Pounding rice (mochi tsuki)

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Pounding rice (mochi tsuki, mochitsuki)

***** Location: Japan, Philippines, other areas
***** Season: Mid-winter
***** Category: Humanity

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Explanation

pounding rice, mochi tsuki (mochitsuki)　餅つき
song for pounding rice, mochi tsuki uta 餅つき歌

having your rice pounded for a fee, chin mochi 賃餅
spreading the pounded rice, noshi mochi 熨斗餅
cutting the spread rice in squares, mochi kiru　餅切る
straw mat to lay the ready dumplings on, mochi mushiro　餅筵

Pounding rice for small rice dumplings (sometimes translated as "cakes", but they are not sweet at all) is a ubiquious sight all over Japan during the few days before the New Year. It used to be done in a wooden or stone basin with a large wooden mallet, but nowadays many families use an electric appliance, although complaining that the taste is just not the same. The rice dumplings are put in the special soup on the first of January (zooni, see below) and the round rice dumplings are seasonal offerings for the Gods (kagami mochi, see below).

Pounding rice and preparing soup or dumplings and cakes is quite fun and the big local event at our grammar school is a get-together of the whole mountain village community.

More kigo are given below.

Gabi Greve

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Mochi is finely ground cooked rice pressed into shapes. This creates soft, chewy shapes which can be used in sweet and savory foods. If kept, they form hard blocks, which can be stored until they are needed. Mochi is also combined with roasted soy bean flour (kinako) or sweet bean paste (anko) to make traditional Japanese sweets.

Traditionally, making mochi is a group activity. Village people sat together, hand-pounding the rice with a wooden mallet (kine). According to Shinto tradition, each grain of rice represents a human soul, so the process was reflective and self-purifying for the whole community.

In the West, when we look at the moon, we see a man on it. The Chinese see a rabbit, pounding magical herbs to make the elixir of eternal life. The Japanese, with their love of obscure wordplays, envision the same rabbit pounding rice to make mochi. The name of the full moon is “mochizuki”, while “mochitsuki” means “making mochi”.

The rice dumplings are extremely sticky and difficult to swallow, and many people choke to death on them every year. The New Year is a particularly dangerous season, because many people eat o-zooni, a traditional soup containing mochi, which is served on New Year’s Day. Newscasts feature an annual “death toll” of all the old or drunk people who bit off more mochi than they could chew. In one case, a 70-year-old man was saved from a glutinous death by his resourceful daughter, who used a vacuum cleaner to remove the hazardous blob he was choking on.
http://ballz.ababa.net/uninvited/mochi.htm

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The Hare (Rabbit) in the Moon

The Universe and Human Life
By Daisaku Ikeda

In recent years, ever since man began launching satellites into space, his ideas about the universe have been undergoing a profound though little noticed change.

The science of astronomy has existed since ancient times, yet when we as children in Japan looked at the full moon, we invariably saw in it the image of a rabbit pounding glutinous rice to make rice cakes because that was what the adults had told us existed in the moon. The adults, we learned later, had told us a lie. But even the adults, when they looked at the full moon, particularly in the Autumn, probably had thoughts almost as stereotyped as ours, thoughts like those expressed as early as the Heian period by the ninth century poet. Oe no Chisato in his famous verse on the full moon:

When I gaze at the moon
All things seem sad
Though I know the Autumn
Comes not to me alone.

Read the rest here:
http://www.buddhistinformation.com/universe_and_human_life.htm

Safety Copy is here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Haiku-Essays/message/94


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Worldwide use

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Things found on the way

Japanese Link with detailed story about the Chinese and Japanese version of the Hare in the Moon.



http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~nr8c-ab/afjptukiusagi.htm

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A local wooden toy


http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~QB1T-FJT/mochiu.html

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The Real Rabbit in the Moon



"The bunny's two ears point up from New Zealand but point down when seen from England, so many northern people do not recognise our familiar moon rabbit.
However, Maya Indians are supposed to have recognised the moon rabbit.
The Rabbit is made of black moon lava."

© Photo by by John Wattie, NZ

More of his photos are on this LINK
http://nzphoto.tripod.com/astro/#rabbit

There is another moon photo about this on a Japanese page, where you can see the rabbit pounding rice:
http://www2j.biglobe.ne.jp/~hoshino/tsuki%20to%20usagi.htm

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Mani Moon Hand, gessei manishu
月精摩尼手 (げっせいまにしゅ）



Gakko Bosatsu 月光菩薩 (Moonlight Bosatsu)

Gachirin (moon disc) with a rabbit pounding mochi (glutinous rice) drawn inside. In Japan, Gakkō is also associated with a hare. People suffering high temperatures or fevers can purchase such talismans or icons (called Gessei manishu 月精摩尼手), which are said to reduce fever and cool the body.

