3. Case study: mochinage (throwing cakes)

In this section, I want to describe the case of mochinage or the throwing of rice cakes. Mochinage was one of the most popular forms of communal gift exchange I encountered during fieldwork, involving entire neighbourhoods. Mochinage is usually understood to be a kind of exchange that reflects the principles of vertical hierarchy. Cakes are thrown at the completion of buildings. Those who give, usually understood to be the patrons of the event, are placed on a roof or a high place, and those who receive are down (women, dependants, neighbours and children). However, mochinage, like gift exchange in general, cannot be reduced to these spatial considerations. In Kamikatsu, cakes are thrown from a high place, but on other occasions mochi are thrown horizontally, despite the actual rank differential among givers and recipients. Looking only at the moment of throwing, however, obscures the complex relation between those who produce mochi and those who throw it. The aim of this section is to look at this relation.

Villagers say that Mochi or mochi is a humble gift. It is small, it is not expensive, and it is auspicious. Ohnuki-Tierney (1993) describes how rice has cosmological significance. Raw rice is identified with the nigitama, the positive power of divine purity and the origin of the acquisition of wealth. Rice provides sacred energy and power and it is eaten at when people need strength or in stages of regeneration (New Year) (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993: 55-74). Mochi is thrown from an elevated position in a replica of the folk belief that fortune falls from heaven (sometimes a shelf). Ohnuki-Tierney also argues that the production of rice, which makes mochi possible, is a cosmic exchange between man and deities (ibid.). Unlike metallic currency, rice is viewed as pure. Many authors have argued the problematic of giving ‘dirty’ currency as gifts, mostly money (Bloch 1989, Webbly 1993). Although Japanese do not have any problem with making gifts of money, currency is nevertheless perceived as somehow ‘dirty’ (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993: ibid.). As I argued in Chapter 1, Araki (1978) considers wrapping as what ‘cleanses’ the dirt. I, however, see the wrapping of money as a method of containing the ‘dirt’, mystifying dirt, allowing dirty things to circulate between people without contaminating the transactors.

To consume mochi is said to bring good luck, it is good for the body and one’s health (Chapter Four). Throwing mochi complements the giving of sake. Villagers attach much importance to the pounding or processing of mochi. This is team work. Mochi-making is hard work and one that requires harmony among those that make it. Children are taught to make mochi from an early age at school. It is a process of co-operation that puts most of the ideas of ‘hard work’ and ‘harmony’ in circulation. However, these ideas of ‘harmony’ are not about burying differences. Harmony in these contexts means to decide who are the best pounders and makers of mochi, and how mochi is usually extracted from the makers and given to others that will throw it. It is a harmony of ‘consent’ in which the producers of mochi give away their rights over the final product and distribution.

Mochi is produced by boiling rice. Once the rice is soft it is put in a pounding mortar (or electric mixer) and pounded with large wooden pestles. The process requires at least one person pounding and another person folding the rice. Once the rice acquires a texture like a dough it is transferred to a table where another team of people cut and fold the rice. Mochi is understood to be a folded or wrapped prestation. While folding mochi Mieko, a woman in her mid-seventies, said to me:

Mochi is one of the few prestations that is never bought in the market. Most mochi is produced either by hand at home or with machines owned by Japan Agriculture. These machines can be rented for private mochi-making, specially in cases when there are large donations of it. Most of the non-household production goes to Sunday markets for foreigners and city dwellers. Tourists buy mochi in the town market, as an expression of ‘rural experience’. An entry in my diary reflects:

Tourists pass with their cars through the town. There is a small shop at the entrance of Kamikatsu. They stop to buy. Tourists contemplate mochi pounding eagerly. Shy, a man in his mid-fifties asks to participate. He laughs and pounds with the villagers. He feels ‘good’ after pounding. He and his wife buy a large supply of mochi to take home. For most tourists and villagers, making mochi is an experience, as a friend put it, of ‘being in contact with nature and the human spirit’.

