A Smashing Success

Guy Urata, 42, was splattered down his front with chunks of mushy rice. With a wooden mallet in his hand and a granite crucible in front of him, he celebrated a Japanese New Year tradition called mochitsuki.

Urata was among nearly 100 people from the Oxnard Buddhist Temple and the surrounding community who congregated for the centuries-old ritual of fellowship and celebration.

Each new year, the congregation participates in the Japanese tradition of making steamed sweet rice cakes called mochi. The white cakes symbolize purity, excitement and happiness, said the Rev. Kakei Nakagawa, minister at the temple.

With repeated splats, congregation members pounded a wooden mallet into mounds of the steamed rice, which resembles bread dough. The smashed rice was then taken indoors where it was shaped into cakes, coated in corn starch to make it less sticky, or dropped into bowls with a mixture of white radish, Chinese cabbage and ginger.

The temple sells these cakes, primarily to congregation members, as a fund-raiser. But the real point is to celebrate as a community, to reflect on the past year and offer thanks.

Temple members of all ages chatted as they quickly handled the pounded rice. They laughed. They smiled. Outside, men drank Japanese beer and watched as their friends repeatedly walloped the sweet rice.

“In my heart, it’s cultural,” said temple President Ron Watanabe, 56, of Thousand Oaks. “It’s a very important tradition to do the new year this way.”

The mochi tradition is based on the significance of rice to the Japanese people. In ancient Japan, rice was offered as one of the first crops to the gods. Today, many secular organizations and nearly all Japanese religious groups host a rice-cake-making event at year’s end, Urata said.

The temple, which celebrated its 70th anniversary in September, has been participating in the tradition for about 40 years. This year’s event was hosted by the temple and Oxnard Kendo Dojo, a traditional Japanese fencing group.

In recent years, the temple has foregone the mallet and mortar smashing method and used machines to mash the rice.

But this year it returned to the old way of making mochi, because “culturally, it would be beneficial to the kids to see how they do it,” Watanabe said.

Emi Hatakeyama, 17, of Oxnard and her brother Kenji, 14, passed up a buffet of mochi bathed in white radish, ginger and other dressings for a trip to Jack in the Box with the congregation’s youth group.

“Busted!” blurted Tammy Mizuno, 38, of Oxnard, when news of the fast-food run surfaced.

But as hip-hop music poured from a speaker in the corner, the pair of teens seemed glad to help with the annual tradition.

Tammy’s mother, Sumiye Mizuno, 65, loved the fact that Emi, Kenji and other youngsters were working with older church members to shape the mochi, place it in bags and add a price.

“It shows that they’re interested in the church and that we know we will have future leaders,” she said.

The temple is scheduled to host another mochitsuki event from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at the temple, 250 South H St. in Oxnard. For more information, call 483-5948.