Women at Coal Pits (Yama) in the Old Days #17 (Life in Row Houses; Meals of a Husband and Wife)
1958 - 1963

Mukashi no Yama no Onna #14 (Tanju no Seikatsu; Fufu no Shokuji)
[Women at Coal Pits (Yama) in the Old Days #17 (Life in Row Houses; Meals of a Husband and Wife)]
20.5 x 29.1 cm Ink Painting

The husband working as a coal hewer (sakiyama) has started drinking sake to ease his weariness (agari-zake), sitting cross-legged, after taking a bath as soon as he withdrew from the pit to wash away the coal dust on his body. His wife working as his helper (atoyama) is busy preparing their supper as soon as she returned from underground without satisfactorily taking a bath. Wives with children would be far busier than her.
Additionally, wives in the coal pit had to use open-air sinks of row houses 9 shaku (about 2.7 m) wide by 2 ken (about 3.6 m) deep, and each of them had to make meals with an umbrella in their hand when it rained. A row house had a room of 4 and a half tatami mats (about 7.4 square meters) with no cupboard and an earthen floor of 3 shaku (about 90 cm) wide by 9 shaku (about 2.7 meters) deep. If a wife cooked rice in her courtyard, the smoke from her stove flowed through the ridge of the row houses and filled all of them, floating down from the ceiling to suffocate all the inhabitants.

Lyrics of "Gotton Bushi" Song below the Inset
Ishi wa chonkan demo jikan sae tateba,
agarya nigo han ga udemakuri.
Gotton!

Even if I can mine no more than a tub of coal today,
450 milliliters of sake will be waiting for me
when I return home after my working hours are done.
Gotton (Clang)! (Interjected chant)


Translation Assisted by Mr. Nathan Johndro

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