Nikko (Sunlight Bosatsu) & Gakko (Moonlight Bosatsu)
Mark Schumacher


In India's ancient language Sanskrit,
one of the names for the moon is 'sashi', and rabbit is also called as 'sashi' in Sanskrit.


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Some more worldwide Rabbit Lore
WKD Library


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HAIKU

pounding rice cakes---
a lull between
typhoons

robert wilson (Philippines)

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pounding rice cakes -
midnight temple bells,
New Year guests

Joachim
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WHCworldkigo/message/991

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cha no mochi

green rice cakes:
family chants to the beats
of a mallet

Chibi Dennis Holmes

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pounding mochi
for cakes
instead of wine

shanna

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Issa and Pounding Rice

From a discussion in Translating Haiku Forum, August 2006

犬の餅烏が餅もつかれけり
inu no mochi karasu ga mochi mo tsukare keri

one for the dog
one for the crow...
rice cakes

by Issa, 1819 (Tr. David Lanoue)

From my experience in rural Japan, where the pounding of rice is made outside in the farm yard, I can imagine more than one dog and one crow waiting for the cakes to be ready ...

> > > > pounding rice ...
> > > > rice dumplings for the dogs
> > > > rice dumplings for the crows
Tr. Gabi Greve

Sakuo was wondering if the poor farmers of the Edo period really had enough to pound rice and give some leftovers to the dogs and birds. Farmers mostly ate buckwheat and such grains.

To this worry, Larry Bole had the following answer

I think Issa's emotions in writing this haiku are amusement and empathy. I think he has a humorous appreciation of the expertise in thievery displayed by these opportunistic scavengers. We know in advance that at least a couple of the rice cakes we are laboriously making are going to end up with the dog and crow, but even knowing that, we aren't going to begrudge them their share.

And I think there is an underlying empathy in that, by stealing rice cakes, the dog and crow are celebrating the New Year along with us in their own way.

There is another rice cake haiku by Issa which R. H. Blyth interprets in much the same vein:

mochitsuki ga tonari e kita to iu ko nari

"The rice-cake makers
Have come next door,"
Says the child.

Blyth says about this haiku:

"'Mochi' is made from a special kind of rice, boiled and pounded into a [glutinous] mass. Japanese people all enjoy it very much; it corresponds (in feeling, not in taste) to Christmas pudding in Europe and America. Pounding the rice is hard work and needs a very large mallet etc., and specialists, so to speak, go from house to house making it.
Some are too poor to afford it, and of such is the child who is speaking. He runs in to his mother and tells her that the men who make the mochi have come to the house next door. The mother cannot answer; there is nothing to say. They cannot afford it, and other children must have the happiness forbidden to hers. ..."

David Lanoue, on the other hand, translates it and then says:

"The rice cake man
is next door!"
the child announces.

"The reader need not see it this [Blyth's] way. The child bubbles over with excitement and anticipation--feelings that Issa and his adult readers share, as they remember their own childhoods."

Lanoue's reading is more in the spirit of another of Issa's haiku:

ako ga mochi ako ga mochi tote narabe keri

"This is sonny-boy's rice-cake,
This is sonny-boy's rice-cake too."
Piling them up.
tr. Blyth

my child's rice cakes
my child's rice cakes...
all in a row
tr. Lanoue

It's interesting to me that Blyth's interpretation comes at a time when both England and Japan were suffering post-war food shortages, whereas Lanoue's interpretation comes from someone living in a land of (relative) plenty, in one of its most plentiful times.

From reading through the 'rice cake' haiku on Lanoue's translastion site, it seems that besides the New Year, rice cakes are also associated with the Girl's Doll Festival, and with a 12th day of the ninth month celebration honoring Nichiren.

Issa also has several haiku about rice cakes being stolen by dogs in one way or another.
And what are we to make of left-over rice cakes?

There is Basho's justly-famous haiku:

uguisu ya mochi ni funsuru en no saki

Ah! the uguisu
Pooped on the rice-cakes
On the verandah.
tr. Blyth

a bush warbler
dropped poop on the cookies
at the edge of the verandah
tr. Jane Reichhold

bush warbler--
a dropping on the rice cake
at the veranda's edge
tr. Ueda

Basho is quoted as saying about this haiku [in a letter to Sampuu]:

"This hokku shows the kind of innovation [karumi] I am trying to achieve nowadays."

