mochi pounding

I attended Tenrikyo Church's mochi-tsuki, or mochi making, a few weeks ago. Never having made mochi (but eating plenty of it!), I never realized that traditional mochi is made by pounding glutinous sweet rice (or mochi rice). The end result is so texturally smooth and homogenous that it's hard to imagine it used to be a thousand individual grains of rice. In the Shinto tradition, each grain of rice symbolizes a tamashii, or human soul, so rice cakes represent millions of souls. I'm told that pounding and handling the rice is a purifying and reflective act, but I can't help wondering, if each grain of rice is a soul, why are we pounding it instead of leaving it whole and undisturbed?


The rice is soaked overnight and then steamed in wooden steamers for an hour. A batch is put in the usu, what looks like a large stone mortar, and then pounded with big wooden hammers, or kine. Three of the biggest guys from Tenrikyo Church circle around the usu, using their kine as pestles, grinding the mochi rice as they walk around the usu. After about five minutes, they stop circling, and taking turns, they lift their kine and bring it down like a hammer onto the mochi, literally pounding the mochi. They work quickly, before the mochi cools and becomes less malleable.


When the dough is smooth, it's transferred to a table dusted with rice flour where other members of the church tackle it, pinching off small balls of dough and filling them with azuki and rolling them in kinako (roasted soy flour). When I get my mochi, it's still warm, and I devour all those souls in two quick bites.