SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

Hello! This is Kimmie Shuck, a co-founder of the Mendocino Obon Festival.

Our obon festival was a tremendous success this year. 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! 

We would like to keep on improving the event year after year, so we are recharging with KAIZEN (continuous improvement) spirit right now. During these preparation months, however, I would like to share my stories about Japan. I was born and raised in Japan, and as an adult, I moved to the US. My time here is exceeding my time in Japan, but there is a saying that, “you can take out a person from Japan, but you cannot take out Japan from a person,” which is an exact case for me. From the view of a former full-time Japanese, you may find something unusual and interesting… I hope you enjoy them!

October is here, and fall is in full swing. The first thing I think of relating “fall” is OTSUKIMI, viewing and appreciating CHUSHU NO MEIGETSU, direct translation of Beautiful Moon in Mid-Fall, which is Harvest Moon.

The family I grew up with was a huge OTSUKIMI “decoration” fan, so every year, we set up a small table in our terrace for a bouquet of grass and flowers, steamed taro, and sweet mochi (rice flour) cakes, and other food items. We hurried to finish our dinner and sat just to look at the moon. We all gathered at the beginning, but soon my mom had to go back to dishes and cleaning, and my dad usually sat for 10 minutes or so. My sister was too busy and so was my aunt. Then here my grandma and I sat for a couple of hours. I did not understand we could sit for such a long time, but we did. I remembered that I really liked “moon light bath” with its mysterious calming yet exuberant effects – maybe because of that? Perhaps.

My grandma was not a talkative person, but she was unusually cheerful (thanks to the moon!), and she started talking about two rabbits living on the moon. Those rabbits were making mochi to celebrate a beautiful moon, so that was why we honored their hard work with our offerings of flowers and food. “If you look closely, you can see those rabbits. See them? Those shadows look like rabbits pounding mochi in a mortar, right?” she said. I was a “good” kid without questioning and challenging to adults, so I was just quietly listening to her story, but my 4-year-old brain had almost burst with so many questions.

I don’t make out rabbits from the shadows like a grandma says. They must be super-sized giant special rabbits! Like size of Godzilla! How can rabbits hold mochi pounding in a mortar, though? One must pound, and the other must move around mochi with a wet hand. Wait, do rabbits have hands like us? Can they even stand up? They must! How much mochi do they make? What do they do the rest of the year, or do they make mochi every day? Who is eating the mochi they make? How do they get mochi rice? ???

It turns out that the story of Moon and Rabbits was based on a folklore, which goes like this. A rabbit, a fox, and a monkey were asked to prepare food for a hungry old man, but a rabbit could not offer any food unlike a fox and monkey. After a long thinking, a rabbit finally jumped into the fire himself, saying, “Please eat me.” A hungry old man was God, took pity on devotion of the rabbit and resurrected him on the moon to serve as an example to follow. Then, rabbits make mochi for God on the moon.

Now I know those rabbits make mochi for God. One less question!

CHUSHU NO MEIGETUS (Harvest Moon) this year is October 6.