Yamamoto says:

"This hokku presents a scene of moldy rice cakes placed in the sunlight on the veranda several weeks after the New Year. Suddenly a bush warbler flew in from the garden and let a dropping fall. This is an idyllic scene filled with spring sunshine."

Would old, uneaten holiday rice cakes be put out for the birds and other animals to eat?

And one more Issa haiku, with the DOG :

餅搗のもちがとぶ也犬の口
mochi tsuki no mochi ga tobu nari inu no kuchi

the fresh rice cake
goes flying...
the dog's mouth

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Another Issa Haiku under discussion

草の庵年取餅を買にけり
kusa no io toshitori mochi o kai ni keri

thatched hut--
the year's last rice cakes
are bought

Translated by David Lanoue
More ISSA Haiku about Pounding Rice

The discussion started with another translation of this haiku

thatched hut--
the aged rice cake
is purchased

Translating Haiku Forum Nr. 853 / 855 / 858 / 864

In former times, it was customary in Japan to add one year to one's life on the first of January (toshitori). Individual birthdays were not celebrated.
to get older, toshi o toru　年を取る

thatched hut -
buying rice dumplings
to grow older another year
(Tr. Gabi Greve)

"yellowtail tuna to pass into the New Year" toshitori buri　年取鰤 is a speciality for New Year in Western Japan.


The use of IO, iori, 庵 the thatched hut
Translating Haiku Forum

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to my hut too
New Year's arrives...
the zooni vendor

waga io ya ganjitsu mo kuru zooni uri

我庵や元日も来る雑煮売

by Issa, 1817

Zooni, glutinous rice cakes with vegetables, is enjoyed in the New Year's season.
This haiku has the prescript, "In Hatsuchoobori Beggar Quarter, I greet the spring."
Hatsuchoobori was a district of old Edo (today's Tokyo). See Maruyama Kazuhiko, Issa haiku shuu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1990; rpt. 1993) 261, note 1394.
Shinji Ogawa offers this translation:

To my hut
even on the New Year's Day
zooni vendors come

He notes that it is a Japanese custom not to work during the first three days of the year, but in the big city of Edo, zooni vendors were busy as bees.

Tr. David Lanoue
http://cat.xula.edu/issa/


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Related words

***** New Year's Rice Dumplings (toshi no mochi 年の餅)
kigo for the New Year

"mirror rice dumplings, kagami mochi 鏡餅
..... a special offering for the gods at New Year. They get very hard, are then split with a hammer and put into soup.
"honorable mirror" rice dumplings, o-kagami 御鏡
"armor plate" rice dumplings, yoroi mochi 鎧餅

"rice sumplings for the ancestors" offered for the ancestors at home
..... gusoku mochi 具足餅

rice dumplings for the new year soup (zooni),
zooni mochi 雑煮餅
Mixed vegetable soup for the new year (zooni, a kigo for the New Year) is eaten on January first in the morning, usually after the first shrine visit and prepared with .. the first well water (wakamizu) .
In Western Japan, it is the custom to add a lot of yellowtail (buri) to the broth of vegetables.
People greet each other on the first of January: What did you eat in your zooni?
After that, no hot food was eaten until January 4, to give the housewive and the kitchen and hearth deities a short holiday.
Click HERE to look at some photos !


New Year's rice dumplings, toshi no mochi, 年の餅
..... made as a gift for neighbours and visitors (we often get our share of these hard presents)

Quote:
..... even the poor cooked pure boiled rice and pounded rice cake from pure glutinous rice for important meals. Pounded rice cakes (mochi), prepared by pounding steamed glutinous rice with a mortar and pestle, have been indispensable food items for Japanese ceremonial feasts. People thought that the essence — the sacred power of rice — was made purer by pounding, and mochi was believed to contain the "spirit of rice."

Naturally this was and is the most celebrated form of rice and therefore the most appropriate food for feasts. Thus, New Year’s day, the principal annual feast in Japan, sees mochi always consumed as a ceremonial food.

Read more:
Food of Japan, by Naomichi Ishige !!!!!

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yukiusagi 雪兎　ゆきうさぎ snow hare
kigo for all winter


Otherwise the hare and rabbit are not kigo.
Rabbit and hare ...
Kigo Hotline, November 2008


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*********** NEW YEAR FOOD SAIJIKI


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