kotatsu

Updated: May 16, 2025

Another important warming utensil was the kotatsu, a latticed wooden frame enclosing a brazier and covered by a quilt. Lanterns were also employed. They consisted of a candle fixed in a skeleton frame on which an envelope of thin paper was stretched. Their introduction was quickly followed by that of a kind of match which took the form of a thin piece of wood tipped with sulphur.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era