The Home Kitchen of Japan had made remarkable progress according to the considerable changes of the Japanese home life in the modern times. Most of the precedent studies have shown the basic examples of its changes and ascertained direction of the changes toward the modernization. However, these studies could not reach to a level of clarifying detailed aspects and appearances of modernizing the home kitchen. Here at this point, this study has more specific purpose to attempt making clear the modernization of the kitchen described in the authorized textbooks published from the Meiji period to the early Showa period. The authorized textbooks on domestic science for girls' high school are the most profitable historic records for this study, containing descriptions about the kitchen in the form of both texts and figures. In particular, this paper examines the significance and the subjects of the descriptions about the home kitchen in the textbooks. As a result, the three concepts of 'hygiene', 'efficiency', and 'Ritsudo-Shiki' (standing work style) are raised as the principles of the modernization of the kitchen.
