Early Growth Abounds (Shoman 小満)
Silkworms Start Eating Mulberry Leaves (Kaiko okite kuwao kuu 蚕起食桑）May 21-25
Safflowers Bloom (Benihana sakau 紅花栄) May 26-30
Barley Ripens (Bakushu itaru 麦秋至) May 31-June 5
<Calligraphy by Chieko>
Barley Ripens
When the loudspeakers in our neighborhood blared the song “Seven Baby Chicks” at 5pm, it was time to return home for dinner:
Crow, why do you caw so?
Because up in the mountain
I have seven adorable baby chicks…
I really disliked this song because I always wanted to play outside longer and had very little interest in going home to eat. Decades later, I was amused whenever my nephews and nieces fell asleep at the dinner table because it confirmed that apathy for eating ran deep in my family during infancy.
But occasionally I was excited about food, in particular when my mother made us barley rice, called mugigohan, which was a mixture of white rice and rolled barley. A rolled barley looks just like a whiter rolled oat and it is flat with a line running down the center. When I spotted these telltale faint brown lines mixed into the rice, I would exclaim with joy. I picked the barley out with chopsticks and popped them individually into my mouth to enjoy their chewy texture. “Mugi is healthy, but a politician once said it’s food for the poor people,” my mother would often say as we ate our mugigohan. This made me think that “politicians” are nasty if they were telling poor people what to eat.
The word mugi in Japanese means wheat or barley. A rolled barley is called oshimugi, and barley tea is called mugicha. The other mugi that we grew up with was mugiwara boushi, which means straw hats. When we were young, many parents made us put on straw hats during the summer and because of this, they are synonymous in our minds with carefree adventures and summer holidays. So, anime fans, it is no coincidence that the protagonist “Luffy” of the popular anime series, “One Piece,” wears a straw hat as he continues his adventures while building friendships.
Straw hat also reminds me of the advertisement for the movie “The Proof of the Man” which was widely broadcast on TV in the summer of 1977. The movie was adapted from a popular murder mystery book written by Morimura Seiichi. I was too young at the time so I actually never saw the movie or read the book, but I vividly remember the commercial that started with an image of a straw hat falling into a ravine. The scene was accompanied by a poem by Saijo Yaso, called “My Hat,” somberly read by the voice of a young man:
Mother,
I wonder what became of my hat
The straw hat that fell into the bottom of a ravine
On the way from Usui to Kiritsumi
That summer…
I think most Japanese children who grew up in this era learned the beginning of this poem thanks to that TV commercial. It was, when I think back, the first time I heard a poem read aloud and experienced how words can evoke feelings.
I felt great sympathy for this man without his hat because I thought about the terrible feeling when I lost something and of the woefulness of having to tell mother. Once, probably a few months after watching the commercial, I lost my water bottle at school and my mother asked where it was. I said in a solemn tone, “mother, I wonder what became of my water bottle…,” at which point she burst out laughing. “You are just impossible,” she groaned, and laughed until tears were streaming down her face.
When I was growing up in the relatively rural, newly built single-family-houses suburbs of Philadelphia, one of our neighbors would ring a cowbell to signal to their children to come home. Our families were a diverse population of middle-class post-WWII era who kids enjoyed playing outdoors in our backyards on swing sets during summer vacations or in the snow on days when school was cancelled because the roads were blocked and power was out. We also would hear each of the two ice cream vendors ring the signature bells or play a tune as their trucks progressed at about 1 mile/hour down the street during the summer, always disrupting family dinnertimes.
As for barley: While my family didn’t eat much of this grain, it figures formally in traditional Jewish culture. On the night before the second day of Passover (dates change because of the lunar accounting), in ancient times, a measure of barley from the first harvest will be brought to Jerusalem for preparation as an offering in the ancient Temple. 50 days later, wheat from that first harvest, baked into two loaves of bread, would be offered as well. These pilgrimage festivals always fall on full moons. This period is still observed by Jews in contemporary times, albeit there is no more Temple, including those engaged in mystical practices. So many natural, earth-based practices cross through different cultures.
Thank you for reading and for your comment Lauren,
A cowbell! That’s much nicer than loudspeakers, which I’m sure you’ve heard somewhere when you were in Japan. We didn’t have ice cream vans yet. There were trucks that came to sell laundry poles and also to collect newspapers, and they played distinct tunes. In the winter, there were carts selling ramen and roasted sweet potatoes.
I really appreciate that you took the time to share your knowledge about barley in Jewish culture. Now I’m really interested and will read more about it. I thought hard about the translation for the word mugi and decided it should be barley. Many 72 seasons translations use the word wheat, but barley arrived much earlier than wheat to Japan and, I also remembered that, barley was often used as rotation crop for rice where I was growing up.
Yes, in Kyoto I remember the tunes from the loudspeaker trucks selling hot sweet potatoes, and the fire watch teams walking around the neighborhoods at nightfall with those wooden clackers.
Oh, I haven’t heard those clackers in many years. You must have gone to Kyoto in the winter.
These childhood memories are so charming. When I was young, we were all read to from a beautiful children’s book, Momotaro, published by Island Heritage. It was illustrated by a chap who had grown up in Hawaii and so the pictures really had the feeling of the islands albeit with the otasan and okasan wearing conical straw hats as you’ve described in Japan. Even though we weren’t Japanese and were growing up in the States, the stories and pictures helped us to feel familiar and fondly about Japanese culture. These memories and images are really important for children. It makes a good lasting impression and cultural familiarity even with places and people far away. Incidentally, I think your barley rice combo sounds tasty. I’m going to try making it soon. Thanks!
Thank you for reading my essay and for your kind comment Laura,
It’s delightful to hear your experience of growing up with the story of Momotaro. Japanese children of my generation grew up with a lot of stories written by American authors that were translated into Japanese, and, like you, those stories are still with me today. I’ll mention some of them in my future essays 🙂
And, I’d love to know what you think of mugigohan. It’s also often eaten with ground tororo, grated yam. That’s called mugitoro gohan.