The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

64 p.o.v. number 13 March 2002
man would turn a year older on the first of January, a custom that
was first changed in 1950. In any case, ohagi is nearly the only sweet
that people born before World War II in rural Japan can think of
when asked about it. Their families had rice and beans. Sugar was
scarce and expensive and thus kept for these special occasions.
Tarô's fondness for bean cakes above anything else does not
surprise anybody in this group. His silent fight with the teacher
over the matter is followed with nods of goodwill and understanding.
It is only natural that his urban schoolmates did not
understand how important mother's ohagi could become for a little
boy left alone in an environment where most if not all seem to be
enemies. O-Yoshi's reaction when trying this delicacy in the last
scene confirms her lack of understanding of it before this
experience. It was possible for children in urban Japan to get several
kinds of sweets. Their playgrounds used to be near small booths
where elderly women sold colourful candies, little bean balls, sugar
canes, and cheap toys. Every day they would gather there after
school and spend the little pocket money they had received from
their mothers for their afternoon snack (Fukaya 1996:184-186). To a
child like Tarô, from the countryside, where cash was kept for the
most urgent necessities, such a custom must have been unknown.
Connoisseurs of Japanese-style confection have been searching for
an explanation as to how ohagi came into existence. The common
way of making this kind of Japanese-style cake was to cover a little
ball of sweet white or red bean paste with a layer of glutinous rice.
That was not only easier but also cleaner to make. How, then, did it
turn into the contrary? How did what should have been inside, the
bean paste, come to be outside, and what should have been the skin,
the mochi, become the content? Looking at the occasions on which