Takaishi are a prominent family of farmers in Masaki village. I met Mrs. Takaishi and her children at an eikaiwa (English teaching) lesson. Though we did not meet very often, they were kind enough to invite me to the ceremony of making their new house. Mrs. Takaishi and I met at the post office by chance. It was the anniversary of the opening of the post-office in Masaki village. The extent to which mochi is important was reflected in the prestation given by the post-office to its customers. We were given a plastic box with two auspicious white and pink mochi and a calendar. Mrs. Takaishi was on her way to book the large machine for mochi making at the JA. She invited me for the following week. A week later, in the JA annexed building I met her and another eight neighbours, her mother and her husband’s father. They had been working already for few hours boiling rice. They had paid for the rice as part of their gift as host, although they had received some gifts of money from neighbours to help out with the cost of the event. The room was so steamy it was hard to see. After a brief introduction we started working. We cut and shaped and folded rice. Relations between Takaishi and those helping them were convivial. The women from the neighbourhood who helped making mochi had their heads wrapped with white wrapping cloth tengui (see picture). As Hendry argues head bands indicate the sacredness of the work being done (Hendry 1993: 82). Takaishi women, however, did not make use of headbands. It is possible to argue that the difference in wrapping suggest a different approach to work. Takaishi owned the production of mochi. The rest of women received tea and fruits as ‘thanks’ for their help. They also participated in catching mochi. As I describe below, mochinage results in intense competition among neighbours. Thus, these women who worked at the level of equals had, later during mochinage, to compete among themselves to ‘catch’ the mochi. All women, alike, however, wore aprons, a plastic glove on their left hands (for cutting mochi) and a white glove (for folding). They used gloves to prevent ‘dirt’. Thus, the mochi was clean and apt to be an auspicious prestations (see Chapter Four).

On the day of tatemae, several gifts of sake arrived at the Takaishi house. Takaishi counted them and left them at the store house. There were over 30 boxes of sake from different neighbours, kin and friends of the family. Takaishi’s head, his son, his brother, grandson and the carpenter ascended through the building structure to prepare an altar in the roof (see also Ashkenazi 1985). Takaishi’s wife, his son’s wife, and his son’s wife’s mother prepared the mochi in wooden trays and gave them to the men who took it to the roof. The carpenter, also the ritual specialist, prepared the ritual prestations for the deity. From below, none of us had direct access to the ritual in the roof. It was veiled. A Shinto ceremony was celebrated to ward off inauspiciousness. Takaishi offered sake, fruits, sakaki leaves, and vegetables (7 in total) to the deity, as well as several pieces of mochi.

Meanwhile, the men who had helped the carpenter, mostly neighbours and carpenter’s workmates, arrived and sat below the house. Takaishi asked the children to remain inside the tatemae (wooden frame) and wait there. Takaishi’s wife waited under the roof of the old house, greeting the women of the neighbourhood. These women waited in the left side of the house, next to the entrance. In total there were over 21 men who had either helped in the construction or given gifts or were neighbours, 15 women and over 15 children (Takaishi’s children’s friends). Women greeted each other. They knew each other very well, having met many times at mochi making and mochi throwing during the year. They all had their plastic bags ready to carry mochi home. They did not greet each other very formally, partly because minutes later they would be competing to catch mochi. The mochi were given both to ‘thank’ for help and to ‘apologise’ for all the inconvenience that neighbours had to put up during the construction of the house, and to celebrate the auspiciousness of the event. Mochi were given to those who were the ‘workforce’ (in making the house and making mochi). It was a return prestation, ‘thanks’ and ‘compensation’ and ‘apology’ for the appropriation of labour and for their gifts of sake.

At the end of the Shinto ritual on the roof, Takaishi, dressed in a smart suit, threw large amounts of sweets to the children inside the tatemae. They were placed there for protection, as Takaishi, his son, and his nine-year-old grandson were going to throw large amounts of mochi, which were hard and could hurt the children. The children jumped in joy as the sweets fell from above. Children’s suito-nage (throwing of sweets) shows that it is not mochi per se which defines the conditions of auspiciousness, but the action of throwing large quantities of prestations. There were more sweets than they could catch. Their hands and pockets were already full but the sweets continued to fall. Adults were delighted by the sight of happy children. They were also slightly nervous waiting for the mochi. Women and men looked for the best place from where to catch mochi. Takaishi threw over 30Kg of mochi, to the neighbours. Men and women hurried to catch as much they could; all politeness, status or any other consideration were forgotten. They competed with each other to catch more than their neighbours, stealing mochi cakes from each other if they could. All was done amid laughter but the pursuit of mochi remained frantic.

