards. The time when they "put in tatami," which my daughter Fumi (me) was told about later, was, I think, either during Tsugio's "gozemuke" (welcoming the bride), or at some other auspicious time.

Furthermore, the roof was re-thatched from straw to roof tiles much later, in the year I, Fumi, was born. Even then, they only re-thatched the main house first, so I vaguely remember that the roof of the "unmaya" was still thatched with straw.