LIHU‘E — While people scurried about doing last-minute Christmas shopping, Ed Kawamura was anticipating the mochi-making that starts today. The Kawamura ‘ohana continues to honor the tradition of making mochi using wooden mallets, or kine, and the stone mortar, or
LIHU‘E — While people scurried about doing last-minute Christmas shopping, Ed Kawamura was anticipating the mochi-making that starts today.
The Kawamura ‘ohana continues to honor the tradition of making mochi using wooden mallets, or kine, and the stone mortar, or usu.
“You need to start early,” Kawamura said. “Mochi is usually done between Christmas and New Year’s.”
A collection of relatives, friends, and residents of the neighborhood congregate for the event which usually lasts the entire day, enjoying fellowship while waiting for their batches of special mochi rice to be prepared. The mochi rice, too, must be prepared and soaked several days ahead of mochi-making.
“This year, Kaua‘i County Council member Derek Kawakami came and made his own kine,” Kawamura said. “He’ll be doing is own pounding, too.”
Mochi is one of the traditional Japanese New Year’s food, or osechi ryori, which is prepared to celebrate New Year’s. Mochi also are formed into kagamimochi, or special mochi which are usually placed one on top of the other and serves as a dwelling place of the god of harvest as well as the offering to the god.
In Hawai‘i, a leafed citrus, usually a tangerine, is placed atop the two mochi.
“This is what I like about this place,” said Jerry Kaluna who was visiting the Kawamuras on Christmas Eve. “There is so much to learn, and it is important that we remember some of these traditions that brought us to where we are today.”
The Kapa‘a Jodo Mission, usually celebrating by making mochi for its members and limited sale to the public, already created its own mochi last week, paralleling the Hawai‘i Government Employees Association who created the kadomatsu, another traditional Japanese New Year’s icon, ahead of Christmas.
The kadomatsu, or gate pine, is placed on either side of a home’s main doorway, symbolic of ushering in good luck since the pine is one of the symbols representing longevity, and the bamboo represents flexibility and vitality.
Many of these traditions arrived with the first Japanese who were brought to Hawai‘i as laborers for the sugar cane and pineapple plantations in the 1880s.
From their plantation camps, the traditions melded with traditions from other immigrants who also arrived as laborers to form a unique Hawaiian culture.
