LIHUE — It is time to teach the young people how to do things, said Ed Kawamura Sr. Thursday. Following a day’s toil at the M. Kawamura Enterprises, a company formed by Ed’s father, Mac Kawamura, friends and relatives collected
LIHUE — It is time to teach the young people how to do things, said Ed Kawamura Sr. Thursday.
Following a day’s toil at the M. Kawamura Enterprises, a company formed by Ed’s father, Mac Kawamura, friends and relatives collected in the open yard.
Stacks of wooden pallets were moved into place as the volunteers began the task of converting lengths of hau into kine, or wooden mallets, used to pound mochi for New Year’s, a process which was started from the days when Mac Kawamura operated the farm and garden shop.
“We still do it the old-fashioned way,” Ed said. “People come to the house and spend the day enjoying fellowship while making mochi, enough for everyone who brings rice.”
The tradition of mochi pounding is one of the facets of Japanese culture which arrived in Hawaii with the first Japanese immigrants more than a century ago.
A special sweet rice, available at grocery stores, is soaked, steamed, then pounded with the wooden mallets in the usu, a big, deep bowl fashioned out of stone.
Once the proper consistency is achieved, the blog of hot rice is placed onto a table where it is shaped into flat balls by hand.
“At one time, my mother said she was going to buy a machine to make mochi,” Ed said. “I told her, ‘Da machine going replace me? I no need come your house, then.’”
As the tradition melded into the Hawaiian lifestyle, there are families, and churches, who use the more modern machines to create mochi, considered a Japanese traditional food for New Year.
It is part of a Japanese traditional soup, ozoni, which is eaten to ensure good fortune in the coming year.
Kawamura said because the mochi making process takes a lot of work, and as age overtakes the human body, there needs to be a time when the younger people are taught the lessons so the tradition can be carried on.
“Today is that day,” he said, calling on his grandson, Matthew, a senior leader with the 4H Ranchers, to work with Brayden Poai, 10, in making a kine which he will use, Sunday, to pound out the New Year’s mochi.
• Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-0453 or dfujimoto@thegardenisland.com.
