🍡 Kashiwa Mochi
Tango-no Sekku, May 5, is celebrated as Children's Day in modern times. Depending on the region, various sweets such as chimaki, sasamaki, and beko-mochi (rice cake) are prepared and eaten. Kashiwa Mochi, which is eaten throughout Japan, is a celebratory rice cake made of fine white rice flour and white bean flour, and filled with red bean paste or miso bean paste. The leaves of sarutori ibara, a deciduous tree of the beech family, which wrap the rice cake, have been used since the Edo period (1603-1867) to bring good luck that "the family lineage will never cease" because the leaves do not fall until new shoots appear in early summer. In Yamaguchi Prefecture, it is one of the most popular local dishes, and has many aliases such as "hoten-do-mochi," "iginoha-mochi," "puton-mochi," and "botan-mochi. In the past, it was made and eaten at home during Tango no Sekku, rice planting, and Obon festivals. It is said that the rice planting, which was done by hand, was especially hard work, and the eating of "Kashiwa Mochi" was one of the pleasures. It is also said that once the Kashiwa Mochi were made, they were distributed to next door neighbors. It is also said that it was the role of the children of the household to go to the mountains to gather the sarutori ibara leaves that were indispensable for the kashiwa-mochi.