The Uejo family of Nuuanu makes mochi the old-fashioned way — pounding sweet rice smooth with wooden mallets in a huge stone mortar — as their ancestors did when they immigrated from Okinawa to Hawaii island in the early 1900s.
It’s a New Year’s tradition for local Japanese families to eat or make mochi, or Japanese rice cakes.
It’s a way to acknowledge the life-giving sustenance of rice, considered a sacred offering to the gods. By pounding it, there’s the spiritual metaphor of melding many thousands of grains of rice (each representing a separate soul) into a sticky, smooth mass — a communal effort that creates bonds between individuals and ties the present to the past.
Most families use mechanized grinders nowadays instead of pummelling the rice, a process that still requires the help of many hands and the know-how of the experienced.
A few days before every new year, all the aunts, uncles, cousins, grandchildren and other in-laws flock to the home of patriarch Masaichi Uejo, the eldest of seven children whose parents came from Okinawa. On Sunday they pounded and shaped some 50 pounds of rice into cakes to be shared with friends and neighbors.
Now 89, Uejo said, "I like everybody come every year; after all, you gotta know your own family. Some families never get together and don’t know their own brothers and sisters."
Watching some women form the rice patties and stuff them with azuki bean paste or untraditional peanut butter for the kids, he nodded approval of their deft handling of the gooey paste. "After all, I’m the supervisor," Uejo said, triggering laughter.
His daughter Colleen Uejo said her parents once used an electric mochi grinder in the 1960s, but in 1976 found a heavy stone in Kahaluu perfect for the mortar, or "usu," with a hollow already formed to hold the rice. Her uncle Minoru Uyejo (whose name is spelled with a "y" thanks to the inclination of an immigration official) made the mallets from guava wood in three different sizes, including a miniature version for the toddlers. A retired machinist, Uyejo also made the grinder for the steamed rice to cut down on the amount of pounding the mixture needs.
"When we got the usu we started pounding mochi, mainly to teach the younger kids how it was done. Otherwise, they would think it just comes from the store," Colleen Uejo said.
Her sister Julie Mun, who travels home each year from Maine during the holidays, said the old-school method is a lot more fun, and "it tastes better when it’s your sweat." She added, "No place else in the world can you get peanut butter mochi!"
Sisters Keiko Sugikawa and Takako Owens are the aunties in charge, and along with Uncle Minoru they’re on their feet the entire day working at the big center table in the garage. Relatives of all ages stand side by side at the table, chatting and laughing, their hands caked with potato starch as they roll and stretch the sticky paste into patties and stuff them with filling. The trick is to put just the right amount of filling in the center so it doesn’t ooze out.
"Everyone is scolding each other for making junk mochi. The worst thing is to put too much filling and you can’t close it and the guts come out," Julie Mun explained as others nodded and laughed. The junk ones can’t be given away, so they have to be eaten by their maker, she joked.
Dawn Sugikawa, who married into the family, said, "I love it. And the mochi is fresh, much better than store-bought ones, I think, because it’s warm. And all the family gets together and has fun."
Everyone take turns at pounding the mochi — it’s considered good luck to pound — and "anybody sitting close by gets wet as well. The water goes all over and there’s rice everywhere!" Sugikawa said, referring to the water used to keep the rice from sticking to the mallets and usu.
Husband Roy Sugikawa said his muscles get pretty tight after pounding mochi for the half-hour it takes to make the rice smooth, swinging in tandem with cousin Glen Uyejo. In between swings, Neal Yamanouchi turned over the entire mass of rice with a wooden paddle, and said the physical exertion was "a good way to start the new year."
Keoni Yamanouchi, 13, guided his little sister Nalani, 2, in wielding her tiny mallet with brother Makanani, 4. Keoni said he started pounding mochi when he was 1 year old, adding, "I used to play with it a lot; I used to think of it as Play-Doh, but then I was taught not to play with my food."
Two mochi cakes made from the first batch are offered to the gods on the family altar in the main house, graced with photographs of the grandparents. Each of the relatives takes a turn bowing slightly before the altar, with palms together in prayer for prosperity in the coming year.
Auntie Reiko Uyejo said a larger mochi cake is put on the bottom, and a smaller one on top of it, then both are crowned with a tangerine or other fruit with a stem and leaf still attached, an arrangement called "kagami mochi." It symbolizes the year past and the new year to come, and the continuity of the family. The sweetness of the fruit signifies the hoped-for sweetness of the coming year, for good health and luck for the family, she said.
