The following is my essay that I wrote as an assignment for an English school AEON:
Topic: New Year’s traditions in Japan
Style: Casual
There were a bunch of rituals, ceremonies, and customs related to New Year’s holidays. Most of them are currently lost in many families, but there is one area where a long tradition is still vital: food. The most important special food for a new year is mochi, or rice cake. Mochi is made from a special type of rice that is stickier than the usual type. We steam that rice and put it in a stone bowl and hit it by wooden beetles for say, 10 to 15 minutes. The rice is crushed enough to become like a pudding. Then we pick some apart and make it round (the way in the western part of Japan) or cut it with a big knife (the way in the eastern part of Japan). While the form of mochi in the western part of Japan is round, it is rectangular in the eastern part. The round form was the original, but the eastern type rectangular form was introduced to cope with increased population in Edo (the former name of the Tokyo city) to save time. Since I was born in Yamaguchi prefecture that is located in the west end of Honshu island. I was surprised very much when I saw rectangular mochi in Tokyo for the first time.
There are several ways to cook and eat mochi, but the most typical and important dish to use mochi is zoni, special soup with mochi. Zoni is prerequisite for the first three days of the New Year for breakfast. I just mentioned the difference of the form of mochi, but there are tens of hundreds of ways to cook zoni. When a newly married couple, each coming from different areas in Japan, holds a New Year ceremony together for the first time, one of the most troublesome things is how to cook zoni. Each has a completely different image for zoni, and since zoni is a very special and important dish for a New Year, it may cause a lot of trouble between the couple. Not mentioning the form of mochi, there are also two ways to prepare mochi for zoni: to bake or to boil it. There are also several types of soup such as soy source based, soy bean paste (miso) based, and in some limited area they use ‘sweet’ soup using red bean paste.
When I was living in Tokushima, there was an exhibition in a local museum regarding the types of zoni in the Tokushima prefecture. Since Tokushima (Awa) was governed by Hachisuka family came from Aichi prefecture, there are some families that use rectangular mochi while round mochi is popular in Tokushima which locates in the western part of Japan. There were actually almost forty or fifty different types of zoni in the prefecture. One thing that surprised me was that there are some people living in deep mountain area who eat soba noodle instead of zoni since they cannot plant rice because of cold weather.
Now, I usually spend New Year holidays travelling. It is always interesting to try a new type of zoni in different areas.
白井喬二原作、山中貞雄監督の映画「盤嶽の一生」の当時のプログラムです。ヤフオクで落札。この映画が失われてしまったのは本当に残念です。どこかに奇跡的に残っていていつか観られることを期待しています。
「原子力潜水艦シービュー号」の”The Killers of the Deep”を観ました。この回は良かったです。正統的な、駆逐艦対潜水艦の戦いです。といっても潜水艦はシービュー号ではなく、ある小国の旧式の潜水艦です。この潜水艦はアメリカが水中のサイロに保管していた核ミサイルを盗み出して自国に持ち帰ろうとしていました。それをフライングサブでネルソン提督とクレーン艦長が探りに来ますが、潜水艦のミサイルでフライングサブは撃墜され、二人は救命胴着とパラシュートで脱出します。ネルソン提督はアメリカの駆逐艦に救助されますが、クレーン艦長は敵の潜水艦に捕まってしまいます。駆逐艦の艦長は潜水艦からの魚雷攻撃で戦死し、ネルソン提督が替わって指揮を執ります。それでここからの潜水艦と駆逐艦の戦いが非常に見応えがあります。敵の潜水艦の艦長もなかなかの知恵者で様々なデコイを駆使して駆逐艦を翻弄します。クレーン艦長は手錠を外して敵の潜水艦の中を逃げ回り、レーダーを破壊したり、警笛を鳴らしてこの潜水艦の位置を駆逐艦に知らせたりと活躍します。駆逐艦は結局3発の魚雷をくらって船は炎上しネルソン提督は乗員に退避命令を出します。しかし潜水艦も爆雷攻撃で損傷して浮上し、最後はネルソン提督が駆逐艦自体を潜水艦にぶつける、という結末で、辛くもクレーン艦長が爆発の寸前で敵潜水艦から脱出します。しかし、今回はシービュー号自体は何の役にも立っていませんでした。