The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

A Danish Journal of Film Studies 63
Ohagi: glimpses of a not-so-old Japan
Anemone Platz
Ohagi da nee... The name of the sticky sweet cake made of glutinous
rice and red azuki beans awakens at once childhood memories
among the handful of elderly people who agreed to watch the film
with me. Memories of hard work in the rice fields being rewarded
with ohagi at certain seasonal turning points of the year. The
children usually had to pound the half-cooked rice until it reached
its characteristic sticky consistency (mochi). The difficulty lay in the
fact that the rice grains should not be pounded completely but
should be left "half killed," as they would be told. Forming this mass
afterwards into small rice-balls would give them a smooth surface,
but inside some tasty small grains would remain. Lastly these balls
were to be covered with sweetened azuki bean paste, which of
course was also homemade. After offering the best ones to their
ancestors’ spirits on the Buddhist house altar, they would take the
bean cakes to the fields to celebrate the end of the rice planting in
spring or the closing of the rice harvesting season in autumn.
Another occasion some of them apparently vividly remembered
was the day they entered elementary school. Like Tarô's mother had
made some to celebrate his first school day in the Lafcadio Hearn
story (Hearn 1972: 247) that inspired Greenspan to make this film.
Later on, also birthdays became a reason to celebrate with bean
cakes, but at Tarô's time birthdays were so unimportant that they
were often forgotten. In those days everybody from new-born to old