Fuels Used by Pit Workers #3 (Heater with a Trivet and Coke Making)
1958 - 1963

Yamabito no Nenryo #3 (Gotoku to Gara-yaki)
[Fuels Used by Pit Workers #3 (Heater with a Trivet and Coke Making)]
21.0 x 30.0 cm Ink Painting

Text at the Right End and Bottom
This heater and stove called a gotoku was used by many miners (yamabito) in their small houses called nayas (barns). (It was a mold 18 to 20 cm in both diameter and height.) This gotoku was also used by the people in town. No one knew about or used today's kirigotatsu (built-in foot warmer). Additionally, such foot warmers could not be built in the floors of pit workers' houses because all of their floors were made of bamboo cut lengthways in two pieces, weaved and tied together with straw ropes. No miner used a yagurakotatsu (table-type foot warmer), either. In the Meiji era (1868-1912), there was no other way for a miner's family to cook than to use the fragile clay stove called a Hakata hichirin (normally shichirin) unless they used a stove made to order by tinsmiths. Some large families in pits rented two neighboring row houses and built into one of the floors a hearth called an irori, usually used in farmers' houses.

Text at the Bottom Left
A husband and wife working together had no time to gather namaishis (low grade lumps of coal gathered from refuse heaps above the ground) to make coke, so they brought some lumps of coal from underground and burned them (to turn them to coke [gara]) in a quick-built shichirin stove made of an oil can whose top was cut off. It took much time to turn the lumps of coal to coke. The wife brought the coal still smoldering into her house. How awful! The smoke filled one whole ridge of the row houses because a ridge of row houses was separated by only about 7-shaku-high (about 2-meter-high) earthen walls and had no ceiling. Quarrels could be caused if someone grumbled about it.

The Wife's Murmur
"I'm not making coke just to pass the time like you!"

Text at the Top Left
"Oh, I'm freezing!"


Translation Assisted by Mr. Nathan Johndro

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