Kotatsu, heatable table

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Kotatsu, a warm table (Japan) コタツ　炬燵　おこった

***** Location: Japan
***** Season: Winter
***** Category: Humanity

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Explanation

You can not live in Japan without a kotatsu in winter. It is called "O-Kotta" and the best friend of all family members. You sit aound this table, munching mandarins and drinking tea for hours.

It is a table with low legs, standing on the tatami floor, with a warm quilt under it and a huge quilt and blanket over it. Inside is a heater, nowadays an electric infrared one, in olden times it was charcoal burning. You strech the legs inside to keep them warm and toasty, and the CATS just love it.
This year we opened the Kotatsu-Season in October and it well be so until May next year.




Here is my cat Haiku kun sleeping happily with warm feet:
And slowly edgeing his way out to keep the nose cool.


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HAIKU

rainy morning -
the cats deep
in the kotatsu

........................... Regenmorgen -
........................... die Katzen tief
........................... im Kotatsu

..... Gabi Greve, 2004

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思う人のそばへわりこむ炬燵かな
Omou hito no soba e warikomu kotatsu kana

Trying to sit
right next to the person you love,
at the warm fireplace.

Issa

Comment by Gabi:
To sit near a person you love in a kotatsu is quite a different thing than sitting beside a fireplace. Nobody can see what you do with your legs in the dark under the blankets and we often call it "to play footsies".
But I agree, it is difficult to translate this word without giving a long explanation or show a picture, to explain what a kotatsu is.

Issa has now the following translation by David Lanoue, the Issa expert:

squeezing in next
to my lover...
quilt-covered brazier


Art and calligraphy from Sankanjin, a haiku book of 1814 that includes some of Issa's work.
Issa and two comrades warm their feet with a brazier.


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mamori-iru kotatsu o io no honzon kana

The 'kotatsu'
That guards my hermitage,
Is my principal image.

Joso, trans. Blyth

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kirigirisu wasurene ni naku kotatsu kana

The cricket chirps
In a forgetful way;
This 'kotatsu!'

Basho, trans. Blyth

And Barnhill's translation:

a cricket
crying forgetfullly:
the brazier


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Related Words

kotatsu fusagu 炬燵塞ぐ　to pack away the kotatsu
kigo for spring
Usually, you wash the quilts and blankets and put them back in the coupboard until the next season.
The table, whose top can be lifted, can then be used as a normal table on the tatami mats.

haru-gotatsu 春炬燵　　　Spring-kotatsu
kigo for spring
A wellcome item on cool spring days. In mountain areas such as mine, people keep the kotatsu until after the rainy season. Since most farmhouses are difficult to heat, this in the best way to keep body and soul warm.

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yutanpo 湯たんぽ　hot-water bottle
kigo for winter


All I ask of the world,
a hot water bottle -
I'm cold!

MEISETSU (1847-1926)
http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/stryk.html



I miss my duvet
The hot water bottle blues
Get me (eider)down.
http://orbyn.com/misc/haiku/kev.php

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denki moofu 電気毛布 electric blanket
kigo for winter
One of these itmes you need in an unheated Japanese home.


Electric blanket
No more ice-cold toes for me
New-found sleeptime bliss.
http://www.rabidmonkey.com/mt/archives/2004_11.html


spread-eagle
with an electric blanket
winter?
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=11490


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jiko (both stove and brazier), Kenya
kigo for the cold season in the tropics
see Kenya Saijiki


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