Osechi ryori is the food of the Japanese New Year. It is cooked in the last days of December, packed into lacquered boxes stacked in tiers, and eaten over the first three days of January, so that nobody has to cook while the year begins.
Almost every dish carries a small wish for the year ahead, often through a pun or a shape. Here are the ones most households include.
The boxes
Osechi is served in jubako, stacked boxes with two to five tiers. Stacking is itself the first wish: happiness piled on happiness. Each tier traditionally holds a different kind of dish, starters at the top, grilled and simmered things below, though few households follow the order strictly today.
It is eaten with iwai-bashi, celebration chopsticks tapered at both ends: one end for the person eating, the other, in the traditional explanation, for the gods sharing the meal.
The three essentials
Many regions have a short list of three dishes without which the boxes are not osechi. In eastern Japan it is usually these.
Kuromame, sweet black soybeans. Mame also means diligent and healthy, so the wish is to work hard and stay well.
Kazunoko, herring roe. Thousands of tiny eggs: a wish for many children and a flourishing family.
Tazukuri, small dried sardines glazed with sugar and soy. Sardines were once used to fertilise rice fields, and the name means making paddies: a wish for a good harvest.
Sweet and golden
Kuri kinton, mashed sweet potato with chestnuts in syrup. Kinton can be read as golden treasure, and its colour is the point: a wish for wealth.
Datemaki, a rolled sweet omelette mixed with fish paste. Its spiral looks like a rolled scroll, so it stands for learning and culture.
Red and white
Kamaboko, fish cake, sliced in alternating red and white. The two colours together mean celebration in Japan, and the half-moon shape is said to be the first sunrise of the year.
Kohaku namasu, thin strips of daikon and carrot in sweet vinegar, the same red and white in a salad.
Long life and good roots
Ebi, prawns, simmered or grilled. Bent like an elderly back, they are a wish to live long enough to stoop.
Kobumaki, kelp rolled around fish and tied with a strip of gourd. Kobu echoes yorokobu, to be glad.
Tataki gobo, pounded burdock root. It grows deep and straight, so it is a wish for a family with deep roots.
Renkon, lotus root, cut to show its holes: a wish to see clearly into the future.
Ozoni
Alongside the boxes comes ozoni, a soup with mochi rice cakes. It is the most regional dish of the New Year: clear broth or white miso, round mochi or square, grilled or boiled, with different vegetables in every part of the country. Ask anyone from Japan how their family makes it and you will get a precise and affectionate answer.
Making a small version
Nobody needs to make all of this. A home version can be three or four dishes made on December 30, black beans, a rolled omelette, something red and white, kept cold and eaten over three quiet days. The idea underneath is the one worth borrowing: cook before the year turns, and rest after it.
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This article is part of a series exploring Japanese philosophy and intentional living: