Daiokoro (台所;lit. "kitchen") is the place where food is prepared in a Japanese house. Until the Meiji era, a kitchen was also called kamado (かまど; lit. stove) and there are many sayings in the Japanese language that involve kamado as it was considered the symbol of a house and the term could even be used to mean "family" or "household". When separating a family, it was called Kamado wo wakeru, which literally means "divide the stove". Kamado wo yaburu (lit. "break the stove") means that the family was broke.