It must be admitted, however, that our earnestness to date has not yet been sufficient to make this a question that will not be laughed at. On New Year's Day, when people's minds are a little more formal, we need to inspire them to stare at the old-fashioned ordinariness that has persisted for thousands of years. There has already been a great deal of difficulty before the level of development of Japanese individual awareness has finally reached a recent level. Many people are exhausted and hurt because of disobedience and struggle that seem useless in retrospect. Moreover, in many cases, the result was that a small number of clever people simply planned the actions of another group based on this name. So much so that we were a people who wanted unity, valued heroes, and followed our predecessors. Even if it was only a theory, it was not necessarily a change in such a short period of time as contact with an external culture that the value of individual souls was recognized, and the arbitrary development was taken for granted. It had been a long time since it had sprouted from within. It is still difficult to trace its origin, but at least the process can be traced because it is a kind of food, rice cake.

ordinariness（名）普通さ

disobedience（名）反抗

in retrospect......思い出してみると、振り返ってみると

predecessor（名）先任者

arbitrary（形）気まぐれな、勝手な

The household was originally the unit of production as well as consumption. Food, in particular, was communal in principle and transcended beyond the sphere of distributional theory until the moment it was brought to the mouths of family members. The disproportion in which the patriarch drank alone, and his wife preferred a small hot pot dish while others watched appeared only in early modern times, and this tendency was pioneered by rice cakes and dumplings made on Setsu days. Even when a daughter was allowed to keep only one vat for ramie and a child was not allowed to own any private property other than a toy box, only rice cakes were freely owned and disposed of individually depending on their form and state of preservation. Even under the most solemn patria potestas, each person could still formally ingest the food that was his heart. Because in Dewa, as many Uga no mochi (rice cakes for Uga god) as the number of male members of the family was made and offered to the god on New Year's Day, and in the festival of the mountain god held in mountain villages in Yamato and Iga, rice cakes for their number were also offered, it is possible to imagine that the origin of putting up as many chopsticks as the number of family members on mitama no meshi in Shinano was the same and that each one was designated as someone's things. At present, it seems to be held only in a rural area in western Japan, vis-a-vis with the Ikimitama custom of Bon, there was a custom of giving Kagami-mochi called oya no mochi (rice cake for parents) to children to elderly parents on New Year's Eve, and there was an event called mago no mochi (rice cake for grandchildren) in which many of the rice cakes were gathered by people who took care of many kids such as those who had makeup applied ohaguro at the coming-of-age ceremony, godparents, matchmakers, and midwives, and they gave them to their grandchildren again. In the depths of Ou, young men make rice cakes for machetes and young ladies make ones for ramie vats, and they gather to roast and eat them on the evening of the 19th to 20th of the New Year as an annual day of enjoyment apart from their families. Not only that, but rice cakes for horses and cows were made in old-fashioned houses, and so-called osonae were also offered to mortar, plow, and hoe on certain days. Needless to say, this is a remnant of the belief that such objects also had spirits, but if rice cakes had not been one of the representations of individualism, this custom would probably not have been handed down for a long time.

communal（形）共有の

transcend（動）超越する

distributional（形）配分の

disproportion（名）不均衡

patriarch（名）家長

dumpling（名）団子

ramie（名）カラムシ

solemn（形）厳粛な

patria potestas......家長権

ingest（動）取り込む、摂取する

vis-a-vis（前）～に相対して

coming-of-age（形）成人の

godparent（名）名付け親

matchmaker（名）仲人

midwife（名）助産師

machete（名）鉈

mortar（名）臼

plow（名）鋤

hoe（名）鍬

remnant（名）残存、名残

representation（名）表象

individualism（名）個人主義

Makimochi, which is made in May, is also allowed to be privately owned by family members, and the tradition remains in various places where young children hang their rice cakes in a corner of the room to enjoy their happiness for a long time. Muchi made in Ryukyu had a similar custom. More than a decade ago, on a moonlit night in December of the lunar calendar, I took a cab to Tomigusuku Village and experienced a rare sight. I could not see his face, but a boy, about 12 years old, came after me, saying something. When I stopped the cab and asked him what he was doing, he suddenly threw a bunch of muchi wrapped in shell ginger leaves into my lap and went away. Later, when I heard the explanation from my companion, I realized that this was a day when children with large families frequently received rice cakes. Because they were unaccustomed to possessiveness, they soon got bored and were motivated to give the leftover rice cakes to travelers. I also thought that it was not a bad thing because on this day even little people could exercise the right of hospitality that only the patriarch could have on weekdays.

cab（名）馬車

shell ginger......月桃

unaccustomed（形）不慣れな

possessiveness（名）所有欲

leftover（形）余った、食べ残した

hospitality（名）もてなし、歓待

This is also the knowledge that I acquired in Okinawa, but when I recorded and published the term of wild boar hunting in Hyuga in 'Nochi no Karikotoba no Ki*,' I was suspicious of the fact that each individual's share was called tamasu when the game caught by karikura (joint hunting) was distributed to seko**, but this term was also preserved in Okinawa. According to the memory of Genna Nakasone, when food is distributed to boys and girls in the Kunigami region, each portion is called tamashi. For example, when a greedy child tries to take another child's food after eating his first, they say, "What happened to thy tamashi?" The word "tama" is not only used in Japan as a name for the amount of one serving of udon, but also in Iwate and Mikawa, 'hitotama, futatama (1 tama, 2 tama)' is a piece of cut mountain wood, so it is probably the same in Shinano. On the other hand, the word "tama" used to mean children. Now only the offspring of birds are called tamago (eggs), but the old usage may still exist. A doll called "tamasa" or "ichima" in dialect might be an example. In any case, it seems that the roots of the term "tamasii", which refers to a spirit, and the term "tamasu" and "tamasi", which refers to the concept of private ownership, will gradually become one. If we regard rice cakes as ordinary old customs, and if we abandon them without considering their natural transition, one of the consequences of this will be the disappearance of what we have to know. Thus, if we suppress our own doubts, and leave the matter as a fad, providing only the theories which some have anticipated, our local studies may be in vain.

portion（名）取り分

thy（形）汝の

offspring（名）子

ownership（名）所有権

transition（名）変遷

consequence（名）結果

disappearance（名）消失、消滅

*Nochi no Karikotoba no Ki: Yanagita's book was published in 1910. This paper describes the actual condition of hunting tradition carried out in a traditional mountain village called Shiba Village in Miyazaki Prefecture.

**seko: a person who is responsible for driving out or driving wild animals in the direction of a shooter when hunting.