Two Shō of Glutinous Rice in Tane's House, and the Sound of Mortars at Year's End

Why a village that usually sups on millet gruel pounded white rice cakes even in a hard year

"Don't let the fire die."

That was all the old woman named Tane said. Then, her back still bent like a hook, she went off toward the water jar. I crouched before the kamado, the hearth-stove, and fed it one more stick. It was the year 1015 (Chōwa 4), well into its last days, in a village tucked among the hills of Yamato, and this was the morning of the year's end at a house where I had been given a bed on my way through.

The night before, I had been made to draw water three times over. Each time the water in the jar clouded, Tane silently ladled it out and had me fill it fresh. That was the trouble she took over two shō of glutinous rice, about three and a half liters. The grains drank the water, swelled white and plump, and turned very sticky. It was rice quite apart from what they ate day to day, and Tane had kept it carefully put by. From the doorway, the neighbor's wife poked in only her head and peered into the jar.

"Last year it was five."

"Two," said Tane.

That was all she answered, and she scooped the rice left at the bottom with her hand. From the day I arrived, everyone in the village had been talking about how the water ran short in summer and the harvest came in thin. The neighbor's wife said nothing more. In her hand she still held the handle of the pot in which she was boiling millet gruel.

The morning meal was a gruel of foxtail millet and barnyard millet boiled together. Not even the people of Tane's house so much as glanced at the rice in the jar.

Tane divided the rice in the jar with a ladle, half and half. One half she moved into another jar behind the hearth and covered its mouth with a hemp cloth. That was for later. She did not weigh it. She did not count it. The ladle simply went back and forth to the same depth, and the rice in the two jars stood at the same height.

Then the steaming. From the koshiki, the steamer set over the hearth, steam rose straight up. I watched the fire. Tane came and signaled with her hands: pull out a stick. When I had banked the flame low, she lifted the lid of the steamer, took a pinch of rice from near the top, and put it in her mouth. It crumbled softly and already had its stickiness. She nodded, gathered the four corners of the steaming cloth, and jerked her chin at me: carry it.

The mortar had been filled with hot water that morning. If you tip the rice into a cold mortar, the mochi cools at once and will not stretch. Tane had me throw that water out. The earth of the yard was white and hard with frost, and the water fell on it, sent up white steam, and was gone.

The cloth was hot and heavy. I carried it into the yard holding it by the very edge, pinched between my fingertips. But at the rim of the wooden usu, the mortar with its narrowed waist, my pinched hand lost to the heat. A handful of rice or so spilled onto the ground.

Tane said nothing. She crouched and began to pick up the spilled grains, one at a time, with her fingertips. Out of two shō, a handful was gone. Nothing showed in her face, but her fingers did not stop until the very last grain. The grains with earth on them made a dry sound in the palm of her hand. After that I gripped the corners of the cloth in both hands.

Two young men, each with an upright pestle, took their turns at the mortar. At first it was less pounding than crushing the grains, leaning the whole weight of the body into it, working the rice over and over. If they botched it, grains would be left and the tongue would find it unpleasant, so they say. One, out of breath, handed over his pestle; the other rubbed his palms together and took a fresh grip. Even in that moment, Tane's hand, waiting at the rim of the mortar, never left the rice.

Presently the sound changed: petan. The pounding had begun. While the pestle was up, Tane slipped a wetted hand into the mortar and turned the mass over. The hand came out just before the pestle fell. Be a breath late and Tane's hand would be crushed. But the old woman's hand was always a little quicker than the pestle.

The petan grew, little by little, heavier and stickier. On the rim of the mortar, where I had rested my hand, I could feel the tremor of each stroke. The earth underfoot sank ever so slightly at every petan. Hearing it, the neighbors came gathering in twos and threes. In the next house, and the one beyond it, the mortars rang. The sounds from here and there overlapped until the whole village seemed to be counting off the end of the year to a single beat. Every house's mortar was smaller than Tane's. Even so, the sound was in no way outdone; it struck the mountain straight on and came back.

When the sun stood high, the first mortarful was done. Tane tore off pieces of the mochi in quick handfuls and rolled them small, some dabbed with salt, some rolled in boiled red beans, and handed them to the people who had gathered. Fragments the size of half a palm passed from hand to hand, one to each of some twenty people. Freshly pounded mochi stretches softly in the mouth and holds a faint sweetness of rice. These were people who usually sipped gruel of millet. For a while no one spoke; they only chewed. One woman ate half and tucked the rest into the breast of her robe. It must have been for someone waiting at home.

From the fragments she was handing out, Tane set aside four or five and wrapped them in a hemp cloth. She pressed it into my hand.

"Take these. They'll fill your belly on the road."

I put it inside my robe. The mochi was still faintly warm.

The second mortarful was the rice she had set aside in the jar behind the hearth. The steaming and the pounding were no different from the first. This time I was given the job of boiling the water while I watched the fire. What did change was that Tane would not let even the young men touch the mochi once it was pounded. She wiped the rim of the mortar herself with a damp cloth, took the mochi out onto a bed of straw, and began to round it alone.

First she pressed it flat with her palm into a big circle. Wherever a point formed, she gently stroked it with the heel of her hand to smooth it. She smoothed, let go, and looked at it for a while. Then she stroked it again. By my own count it was seven times at the least. Steam rose from the hot mochi into Tane's palm. Under that hand the rounded mochi gained a gloss.

Holding the round mochi in both hands, Tane carried it to a corner of the earthen floor just inside the door. She laid down straw, added a leafy sprig, and set the mochi in place. When it sat poorly, she reached out and set it right. Beside the mochi she also placed a small dish in which the rice grains she had picked up had been rinsed with water. She pressed her wrinkled hands together and kept her eyes closed for a long time.

That evening the villagers went home, each to their own house. The woman who had put mochi in her robe turned at the door and bowed deeply to Tane. I was given the task of burying the fire in the hearth ashes. I crouched and watched until the red of the buried embers grew thin. In the corner of the earthen floor, the round mochi was faintly white in the dark, the only thing that was. Far off, at some house, one mortar was still sounding, petan, petan. I felt the warmth of the ashes on the back of my hand, then crept into the straw of my bed.

That round mochi in the corner of the earthen floor. The kagami-mochi in the shops that I know is stacked in two, one large and one small. Perhaps its roots ran in two strands: the mochi that was likened to a mirror in the capital, and round mochi like this one, from villages like this.

Some years later I passed through that village again. Perhaps the fields had recovered somewhat; at year's end the mortars were ringing here and there. Whether it was those young men, I cannot say myself. Only, among the many mortars, one pestle's sound, the lowest and heaviest of them, came from deep in the village.

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