Video Transcript
IKKO YOKOYAMA: Traditionally, cooking rice was a labour-intensive and time-consuming task for women at home. They have to get up early in the morning to start cooking breakfast, and also continuously have to monitor the wood stove. And also, imagine they have been doing [this] three times a day. That means, if you need maybe two hours of preparation, then it’s six hours of the woman’s life that goes to just cooking rice.
The product was really fitting the right timing for the societal change. Because of the post-war reconstruction, everybody was really coming back from hell. It was devastating. The country had lost. They had to bring back the economy, health, joy, the meaning to life and everything. What I mean is that the rice cooker facilitated that change. Because of the economic boom everybody started to be more busy and [for] efficient citizens and people they wanted to work, they wanted to earn money, they didn’t want to spend six hours just making the fire and cooking rice. That’s not very productive. And also, women started to see their potential. They wanted to go out and they wanted to have their own professions. This was a female relief, but it was also a product [that matched] the societal change.
This one was, design-wise, very, very sophisticated. The outside of the rice cooker is very clean, white mimicking almost the porcelain you [use to] eat rice, the porcelain ceramic. It’s not like a typical kitchen [appliance]. You can bring it into the living room. If you had guests coming, you could bring it out. You know, there’s a little handle to it. Also, there’s this black little switch that can be operated by one finger just sliding the switch down to start. Yeah, it’s kind of very elegantly illustrated.
In an era that brought consumers doughnut-shaped radios, televisions, and then, a little later, portable televisions, on the surface, Iwata Yoshiharu’s unassuming rice cooker, the RC-10K, perhaps did not hold the same allure as some of its more conspicuous counterparts in the home appliance market. On close examination, however, it becomes apparent that the appliance’s value proposition, an easy and efficient method for cooking rice, would fundamentally upend rusted-on domestic routines and change women’s daily lives forever.
Ikko Yokoyama, Lead Curator, Design and Architecture, elaborates on 1950s gender expectations in Japan: ‘Traditionally, cooking rice was a labour-intensive and time-consuming task for women at home. They have to get up early in the morning to start cooking breakfast, and [they] also have to monitor the woodstove continuously.’ The time saved by the rice cooker allowed women new opportunities to participate in Japan’s flourishing post-war workforce. ‘Because of the economic boom . . . women started to see the potential,’ Yokoyama continues. ‘They wanted to go out, and they wanted to have their own profession.’
The RC–10K could be turned on and off with the flick of a switch. The small horizontal rectangle above the lever lights up when the machine is in use. © Toshiba Corporation
Yoshiharu designed the ER-5 and RC-10K rice cooker models for Toshiba. The rice cooker’s design is as ingenious as it is simple, and as objects, they would symbolise middle-class aspiration. ‘It’s not like a typical kitchen [applicance],’ notes Yokoyama. ‘You can bring it to the living room. If you have guests coming, you can bring it out . . . it’s very elegantly illustrated.’ The design and appeal of the rice cooker meant that it would grow in popularity throughout East Asia over the ensuing years. In fact, Toshiba’s 1955 designs were crucial to the development of Tatung Company’s TAC-6 model, which was released in Taiwan in 1960 and became a mainstay there.
The Toshiba logo, with a distinctive stylised ‘T’, was a key part of Toshiba's corporate identity from 1950 to 1969 and was featured on products from that era, such as the RC-10K. M+, Hong Kong. Gift of Nam Wah Neonlight & Electrical Manufactory, Ltd., 2015. © All rights reserved
Today, the rice cooker is found all over the world. Yet, as ubiquitous as it is now, it is worth remembering the changes it facilitated in 1955. ‘The product was really fitting,’ explains Yokoyama, ‘[It] was the right timing for societal change.’ Through this lens, we can view the rice cooker as more than an appliance but a product of, and agent for, change – part and parcel of the societal shifts underlying Japanese society in its post-war years.
Video Credits
- Produced by
M+
- Narrator
Ikko Yokoyama
- Creative Ideas and Animation
Wyatt Lau
- M+ Producer
Rachel Chan, Ling Law
- English Subtitle Editing
Dorothy So
- M+Text and Subtitle Editing
Amy Leung
- Special Thanks
Sewon Barrera, Chris Sullivan, Winnie Lai, Claudia Tsang