kamado was a stone sink without a water tap. Next to this sink were storage shelves with pots and pans on top, washed dishes in the middle, and vegetables and miso on the bottom. Next to the portable stove was a large food preparation table, with several drawers to store cooking utensils. Staples such as rice, sugar, and flour were kept in pots beneath this table. Additional shelves at the other end of the room could be accessed from both the kitchen and the dining room. Next to these shelves was another preparation table where foods were served onto individual dishes and then carried to the dining room. Kitchen windows and shoji were installed with glass panes to make the kitchen brighter, and electric lights were hung from the ceiling. This "dream kitchen" was spacious by today's standards, yet it lacked most modern post-industrial conveniences, although many smaller improvements had been made. Also around this time, many families started to use a low table called chabudai. Everyone sat around it, rather than using individual daiban. Until the 1960s, sitting on chairs and eating around a dining table was considered "haikara". The kitchen in the Taishō period In the Taishō period (1912–1926), a popular movement called "Taishō Democracy" began. Its main focus was on universal suffrage for males, and this movement extended into other fields, serving as a modernization effort similar to the Meiji Restoration. The kitchen was affected. Before the Taishō period, the kitchen was constructed so that most tasks could be done while sitting, crouching, or kneeling. This was due to long preparation and cooking times and helped keep the stove low to prevent the spread of fire. As gas stoves and European-style clothes became popular, kitchens were redesigned so they could be used while standing. A second innovation was that instead of placing the stove and water sink in a sunken, dirt-floored section of the kitchen, the stove was constructed on the same level as the rest of the kitchen, eliminating the need for stepping into footwear to attend it. In 1922, Suzuki Shougyou began marketing a customizable kitchen set that came to be called the "System Kitchen." Many of its parts were prefabricated, and it could be made to fit in a space anywhere from 1.8 to 2.7 metres, the length of one to one-and-one-half tatami mats. The System Kitchen had a water sink, a cutting board,