Portland, Oregon, USA
Mochitsuki 2000
06 February 2000

Mochi (chewy rice) is pounded in an usu (mortar) using a kine (wooden mallet)

I took a couple of visitors from Japan to Mochitsuki 2000. It was held indoors, since the weather in Portland is unpredictable this time of year. My guests found it disorienting to see so many Japanese faces who could speak only English. "Preserving Our Heritage" read a display at the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center booth. "How is that possible, if you cannot speak the language?" one of my guests asked. The events of the afternoon hopefully answered that question.

Mochi (chewy rice in balls or squares) figures prominently in recipies for Japanese New Year food, so an important part of getting ready for the New Year celebration is mochitsuki (mochi making). It used to be a lot of labour, which would bring communities together. Nowadays in Japan, there are electric kitchen appliances that do almost all the work, and ready-to-eat mochi can be bought at the supermarket. Mochitsuki events are seldom seen in Japan anymore.

When pounding mochi, timing is important. Be careful not to crush the blob turner's fingers!

In Portland, they do mochitsuki the old-fashioned way. There were two MOCHI POUNDING stations, where people could try their hand at wielding the kine (heavy wooden mallet), while brave volunteers turned over the blob of rice in the usu (mortar) between swings. Good timing is essential! Special miniature kine let little children get in on the action. When the blob was ready, it was taken to a side table where it was divided into small balls. Very small samples (each about 2-3 mL) were available for tasting. Perhaps the organizers have learned from previous years that Americans like to pound mochi more than eat it. The texture was smooth, not at all lumpy -- a good pounding job!

• Little Tokyo Mochitsuki 1999
  Images from a similar event in Los Angeles CA
• 'Tis the Season to Make Mochi
  A December trip to the Kubota family’s TK Farms in San Martin CA
• Ties Talk Message Archive: Mochitsuki
  Japanese Americans reminisce about mochitsuki
• Japanese Mochi Making
  How technology changed folk processes
• Portland Mochitsuki 2001
  Another iteration of this community event

Mindful of the short attention span of children, the organizers had an ACTIVITY AREA where volunteers taught visitors about shodo (calligraphy), origami (paper folding), using hashi (chopsticks) and playing taiko (Japanese drum). A video played that showed the mochi-making process, and captured the mochitsuki reminiscences of local Nikkei-jin.

Part of the afternon was a STAGE SHOW, which opened with Fujinami-kai, the students of a local odori sensei (Japanese dance teacher) who over 40 years has trained three generations of students, from five-year-olds to adults. There was even a male dancer, a European American who owns his own hakama (traditional Japanese men's formal wear). Storyteller Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo of Eth Noh Tec entertained everyone with his tale of three sisters and a magic peach (I think he wrote this himself; none of us knew of such a Japanese folktale). He skillfully wove in a reference to intergenerational issues: the old woman in the woods says something in Japanese to one of the sisters, who cannot find the word in her Japanese-English dictionary. To finish things off, Portland Taiko played a rousing, high-energy set, which, it was announced at the end, was the swan song for a couple of longtime members.

After the show, my Japanese guests and I were waiting at a bus stop when a carful of young white men drove by, yelling racist comments. In a way, I am glad that happened -- it showed my guests just what challenges people of Asian heritage have to face all their lives in North America, whether they have been here for three months or three generations. Being from a country where they are the majority, my guests have probably not experienced anything like that. It made the performances we had seen all the more remarkable and commendable.

• "Remembering Vincent Chin"
  Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, died from a beating in Detroit MI on 19 June 1982 at the hands of unemployed auto workers who thought he was Japanese
• Letters to Thien
  Thien Minh Ly, a Vietnamese American student, was brutally murdered in Tustin CA on 28 January 1996 by someone who refered to him as a "Jap"
• Why Won't Prejudice Go Away?
  The words "Hunting Season" were once aimed at people of Japanese descent