Carbon Table

Carbon Table

Carbon Table
I read that the Japanese used to put a brazier and their legs under a table, during the cold, winter days?

If a brazier is basically a metal box that holds burning charcoal and the table is inside the home. How did they avoid dying from carbon monoxide poisoning?

I do know they use electric heaters now, instead of braziers.

Maybe the key point is that the brazier (heater) is placed in a hole in the ground underneath the table.

In a traditional Japanese house, there is a notch cut in the floor directly beneath the table. People sit directly on the floor dangling their legs into the hole, which allows them to sit with their bodies positioned as though sitting in chairs.

A thick quilt is stretched over the top of the table, with the edges tangling the half meter or so to the floor. This traps the heat (and all the gases from the heater) underneath the table.

This would seem to solve the problem at least temporarily: all the nasty carbon monoxide is contained out of the way of human noses. But traditional Japanese dress can be likened to a chimney: a big piece of fabric wrapped around the body--with one, big opening at the bottom and one, big opening at the neck.

This structure actually pulled heat up from the pit underneath the table, through the sitter's clothing and out through the openings in their kimono.

So... I don't know.

Maybe carbon monoxide is too heavy to be pulled all the way up through the sitter's clothing in quantities sufficient to make the person sick?

There might be something to that. I've noticed in all the houses I've visited in Japan that there seems to be a very, very strong cultural habit of not letting people recline while sitting at a kotatsu (the kind of Japanese table we are talking about here).

Go ahead--try it. Visit a Japanese house and lay back on the floor while your legs are underneath the quilt of a kotatsu. Be especially sure to do it in front of the head wife of the house.

She will get an upset look on her face and tell you in a rather uncharacteristically forward manner that you should *never* recline while sitting at a kotatsu and you should most certainly never, ever go to sleep.

No matter how warm and comfy it feels...

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