An ink jet printing apparatus for industrial use, which is provided with a comparatively large number of nozzles arranged for high duty recording, particularly an ink jet textile printing apparatus, and an ink jet printing apparatus suitably used for printing on a large-sized medium, are provided together with a method for controlling the temperature of the printing head of such high duty printing apparatuses, and various other types of printing apparatuses reliably. To the large number of heaters used for recording in a printing step, driving signals are applied to cause them to discharge ink for recording and, to the discharge heaters that are not to perform recording, secondary driving signals that do not allow ink to discharge are applied. These secondary driving signals cause the heaters not used in recording to generate heat, so as to reduce unevenness in the intensities of heat generation among the many discharge heaters of the printing head. At the same time, cooling water is supplied by a cooling device to a cooling liquid path arranged for the printing head in order to cool it.