By Yukako Fukushi / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
===========================================================================================
This series discusses the present and future of washoku traditional Japanese cuisine. This installment takes a look at how traditions have been maintained while going through changes.
Japanese people make special dishes for annual events and festivals such as New Year’s Day, and eat them while giving prayerful thanks. This is one of the major characteristics of washoku, and families and neighbors have deepened bonds by eating such dishes together.
“For us, annual events have been based around rice growing,” said Hisako Miyamoto, who has been engaged in agriculture for more than half a century in Iizuna, Nagano Prefecture.
Even today, she makes taue nimono, which literally means “simmered food for the rice-planting season,” and kinako musubi, rice balls sprinkled with soybean flour, and eats them in May and June. Taue nimono uses dried daikon radish and warabi bracken, among other ingredients, with daikon, which contains water, representing rice paddies filled with water. Meanwhile, sunny yellow kinako sprinkled over rice balls represents ears of rice.
These are event dishes related to rice planting to wish for a good harvest.
Inheriting food culture
The culture of agriculture and food had been waning. In 2007, Miyamoto and other women from farming households began conducting interviews with elderly people and other activities. They also cooperated with schools, trying to have children experience rice planting and eat event dishes related to rice growing. (234 words)
______ min. ______ sec.