To conclude mochinage, two larger pieces, also given for good luck, were thrown. Those villagers that caught them would be given a bottle of sake. Men were now jumping to catch these mochi. Finally, Takaishi threw four large pieces of mochi, those that were to bring luck to the house. He threw one from each auspicious corner of the house. The fight for catching these four pieces was frantic. Neighbours threw themselves on top of each other. The prestation they caught was then bartered with a bottle of sake from Takaishi. One of the lucky men, with the bottle under his arm handled the mochi to an elderly lady. Another man came and emptied his pockets full of mochi into my plastic bag. In all mochinage parties I went, men always seemed ready to give away (to women and to) me the mochi they had fought for.
Plate 4. Three stages of mochinague. Women making mochi.

Takaishi from above looked happily at the multitude catching cakes. As some neighbours said, it was a good tatemae, one where much mochi had been thrown, one that would bring auspiciousness to the house, and make neighbours happy. As they were leaving, neighbours would ask to each other, in very indirect semiotic ways, how much mochi they had. Most people returned home with their bags full, some with more than three kilos of mochi. ‘Lucky them!’ a man said, seeing how little I had got, ‘elderly ladies know how to catch mochi, they are very fast’ he concluded. With these words he gave me all his mochi. Mochi would last for many weeks and would make daily food more enjoyable and auspicious. Some people left eating mochi all the way to their houses.[41]
Plate 4 and 5. Three stages of mochinague. Men throwing mochi.
Neighbours catching (and fighting for) mochi.

From an analytical perspective, the competitive scramble for the cakes indicates political and social competition among those who wish to be seen in the prestigious position of providing for the well-being of their households. Since people believe that mochi brings good health and strength, villagers, especially women, fight to have these pieces of prestige food. Mochi are important for women because they are one of the few, or perhaps the only auspicious prestation they are able to bring into their households. Sake and other ritual prestations are usually part of men’s ritual gift exchange. This exchange takes place mostly in the feast that the host offers to the men later in the evening.

The Takaishi women who had produced the mochi remained in the periphery of the house, catching some pieces but mostly watching. For Takaishi to achieve prestige and to create a good atmosphere in their neighbourhood, the task of the women had been crucial. The mochi had been appropriated from them, both Takaishi and their in-laws. Through the women, other women in the neighbourhood had been asked to help. Another appropriation had also taken place. The women of the neighbourhood who had helped in making mochi had been forced to compete with each other, and the rest of neighbours, to obtain their compensation. The hierarchical relations of ‘below-above’ were not only manifestations of vertical rank. They hide the process of appropriation between producers and givers, men and women, forcing producers to become recipients and to cede part of their production. Furthermore, the carpenter achieves a position of mutuality denied to the spouse. Patron and carpenter become the ritual pair of the event (this is opposed to the ritual and domestic pair that husband and wife have as apex of the household). This differences become implemented in the later consumption of the gifts during the feast.

After the neighbours’ return home, Takaishi would get ready for the feast later in the night. Around eight o’clock all the men who had helped in making the house, and all male close neighbours gathered for the feast. I was the only woman invited. Fish and other delicacies were served. All the bottles of sake received as gifts were taken by Takaishi’s wife, and unwrapped in the kitchen. The gifts of sake were served to all guests. The spatial distribution was very important. In the seat opposite the main door and close to the place where sake had been kept, sat Takaishi the household head, his son, the carpenter and Takaishi’s brother. Men sat in opposite benches in u-shaped arrangements. The group of men was positioned in opposition to another, guests to host, carpenter to workforce. At the periphery of this arrangement Takaishi’s women served the food and drink. The women who had helped in producing the mochi were absent.

Early in the morning the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) and members of the local administration gathered to organize mochinage at the school. The money for the rice had been paid out of the PTA/school budget. In teams of twos and threes men and women pounded mochi. A father prepared a large pan for making soup for the children’s parents. Most women of the neighbourhood started arriving to help in the making of mochi. Like in the case of Takaishi, there was no consideration of rank in the working arrangements. All worked according to their skills. Unlike Takaishi’s case, politeness was more stressed here. It was used to play down the differences between wives and mothers, and disagreements over how to prepare and who should prepare the mochi. A few women, especially those who already took care of preparing gifts and the presentation of events in the municipal office, set to organize the wrapping of mochi in boxes, which other women politely declined to do. Gossip was as important as politeness. People talked about children, their performance at school, their parents, and teachers. The mochi pounded outside was moved inside the gymnasium where women had finally set up a production table. One woman folded the mochi, another cut it, a group of six women folded it, and finally three more placed it in pink/white combinations, and wrapped it with an irodori leaf, and placed it in a plastic box, covered with a wrapping paper with auspicious designs, and held fast with a rubber band. The boxes were left at the entrance, and Mr. Hiraoka, a PTA member gave a box to each of the families and elders attending the event. After making the mochi and soup, all the families and children were gathered inside the hall. The headmaster of the school and the teachers, members of the board of education and the PTA sat in a lateral area, with parents at the back of the room and children in between. A long ceremony took place to bid farewell to the school winter semester, and thank everybody for their participation. During the ceremony strict etiquette was observed and polite language was used. Rank was defined by the spatial organisation, with those of higher rank, being furthest from the main door, and teachers and the PTA forming a ‘wrapping’ layer of people around.

