Chabudai

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Chabudai (卓袱台) is a short-legged table used in traditional Japanese homes. Occupants are seated on the tatami floor, rather than using chairs. The four legs of a chabudai are retractable.

Aside from kitchen, bath room, toilet and genkan (entrance area), traditional Japanese house does not have designated utility for each rooms. So any room can be a living room, dining room, study room or bed (futon) room. This is possible because all the necessarily furnitures are portable, being stored in Oshiire, a small section of the house which is used for storage. Large traditional house often have only one room under the roof while kitchen, bathroom and toilet are attached on the side of the house as extension. Somewhat similar to modern office, partion within the house are created by fusuma, sliding door made from wood and paper, which is also portable and easily removed. Fusuma seal each partition from top to bottom so it can create mini room within the house. In large gathering, these partition are removed to create one large meeting room. During normal day, partion create much smaller and more manageable living space.

Chabudai was used for various purpose, such as a study table for children, work bench for needle work, and most importantly, dinner table for the entire family.

[edit] Chabudai Gaeshi

In the anime version of Star of the Giants, an old-fashioned, short tempered patriarch of the family flipped the chabudai when he suffered a moral indignation (his son lied), consequently ruining the dinner for everyone. In original manga version, the father hit the central character. The scene was used in the ending song of the anime, so was aired repeatedly and subsequently created a cliche of an inexplicable outburst by an authority figure which ruins everything.

This practice is also known as Flipping Chabudai, and has been used figuratively by Shigeru Miyamoto to scrap projects he was not satisfied with. Eiji Aonuma, whose initial one year long development of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was scrapped by Miyamoto, has jokingly described "Chabudai Gaeshi" as "Don't like what's for dinner. Upend the table and get a new dinner made. Action of Old-Fashioned Japanese Fathers. Doing So Now Would Destroy the Family."[1]

[edit] Trivia

In the film, American Beauty, an emasculated father of modern American suburbia, portrayed by Kevin Spacey, pitches the large plate with asparagus at the wall, tipping the balance of power in the household.