Sanshoku Dango

Three dango, colored pink, white, and green, skewered together — nothing more. Pink is often flavored with cherry blossom, white left as plain rice, and green colored with mugwort or matcha; the point is the color and texture of the dango itself, without paste or glaze. Also called "hanami dango" (blossom-viewing dango), it is said to be enjoyed year-round, not only during cherry blossom season, as a sweet that evokes a spring feeling. There is no strict rule fixing the order or exact shades of the three colors, and the arrangement is said to vary by shop's own taste.

Rice-flour dough is divided into three, with pink tinted by food coloring or cherry-blossom flavoring and green worked with mugwort or matcha. Each portion is rolled into balls and boiled or steamed, then skewered together in the order pink, white, green. Unless all three colored doughs are worked to the same firmness, the shapes shift once skewered together — an unglamorous but painstaking step in preparation. Steaming time can differ slightly between the three colors, and timing them to finish together is said to be where a maker's skill shows.

One account holds that at a flower-viewing party held by Toyotomi Hideyoshi at Kyoto's Daigo-ji temple in the Azuchi-Momoyama period, he had colorful dango devised for the women present, in place of the plain white dango glazed with soy sauce that had been standard until then. The three colors are also said, in one telling, to represent the passage from spring to summer — cherry blossoms, snow, and fresh green leaves. The skewered form, easy to hand around at a flower-viewing party, is also said to be a device for sharing easily among a crowd.