After the ceremony everybody relaxed and positions changed. Children, parents, and PTA members mingled together waiting for the mochi to fall. From the roof, the head of the PTA and the headmaster began to throw the mochi. They form another symbolic pair. The children, elders and parents all ran to catch mochi. The production of mochi was not as large as in Takaishi’s case, but large enough for each family to go home with an average of half a kilo of mochi. Parent’s and children’s contribution to ‘make the school’ was rewarded with mochi. The throwing of mochi, as in Takaishi’s case, was used to define the limits of the participation and the making of the community. The differences in mochinage reflect the differences in the definition of what is the community in each case.

At the school, soup was given to all families. The giving of soup was a small replica of the feast that takes place on other occasions instead of sake. Everybody sat on a large blue mat. Those who had thrown the cakes, some senior teachers and the headmaster, left while parents looked for a place to eat with their children. Unlike Takaishi’s case, recipients did not partake with the hosts, nor gifts were allowed between parents and teachers or headmaster during the year. The channels for negotiation of their community are different. At the school most of the givers were absent. Women participated in the feast, as well as men.

With the two cases of mochi here I want to emphasise the process from the appropriation of gifts by patrons or figures of authority, to the consumption of gifts. The cases of mochinage seem to indicate that when figures of authority are present, women tend to be excluded from the public consumption of ritual prestations. When seniors/ patrons indicate the renunciation of prestige by leaving (or remaining peripheral), women have a much greater participation in public affairs. It is also possible to see how the pair of patron/ritual specialist substitutes for the domestic pair of husband/wife. This substitution also takes place at autumn festivals (see Chapter Five). Throwing mochi, in the two types of mochinage here, have different political implications depending on how givers and recipients imagine their community to be. Those who are the patrons have different positions of rank and renunciation. Their differences in production, distribution and consumption are to a certain extent ‘creative responses’ to their different needs as different communities.

I will argue that it is through the appropriation of mochi that patrons achieve their status and prestige as auspicious givers. The giver is presented as transforming the production of mochi into an auspicious food during the ritual of giving. The relation between giver and recipient might be represented vertically as well as horizontally when giving. There are several cases of mochinage at festivals where the donor is not placed in an elevated position. Relations between villagers before and after giving (during the production and during consumption) are quite void of the resonances of oppositional rank that are present at the moment of throwing. The community of villagers, usually compliant, helpful and attentive to their fellows, turn their backs on their neighbours in seeking individual, household, and gender profit. Neighbours are not those who live nearby, but those who compete with each other to gain the auspicious prestations thrown by whoever happens to be the patron of that occasion. Political power is achieved by becoming a patron. However, for a patron to be able to be a generous and good provider of auspiciousness, he must have people (women) who will renounce (or be excluded from) throwing. This is reflected in the statement made by Takaishi’s wife:

‘My house is very traditional. When it comes to throwing gifts, it is only my husband’s father, husbands’ father brother, my husband, and my son that can do it. My daughter is very disappointed. She also wants to go to the roof and throw cakes to all neighbours. But she cannot. We have spent three days making the cakes but she cannot throw them. She does not understand why. It is not her place my ‘in-law’ says. I think it is not fair, but they are very traditional’.

Although mochi receives less ethnographic attention than wrapped gifts, the production of mochi tells us about important gender differences that remain less clear in other types of gift exchange. It also informs us of the relation between those who produce mochi and those who throw it as one of appropriation. The lack of ethnographic descriptions of the production and giving of mochi also reveals the pre-eminence that the exchange of wrapped gifts (usually commodities) has for most Japanese.

Cases in which women are patrons of events are rare. The only cases I assisted at, in which women took the role of patron of events, were in Tokushima city among women’s groups such as English conversation classes. On these occasions patrons ‘threw’ cakes by means of giving large amounts of cakes, food and farewell gifts as parties. The host on these occasions, however, participated in the feast and received many orei gifts in return weeks later. Prestations were bought in the market with the women’s money.

