Kitchen Chronicles
--A Kaleidoscopic Overview of Home Living

The kitchen--a space crucial to survival and, therefore, indispensable in a residence. As a space for handling (storing, preparing) food, it is also closely related to the location's land, climate, and culture. As a work place, then, it is a space that continually changes in pursuit of better functionality. Traditional kitchens are nevertheless disappearing in recent years. Because kitchens are contained in private homes, moreover, fact-finding surveys are difficult and comprehensive research is rare. This exhibition takes up the investigative work of an architect and researcher, likening their recorded research to "chronicles." Through their chronicles, we show traditional kitchens around the world and the modern-day evolution of the Japanese kitchen through some 90 materials including re-created models, illustrations, and housekeeping textbooks. Architect Reiko Miyazaki researched traditional kitchens around the world for about a half century. Her work reveals distinctively different features in the use of "fire" and "water" between the north and south with 40th parallel north as a boundary. Then, Fumiyo Suzaki, a Kanagawa University assistant professor, turned to "housekeeping textbooks" at young women's schools as a source for learning about the Japanese kitchen's rapid modernization from the late 19th to early 20th century. Collecting such textbooks, she has conducted empirical research. Their chronicles--the one comprehensive (traditional kitchens of the world) and the other focused (kitchens in modern Japan)--make clear the diversity of what is appropriate in the kitchen, depending on the place and time. They also display the relentless invention demanded by the kitchen as a space indispensable to human dwelling.

We wish to extend our warmest appreciation to Fumiyo Suzaki, Reiko Miyazaki, and everyone whose efforts have made this exhibition possible.