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Two men dining on
individual trays,
from Nenjū sōzai no
shikata (1893).
considered that changes in these practices would be morally significant
for the integrity of the entire household. During the first decades of the
twentieth century, new objects that were to facilitate the diffusion of the new
practices and rules that were to guide them were enthusiastically propagated
by domestic ideologues, and successively reshaped the conventions within
urban families.
A home meal was, in the first place, to become a site of relaxation for
the head of the family. The introduction to a cookbook of 1905, one of the
first that prominently used the term katei in its title, described this ideal in
the following manner:
When he leaves the house in the morning, complicated public
affairs are awaiting him. Regardless of the type of occupation,
every wage earner comes home in the evening absentmindedly,
with tired body and enfeebled spirit. His knitted eyebrows loosen
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