mochi rice cakes, used in the traditional New Year dishes. This image is part of The New Year in Japan, a book published by Kobe-based photographer Kozaburo Tamamura in 1906. Click on Read Full Article to read the original text that accompanied this image." />
The Kisokaido route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country’s then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travelers.
MeijiShowa
License all the photos on this site at our boutique photo agency for vintage photographs, illustrations and maps of Japan between the 1860s and 1930s (Meiji, Taisho, early Showa)
Pounding glutinous rice to make mochi rice cakes, used in the traditional New Year dishes. This image is part of The New Year in Japan, a book published by Kobe-based photographer Kozaburo Tamamura in 1906. Original text:
Our foreign friends indulge in plum pudding; our pudding, mochi (a dough of rice), is the national diet for the celebration of the New Year Era, and also for sacred celebrations during the year. Men, with boilers and dough tubs, pound the rice into dough, and nearly every family engage these dough pounders, to save time and trouble. The pounding begins about the 25th December, and continues until the end of the year.1
See all New Year images on Old Photos of Japan.
1 Tamamura, Kozaburo (1906). The New Year in Japan. Tamamura Shashinkan.
Duits, K. (2009, January 1). Kobe, 1906 New Year Celebrations 2, Old Photos of Japan. Retrieved on 2021, Mar 08 from https://www.oldphotosjapan.com/photos/681/new-year-celebrations-2