The weather forecast for Japan also forecasts the washing index in addition to temperature, precipitation rate, etc. The washing index comprehensively considers the weather, temperature, wind speed and sunshine volume of the day, looks at the dryness of the cotton undershirt after two hours of outdoor drying, and makes forecasts such as "easier to dry", "very easy to dry" and even "recommended indoor drying". Japan's weather forecast accuracy is extremely high, and the washing index makes people feel at ease about whether it is "suitable for laundry" on a certain day. Tv's weather forecast maps depict undershirts tucked away from rope, as well as women's smiling faces — yes, in Japan, laundry is always a housewife's chore for families. The housewife's day is likely to start by making an early breakfast and watching such a weather forecast to decide whether to let her washing machine turn.
In 1999, Kazuko Inoue was a 75-year-old woman who had settled in Fukida City, Osaka Prefecture, with a son in her early fifties, a minister at a company, a daughter-in-law who was a piano teacher, and her grandson had been working in Tokyo for a year and a half. He and his son divorced in his early years, just such an only son. Because she is old, she wakes up before five o'clock every day, afraid of disturbing the sleep of her baby son, and because of the poor sound insulation of the old-fashioned house, she only consumes in bed and does not dare to move more. "But as soon as my son wakes up, I'm alive, so I turn the washing machine away," she told me triumphantly, "and I don't care if my daughter-in-law sleeps or not!" ”
Kazuko thinks that women should follow behind men: "Didn't you watch TV, the wife of the popular wild ball player Ichiro (referring to baseball player Ichiro Suzuki), Mrs. Bow, was originally a TV anchor who made a splash every day, and when she got married, she didn't follow her husband with a low brow, not followed closely, but took a few steps back." "Kazuko is really an old brainer, but she really has a set of clothes to dry."
Kazuko Inoue would never take out the freshly washed clothes in the washing machine and carry them directly to the clothes drying table. She spread out a clean old cloth on the tatami, shaking and spreading the damp clothes that might have been tugged around her arms. Shake off the shirt with force, and smooth the collar of the shirt and the edge of the placket with your hands. Fold the clothes and stack the whiskers of the same kind into a hill. As Kazuko did this, she muttered, as if she had made a special teaching demonstration with a sense of honor: "Friends should stay with friends." Place a newly found "friend" and press it. Such a piece of pressure, the weight can help to suppress the wrinkles. This is the case with clothes, even socks and handkerchiefs, and Kazuko follows the same procedure.
In this way, the follow-up drying of clothes is much faster and faster than that of the untreated. The drying clothes themselves are also a little exquisite, such as drying a long towel, and Kazuko likes to cross the towel and put it in a circle, and the small clip with the hanger is tightly clipped above, and the sunlight comes from above, she said that it is drying so quickly.
Seeing Wazuko fold a pile of clothes that had just come out of the washing machine in four, pile it high, flatten it, and gently pat it, I was surprised at first, thinking it was superfluous. After practicing it myself, the sun-dried clothes are less wrinkled, most of them almost do not need to be ironed, and I have to sigh that in the end it is the wisdom of life summed up by the old-fashioned housewives.
In the homes of ordinary people in Japan, the morning sunbathing table can be said to be the face of a housewife. Who gets up early and washes diligently, at a glance. Other people's sundecks are already hung with freshly washed clothes, and one family always sees no movement in the sun, no need to enter the house, and the style of the housewife in the room has been revealed.
Laundry also reveals the subtle emotions between people inside the family inside the door. Kazuko, who has only a son in her heart, washes only herself and her son's clothes, and does so immediately kicks the daughter-in-law into the category of "outsider" and deprives the daughter-in-law of some of her right to take care of her husband.
In the core family where no elders live under the same roof and live on their own, many housewives use a mantra without thinking or taking for granted, saying that the clothes of the man who is the pillar of the house are "smelly", so they must not be sewn into the water with the clothes of other people in the family, even if they are of the same color and the same texture. This "smelly" word may objectively reflect the oily smell of a man's collar and the sour smell of sweat in his shirt, but it sounds like a face of disgust, as if covering his nose and avoiding it is not far away, as if people who spend more time at home discriminate against people who are active outside the "home" for a long time. This is a small "bullying" in language, this "bullying" is like gambling, like a harmless, retaliatory little fist, perhaps revealing the need for more reunions in the heart of the housewife.
Specific to the washing machine, the selection of Japanese washing machines is slightly different from that of Europe, not by temperature, such as 30 ° C, 40 ° C, 60 ° C, etc., but to see the clothing material, such as cotton, silk, chemical fiber, or direct selection of washing strength. The Japanese have prepared special mesh bags for laundry, and some of the hundred yen shops in the shopping street are equipped with various types of clothing, such as shirts, sweaters, pants, etc., which can really help the clothes not to go out of shape, and also avoid them from being messed around in the washing machine.
I used the washing machine later in Japan. After earning more and more, I finally moved on to live in a more modern apartment with a bathroom, washing machine and air conditioning.
At first, I washed by hand, and in the winter I fought with cotton clothes in the bathtub, and occasionally I had to go to the laundry room on the corner, where there was a line of coin-operated washing machines.
