New rice, the harvest moon, and the September table
Two things happen in Japan in September, and they happen at the same table. The moon gets its night, and the rice comes in.
Shinmai
Rice harvested this year and sold before the end of December can be labeled shinmai, "new rice," and Japanese shoppers look for the word the way Americans look for the first sweet corn. The difference is real. New rice holds more moisture, so it cooks up glossier and slightly sweet, with a faint smell of the field. Everyone has a rule for it: use a little less water than usual, and eat the first bowl plain. No soy sauce, no toppings, nothing. Just the rice, so you can taste the year.
The harvest moon and the first rice are the same event seen twice. The moon-viewing offering of white dumplings is made from rice flour, and the pampas grass set beside it stands in for the rice plant. When a family looks at the moon on September 25, they are thanking it for the bowl in front of them.
What cooks it
Rice cookers exist, and most Japanese kitchens have one. But for new rice, a lot of households bring out the pot. A hagama is the traditional shape: a heavy clay body with a wide brim that sits over the flame, and a thick wooden lid that holds the steam. Ours is Banko ware from Mie, a clay that stands direct heat and keeps it. Rice cooked this way comes out with a faint golden crust at the bottom, okoge, that people fight over. It makes three go, about six American cups of cooked rice, and comes with its trivet and paddle.
Then the rice moves. Not to a serving bowl but to an ohitsu, a lidded tub of sawara cypress from the Kiso valley. The wood drinks the excess steam, so the rice does not go gluey the way it does when it sits in the pot, and it stays warm through the meal. An ohitsu is an object people keep for decades. It smells of the forest for the first few months.
The bowl
The rice bowl is the most personal object on a Japanese table. Each person has their own, and it is chosen to fit the hand. A Hasami rice bowl is the everyday kind: light porcelain, a simple pattern of dots or crosses or waves in blue, made to be held in the palm while you eat. The Matsuri-bayashi bowls come in a smaller red and a larger green, the traditional pairing for a couple, with matching cups for tea. Miso soup goes in a lidded bowl; you lift the lid and the steam carries the smell of the soup up to you, which is the point.
What goes beside it
A Japanese meal is built around the rice, and the plates beside it are small on purpose. The one thing that always appears is pickles, a few slices in a three-inch dish. In September the fish is sanma, Pacific saury, grilled whole with salt and laid on a long plate with grated daikon and a wedge of sudachi. A cup of sake, if the evening calls for it; the Mino cups with the rabbit at the bottom were made for exactly this night.
Onigiri
New rice makes the best onigiri of the year, and the leftover rice from the pot is what they are usually made from. A hinoki mold presses three at once without the rice sticking to your hands; salt them, wrap them in nori, and serve each one on its own small plate. The plates are painted with the onigiri they are meant to hold, which children find very funny.
The table, then
New rice in an ohitsu. A bowl each. Pickles, grilled fish, soup with a lid. The dumplings and the pampas grass by the window, and the moon coming up behind them. It is not an elaborate meal. It is the plainest meal of the year, and Japanese people wait twelve months for it.
The pieces are gathered here: New Rice. Everything is made in Japan and ships from Tokyo with US duties included. For the moon itself, see the Harvest Moon edit, and order by September 12 to have either on the table for the twenty-fifth.