During recent years the idea that ritual prestations become polluted has appeared. Although ‘dirt’ is viewed by villagers as a physical substance, it also has symbolic meaning. Men and women at different stages must ensure that mochi will be ‘clean’, hence the use of gloves and the use of ritual specialists. When villagers speak about ‘dirt’, they speak of the unwanted qualities that affect things and people. Dirt, however, is not physical. It is a symbol for the existence of an ‘outside’ that manages to enter social life. I will argue that as Bloch and Parry (1989) have shown, ‘dirt’ comes as a result of the presence of strong market capitalist relations. Villagers wrap things to symbolically prevent ‘the market’ from coming ‘in’. Once wrapped, things are imagined to be ‘protected’ from this aggressive agent. Villagers in paying for the use of machinery to make mochi, and other contractual relations, move out of the domestic sphere. As Dore argues, one source of difficulty in village relations is the mixing of neighbourly relations with economic contractual relations: ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be – nor a buyer and seller’ (Dore 1978: 268). ‘Dirt’ appears as a consequence of mixing these two sources. When ‘dirt’ appears, so does wrapping (hands, heads, food). With the wrapping of things (people and parts of the body) they represent their community as if it was ‘untouched’, a sphere of social life which is not alienated with the market, and where gifts and commodities are not alienated either.

I will insist throughout this thesis that wrapping is related to the idea that capitalist relations have introduced ‘dirt’. The market is viewed as a form of symbolic ‘danger’, namely the alienation of objects, people and their production. The idea that something can be polluting is quite problematic for Japanese (see Chapter Four), thus they must do something to the market to remove the impression that it is polluting. The more the presence of the symbolic dirt created by market, the more the wrapping. This has important consequences for the understanding of gifts and commodities. When wrapping is applied, the final product is not only ‘protected’ but it stands for the personality of a personalised (as opposed to alienated) object. In capitalist societies, a wrapped gift, stands in opposition to the market (and the alienation of things). The differences in wrapping in capitalist societies tell us about different conceptions of alienation and differences in the production of objects for consumption. Wrapping can also be used to ‘extract’ things from the market, that is to ‘mystify’ things from the market, and to ‘mystify’ the presence of the market. I examine these themes in detail in Chapter Six.

Mochi, like all forms of wrapped gifts, is usually re-wrapped. The second layer (or plastic bag) protects the mochi from symbolic ‘dirt’ and mystifies the market, too. The wrapping, especially if it seals the prestation, or if the prestation is a self-sealing one, creates the illusion that the prestation is inalienable, the object is not only good but auspicious, it stands for all the ‘sacred’ qualities of things that would exist without market. However, consumption requires that wrapping must be removed first. The case of mochi is simple, because although it is a wrapped prestation it is a self-sealing one. It can be consumed without having to be unwrapped. Wrapping can never be removed from mochi, making it sacred, suitable for exchange between people and with deities. Why is it then re-wrapped again, and why is there more ‘dirt’ nowadays? Mochi must be produced, rice must be bought, it must be boiled and elaborated. Mochinage implies a large throwing of mochi and requires people to do it, machinery, and money. The production of mochi is complex because a house depends on others to help to do it. Those who help in the production are not paid. They will, however, receive mochi later. Mochi here is not symbolic ‘money’, but symbolic ‘wages’ they have to fight to get. The patron is neither a borrower nor a lender, nor a buyer nor a seller. Although a patron in mochinage always aims to transcend the relations that can be acquired with contracts, villagers live in a society where their relations are also marked by contract and the market. The tension is, however, a product of the existence of such a market, and the preoccupation with ‘dirt’ reflects it. Mochi is a wrapped prestation but it must be re-wrapped, because in recent years, there is more ‘dirt’ that affects mochi. People’s concerns with ‘dirt’ reflect their concern with the growing alienation of many aspects of their society, the breakdown of relations with neighbours, the power of central administrations and so on.

I will argue in Chapter Four, however, that ‘dirt’ is a concept that cannot be reduced to notions of ‘pollution’. The market is not a polluting force as is in the case in western societies (Bloch and Parry 1989: 2). In Japan, the market can be seen as an agent of both, prosperity and misfortune. It would be more correct to say that people’s concerns with ‘dirt’ reflect a growing alienation that comes as a result, not of the market being ‘negative’ or evil, but of the market having inauspicious qualities.