Foot Soldiers and Pastry

(at left: the characters for "foot soldier" [ashigaru])

Hello everyone! It's been a long time, I hope you all are well. School has taken up a lot of my time for translation this semester, so my translation schedule and personal research has had to take a back seat. I'm still translating, but slowly.

Today I would like to talk a little bit about a snack called okoshi, and its relation to the southern part of Tohoku region. All too often when I think of history, I forget about the flavors involved. But food, then as now, was important!

In Kyodoshi Sendai Mimibukuro ("A Collection of Local History from Sendai"), folk historian Mihara Ryokichi devotes a chapter (pp. 95-98) to some of the foot soldiers who served the Date clan of Sendai. Specifically, the chapter discusses three groups of these foot soldiers (called ashigaru in Japanese) who were assigned as permanent security detachments along certain key roads or bridges. At any rate, the unit that lived at Imaichi, on the road between Sendai and Shiogama, was known for making a local pastry called tsuno-okoshi. This pastry was popular, says Mihara, among people coming back from visits to Shiogama Shrine. As the foot soldiers' official income from the Date clan for security duty would've been small, they did this to supplement their incomes. All three units had different side jobs-- for example, the one at Suwa, in the Nagamachi district of modern Sendai, made brooms.

I have been unable to figure out how tsuno-okoshi is different from regular okoshi. Given the word tsuno ("horn" or "corners"), I assume the okoshi in question would either be shaped like an animal's horn, or have corners. Given what okoshi usually looks like, I think it's safe to assume it's the latter.

So! In the spirit of hands-on research, here is a link to a Hawaiian-style recipe for okoshi. The ingredients should be readily available in the US. Enjoy, and remember those foot soldiers!

Sources:

*"Puffed Rice Cookie (Okoshi), from "Cooking Hawaiian Style" food blog, accessed 20 Dec. 2012 http://cookinghawaiianstyle.com/index.php/hawaiian-recipes/recipes/detail/608/puffed-rice-cookie-okoshi
*Mihara Ryokichi, Kyodoshi Sendai Mimibukuro (Sendai: Hobundo Shuppansha, 1983).