In a bright, modern home in a Monterey Park neighborhood, three generations of a Japanese American family made way for the new year with an ancient tradition.
A hundred pounds of glutinous rice had been soaking since the previous night. In the morning, the rice was drained, steamed and pounded into a soft, sticky mass. Then the Akiyoshi-Katayama family -- three grandparents, four parents and six children, along with assorted friends -- lined up at a long table for the final step in the process of making Japanese rice cakes known as mochi.
Two grandfathers cut the piping hot dough into small pieces and tossed them down on the table covered with white paper dusted with rice flour. Hands large and small reached for the pieces and shaped them into spheres, turning them lightly and quickly. The family members bantered as they worked, reminiscing about times past when grandma taught them techniques she learned from her parents, who learned from their parents and on down through the ages.
Now, generations later on the final day of 2008, the most unusual aspect about the family ritual is that it happened at all.
"Most of my friends have no idea how to make mochi," said Kenneth Akiyoshi, 16, a fifth-generation Japanese American whose parents, Cary and Tammie, have hosted the family mochi-making event for more than two decades. "Their parents don't want to keep up the traditions, but I think they're really important."
For at least 13 centuries, the Japanese have made mochi. Once the hallowed food of emperors, it came to be used as offerings to the gods, a portable snack for traveling samurai and, eventually, as a de rigueur food for the masses during the Japanese New Year season. The rice cakes traditionally symbolized purity and strength.
The mochi is dropped in soup, stuffed with sweet bean paste, rolled in soybean flour, dipped in sugary soy sauce, grilled and wrapped in seaweed. It is also used as a New Year's decoration -- two rice cakes stacked on each other and topped with a tangerine representing the generations -- as a symbol of good luck.
In Japan, mochi is still eaten during the New Year season by the vast majority of people -- nearly 90% of respondents in a 2001 survey commissioned by a Japanese sake maker, Konishi Brewing Co. Ltd.
But in Southern California, both commercial and community mochi makers say demand for the seasonal rice cakes has dropped significantly.
