Fuki Dawara

Fuki-dawara is rice cooked with soybeans and wrapped in butterbur leaves into a small, straw-bale-shaped rice ball. The fragrance of the leaf meets the lightly salted, bean-studded rice for a simple, earthy flavor. Broad beans or peas are sometimes used in place of soybeans. In the Nakanosho area of Matsusaka, a similar rice-and-soybean parcel tied with straw, called saburagi-gohan, is also made.

Soybeans are cooked together with the rice, and the finished rice is wrapped in a butterbur leaf, with the leaf's own stem used to tie it shut instead of string. Shaping it like a small bale makes it easy to carry and eat between stretches of farm work. When offered to the field deity, thirteen are reportedly arranged in a shallow basket, one for each month plus one for the deity.

In the Iga area, fuki-dawara is said to be offered at the water inlet of the rice paddy at planting time, alongside susuki grass and chestnut branches, as a prayer of thanks for a good harvest. The hope, it's said, is for rice grains as plump as the soybeans inside. Because the leaf wrapping lets people eat without washing their hands, and the leaf itself returns to the earth once used, the shape is thought to have grown out of practical wisdom suited to work in the fields.