Food and the Heart

7

One of the peculiarities of rice cakes as food is that you can easily select the shape you like. There is still a custom of making various shapes of cut yokan*, yosemono**, taro and daikon radish as a dish on a ceremonial day, but these were usually added later. Only rice cakes were able to meet such demands among foods eaten since ancient times. The rice cake is soft at first, but then it hardens, so it is most convenient to form something, and when I think about it, the round shape of Kagami-mochi did not become like that without human intention, so it is not so foolish that I wondered why it was round. And the answer has yet to be determined today. What I pay attention to is that the offerings are layered or the middle one is raised as much as possible. The urban style of layering is two-tiered, but oranges and the like are put on the top, and if you go to the countryside, you can still sometimes see three-tiered rice cakes. This can be regarded as 'okazari (decoration)' to make the appearance pleasing, but I think there must be a cause for the psychology of those of us who think that it is comfortable to pile up as high as possible even when stacking rice cakes one by one.

peculiarity（名）特殊性

stack（動）積み重ねる

Perhaps the conical shape of the rice cake and the triangular shape of the rice ball should be considered together. Yakimeshi (baked rice) and yakumama (baked rice) are the most common dialects of rice balls, and they can be grilled and eaten at any time, thus they are also somewhat similar to rice cakes in that they are freely independent of concerted eating and drinking at home. Some people may somehow understand that making these triangles is due to the natural movement of the hand, but as proof that this is not the case, bale-shaped ones are also made, and there are other methods such as kirimeshi and oshidashi*** to simply distribute them to a large number of people without chopsticks, so even if they were unconsciously made into triangles, there was some cause for the development of these hand habits. The most formal use of triangular rice balls is in Shinano where offerings made on New Year's Eve, called 'mitamasama no meshi', are placed on a plate or tray at the end or lower level of the altar for the god who comes to visit in the New Year with 12 rice balls or as many rice balls as there are members of the family in a normal year, but there are regions where similar offerings are also made on the altar for ancestral spirits who come to visit in the Bon Festival. Mitama is native Japanese reading called 御霊, and there is no doubt that it has the same meaning as what is called shoryo (spirit) or hotoke-sama (Buddha) in the present Chugen****, but the reason why food can be offered in this form is already unknown today. Alternatively, some believe that this should be prepared separately for neglected spirits who come after ancestral spirits on this day, and the problem is itself a state of alienation that neither Shinto nor Buddhism can explain.

conical（形）円錐の

concerted（形）協調した

somehow（副）どことなく

bale（名）俵

distribute（動）分配する

offering（名）供物

altar（名）祭壇

alienation（名）疎外

In the Tohoku region, the cooking method of mitama no meshi has changed a little. Raw rice and okarako***** are wrapped in bamboo leaves so they can be boiled later for eating, but the way of wrapping is also triangular. This form seems to have been one of the requirements we must abide by, for today no one can tell us why. Among the foods offered on the days of seasonal festivals, rice cakes made during the Doll Festival in March seem to be the same, but this rule is especially strict for the ones made in May. In the south, akumaki*****, cooked in Kyushu, and in the north, sasamaki-gatsugi******, hishimaki*******, or oni-no-tsuno********, cooked in the whole area of Uetsu, are all rolled in a triangular shape with a string attached to the sharp end so that you can hang them. The muchi********* is made in Okinawa on December 8, and like the chimaki we make, it is also wrapped in a triangle shape with shell ginger and Chinese fun palm leaves. In addition, although rice cakes distributed on national holidays in Tokyo are called Tsurunoko (crane baby), it is not a coincidence that one end is sharp and not necessarily the same shape as an egg, and it is probably the same reason that Uga-no-mochi (Uga rice cake)**********, which is made by as many family members on New Year's Day, is intentionally hollow in the middle to resemble a gourd. Therefore, in the future, I would like to describe in detail before the shape of rice cakes made on these ceremonial days changes too much, but first, I would like to imagine that these are shaped like the human heart. If food is what makes the human body, the old people conjecture that the most important food would constitute the most important part, and therefore, to reassure their belief, they tried to make the shape of rice balls closer to their goal from the beginning. This is hypothetical and of course requires a lot of consideration, but I feel that the pointed triangles used in various situations always represent important things in human life. Since the heart is in our left breast, it is here that it moves quickly whenever something happens, so there is a prima facie reason why they thought so. It would have been a simple human wish that, for some reason, they should have learned that the shape of the heart was a little conical and that they should try to make the food specially intended to feed it as similar as possible. Even though today's physiology shows that this is a completely false cognition, they still make the rice balls into triangles and raise the center of the kagami-mochi, and many local people don't feel like it's New Year's without these things, which is probably one of the effects that we don't know yet, more than just residual.

requirement（名）必要条件

shell ginger......ゲットウ

Chinese fun palm......ビロウ

hollow（形）くぼんだ

gourd（名）ヒョウタン

conjecture（名）推測

constitute（動）構成する

reassure（動）自信を与える

prima facie（形）一見して、それらしい

physiology（名）生理学

cognition（名）認識

residual（名）残余

*yokan: A confection made of red bean paste, agar, and sugar. It is usually sold in a block form, and eaten in slices.

**yosemono: A chilled, solidified food made by mixing ingredients with kudzu root starch, agar, or gelatin.

***kirimeshi and oshidashi: Kirimeshi (sliced rice) is rice that is filled into molds, molded, and then cut into squares. Oshidashi (extruding) is a rice mold that is filled and extruded.

****Chugen: It is an annual event derived from Taoism and is held in Japan on July 15 in the old calendar. People give gifts to those who are looked after during this period. In China, it is said to be the day when the spirits of the ancestors return.

*****okarako: glutinous rice soaked in water, ground with a stone mill, and then rounded.

*****akumaki: A food in which glutinous rice soaked overnight in water with ash (aku) dissolved in it is wrapped in bamboo bark and boiled in aku for more than three hours.

******sasamaki-gatsugi: a food made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo (sasa) leaves and boiled in hot water.

*******hishimaki: a food made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves and boiled in hot water. Hishi means a water chestnut.

********oni-no-tsuno: a food made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves and boiled in hot water. It means a demon's horn.

*********muchi: A food eaten in Okinawa on December 8 in the old calendar. It is steamed glutinous rice powder wrapped in shell ginger leaves.

**********Uga-no-mochi: Oka-no-mochi. It is also called Okanomochi. A modified rice cake made in the Tohoku region on New Year's Day.