Microseason: Chicken Begin to Lay Eggs
WINTER
DEEP CHILL
CHICKEN BEGIN TO LAY EGGS
30 January - 2 February
This year, 3rd February marks the First of Spring, and ahead of that day, we celebrate Setsubun. Essentially it’s the Eve of the New Year. Perhaps not surprisingly, key materials of this celebration are rice and soy beans.
SOY BEANS
Roasted soy beans thrown to ward off oni, evil ogre spirits, while simultaneously ensuring a plentiful harvest across the upcoming year. The celebration involves, mostly children, throwing roasted soy beans and adults who wear oni masks, while shouting “oni outside, good fortune inside!” This practice is said to have begun in the late 700s inside the walls of the imperial court, and spread amongst commoners from the late 1600s, slowly evolving into what it is today. Today it is a festive event, taking place in the home, in schools, in public centers, as well as temples and shrines.
For the Japanese diet, soy beans are an important source of fiber, protein, and vitamins and minerals such as vitamins B1, B2, E, folic acid, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc. And are the hero ingredient in classic food things such as tofu and miso.
Soy beans are not just reserved for consumption, it is used in the natural textile dye process to avoid colors from bleeding.
RICE
Rice is the other material to note. On Setsubun, we eat ehoumaki which is nothing but a large maki roll that includes seven ingredients, playing off the Seven Lucky Gods. Wrapping up all the good fortune. What’s said to be important is how it is eaten: without speaking, eat whole, whilst facing the direction of that’s year’s prosperous direction. Without speaking to ensure that the good fortune doesn’t escape, and eating whole to note severe good will and good relationships.
This practice is rather new, beginning in the 1600s in the Kansai region, and only in recent decades has it become commonplace across the country. The proliferation of ehoumaki is traced its introduction by a Hiroshima-based convenience store in 1989.
Rice is arguably the most important food material, serving as the staple of Japan, but also a vital player in fermentation. However, the plant is not just reserved as a food things. It is also used in the making of earthen walls or sacred amulets too.
Photo credit: Momoko Nakamura