What has dramatically changed in Japanese households is the role of "fires." It is shown in the way we count houses. In Japan, we count them like 1 (ichi)-ken or ikken, 2 (ni)-ken, in which the suffix -ken means "eave." However, in the old days, we counted them as 1 (hito)-he, 2 (futa)-he with the suffix -he, which comes from an ancient word hettsui, another name of kamado. It is an old-style cooking stove where people cooked meals in a cooking pot called a kama with burning fires.

When we count the houses based on the number of cooking stoves, we could be confused if there are more than one stove in a house. In old days, each house only had one kamado so that we could get an accurate count. Why? In those days, a Japanese house was built by first putting in a fireplace at its center, then building the walls around it. If you have seen a pit dwelling, you can easily picture what the home was like.

Later, the fireplace was replaced by an irori, an open hearth. While the homes had another main room with a tokonoma, a decorative room used to welcome guests or to celebrate special events, families sat around the irori and had happy times together in everyday life. The head of the family and his wife were supposed to keep the same seats around the irori.

In spacious farmers' houses, the irori had been the center of the house for quite a long time. However, irori had to be eliminated in merchants' because they had different lifestyles and housing. Even if there were no irori in a house, the head of the family always sat just behind a nagahibachi, an oblong brazier. The place just behind the fire was reserved for the master of the family. Fires had long been at the center of people's lives, wherever they lived. The Japanese saying, "Don't put out fires of tradition," which is similar to an English expression, "Pass the torch," comes from living with traditions like this. The fire-centered lifestyle can also be seen in Europe where an old house has a living room with a fireplace at its center.

Nowadays, Japanese houses do not have an irori, or nagahibachi, not to mention a fireplace. A place for burning fires has been shoved in the kitchen corner. Fire has lost its honor to be the center of people's lives, now only used as a tool for cooking. Today, most people may have a hard time understanding the meaning of "Fires are sacred." In Japanese, Olympic torch means seika (sacred fires). However, not many people can remember the origin of the word.

Fire has been regarded as sacred not only because it can be frightening, but also because it sheds light to the darkness. When I was a college student, two friends and I traveled around the Izu Peninsula with no money. One night we were invited to stay overnight with some farm workers. Wasabi, Japanese horseradish, was cultivated in the mountain area in Amagi. Many people working in the area spent nights in huts near the crops. They talked and talked while burning wood in the irori. The fires lit their faces brightly. When the wood fires burned out, the world turned into the utter darkness. People fell asleep on the floor of the hut.

At no other time in my life had I realized that a fire is light more than that night. The introduction of the electric light bulb changed the role of fire as light. Today it is totally taken over by electricity. Fire is now seen as a fuel, only existing in gas stoves.

This means that each house does not necessarily have a place for a fire. I was filled with deep emotion when I read an advertisement for ready-built housing, featuring "separate kitchens for a two-family home." This home would be for elderly parents and their grown children's family, who used to live together and use one kitchen as one household. It was the end of the thousand-year history of the lifestyle that put fires at the center of the home.

A fire today no longer sheds light in the dark night or symbolizes the center of people's lives.

Our lives, perhaps, have become too convenient.
Although our homes have become more functional, the loss of fires in the home means Japanese people have lost another sacred space.

An excerpt from Nihonjin no wasuremono, (English translation: Things
left behind among Japanese people), written by Susumu Nakanishi, published by Wedge Corp., Japan.

Translation: Candle Night Committee