かまど / Kamado Until the Meiji era, a kitchen was also called kamado (かまど / stove) and there are many sayings in the Japanese language that involve kamado as it was considered the symbol of a house. The term could even be used to mean "family" or "household" (much as "hearth" does in English). Separating a family was called kamado wo wakeru, or "divide the stove". kamado wo yaburu ("break the stove") means that the family was broken. The tiltle of each of these photographs is named Daidokoro, which is the place where food is prepared in a Japanese house.