Around the eve of the millennium, a female entertainer on Fuji TV said that she used a dryer, which was like suddenly adding a babysitter, which was very comfortable. At that time, there were not many people using the dryer, and the host did not experience it personally, only emptyly echoing: "Oh, yes, yes, yes!" I focused my attention on the word "nanny" and quickly assumed that the dryer could spit out the folded clothes, otherwise, how could it be called a nanny? For another five years, I also used the dryer, only to understand that it is just drying in the literal sense, folding a level is not automated, and there is an unspeakable fear for a while.
When I was in my apartment in Osaka Honjo, there lived next door to a girl who sounded like she was in her early twenties. I was there for two years and never saw her face to face. But our mailboxes were next to each other in the downstairs foyer, and I could see her name on the boxes. I also heard her open and close the door, and she opened the door to the balcony on a summer night to cook porridge on the phone. Speaking the Osaka dialect, "really", "cute", and so on, are the mantras of young people, monotonous and fussy, and because of this, full of exaggeration and arrogance of young people. She is like a college entrance examination failure, where she works odd jobs, often returns late at night, and starts the washing machine on the balcony without warning. My pillow was not far from the balcony, and the next sudden night rain, thanks to the fact that I was also young at the time, the nonsense operation of the washing machine did not prevent me from lingering happily in the sound of "rain" and the occasional "muffled thunder".
Kazuko, a master laundry teacher, once gave me a set of old elementary school editions of the Manyo Collection. In the Manyo Collection, the earliest surviving collection of Japanese poetry, the ManyoShu, which contains long and short songs from the first half of the seventh century to 759 and about one hundred and thirty years, someone sings that "salad salad, like the sackcloth washed and dried by the Tama River, is getting smoother and smoother, and I like the woman more and more, but why." A faint and thick love song also reflects the daily scenery of the woman washing linen in the water and drying the linen cloth on the shore to obtain white cloth. This song uses "salad salad" to implicate two words with similar sounds but different meanings, the elephant sound of the flow of water, and the adverb that indicates the degree of progression. The singer hits two birds with one stone, opening up a wider space for imagination. This consonant Chinese translation left me with only two awkward words but helpless. And there are helpless women in the "Manyo Collection", sighing that "it is too far from the river, and the cloth has to not be washed or dried, so it is sewn." There are also collective washing and drying that become landscapes, so there is a question and answer: "Did it snow fall on Mt. Tsukuba? ”
Soaking hand-woven linen in the river and then exposing it to the sun was the labor of women for many years. The income of cloth can be tax deducted, the so-called rice to pay rent, cloth to offset the "adjustment". It is a type of property tax in Japan's old days, which is mainly offset by fiber products. Therefore, there is also a saying of agitation. Originally, the Tama River was also known as the Tama River, and the "Tamakigawa of Chofu" was the ancient name of the Tama River that flows near the city of Chofu in Tokyo today, and the Japanese kana of Tama, Tama, and Tama are the same. As if to leave a little historical evidence, the ukiyo-e master Harunobu Suzuki has depicted the tamaki of tamaki, more than one, or with a strong and dynamic brushstroke, writing that a woman rolls up a white cloth in the water like a dancing silk satin, romanticizing the hard work; Or show more peaceful and meticulous customs, with reeds by the water's edge, echoes of mother and child. The lines of the water waves are horizontal, the longitudinal direction of the cloth, and the bottom end of the cloth are immersed in the water, so that the vertical and horizontal lines are staggered, and they are finally clearly distinguished. The mother of the washcloth leaned to the left back, taking care of the child while working, her feet faintly visible in the water, one slightly raised, and the whole person was in motion. Harunobu Suzuki's lines and compositions are elegant and composed, and the powerful and light beauty of hard work is refined, and the spirit of women and life is condensed on the rolled white cloth.
Although these songs and pictures are inked on the washing cloth and drying cloth, the scene of the women washing clothes by the river in the past can also be imagined.
In addition, washing and drying cloth are based on the understanding that water can dissolve impurities and sunlight has a bleaching effect. In the past, the clothes of the common people were mostly made of hard fibers such as hemp and ramie, and the more they washed, the whiter and softer they became. The method of beating with a stick to add luster to the fibers is said to have been introduced to Japan from China as early as the Nara period (710-794). To wash off the stains on the clothes, in the old Japan, more use of sansa seeds, soap horn, rice soup, etc., soap horn and no seed contain saponins, rice soup contains bran and enzymes, can remove dirt and descaling. Soap then appeared and even appeared on Tokugawa Ieyasu's heritage list.
By the river, clothes are pounded with a clothes stick, clothes are washed in a wooden basin, and laundry has evolved in modern times to be done with one or two buttons and let the washing machine do it automatically. However, in Japanese families, women's laundry still has a stereotypical picture, in the forecast of the washing index, there is no male face on the side of the cotton undershirt, only the woman's, one after another, corresponding to the names of cities and villages.
Written on August 3, 2021 on The Island of Erland
Author: Wang Ye
Editor: Qian Yutong