Wheat and barley sown back in autumn have already sprouted, low and green under whatever snow now covers them — the snow acting as insulation rather than obstacle, keeping the ground beneath it warmer and more stable than bare frozen soil would be. Nothing dramatic happens above ground for weeks yet; the visible growth spurt, and the mugifumi (麦踏み, "wheat treading") that farmers do to encourage stronger root systems by gently flattening the young shoots, both belong to late winter and early spring rather than this exact kō — what's actually being marked now is only the quiet fact that growth hasn't stopped, just gone underground and out of sight.
This kō's own five days happen to contain the calendar year's actual turn — the newest of the seventy-two kō timed almost exactly to fall across New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, wheat's invisible progress running on underneath the loudest, most public turning point of the entire year.
A New Year osechi staple — its huge number of eggs makes it an auspicious wish for descendants.
Small dried sardines glazed in sweet soy, traditionally offered as fertilizer in old rice paddies — the dish's name and presence in osechi both wish for an abundant harvest.
The defining fruit of a Japanese New Year spent under a kotatsu — sweet, easy to peel, and everywhere this week.
Simmered slow and glossy for osechi — 豆 (mame) puns on 忠実に働く (mame ni hataraku, working diligently and healthily), the wish behind the dish.
Still at full sweetness, though many households cook lighter for a few days after the richness of New Year's food.
Both are now fully in their intended role, arranged into New Year displays across the country rather than simply growing in a garden somewhere — this is the one stretch of the year these two plants were essentially cultivated for.
Eaten on New Year's Eve, a custom that took hold in Edo-period merchant households sometime in the late 1600s to early 1700s and had spread nationally as a fixed year-end ritual by the early 1800s. The reasoning behind it stacks up rather than settling on one story: soba's long, thin shape suggests long life; its tendency to break easily is read as cutting cleanly away from the old year's troubles; and goldsmiths once used soba dough to gather stray gold dust off their workbenches, which folded a wish for prosperity into the same bowl.
"The New Year's Eve bell" — Buddhist temples across Japan ring their bell 108 times through the night of December 31st — one strike for each of the 108 earthly desires or defilements (煩悩, bonnō) named in Buddhist teaching, the ringing meant to release each one before the year turns over.
麦 covers both wheat and barley without distinguishing them in ordinary usage — the character predates the point at which Japanese agriculture needed a sharp line between the two grains. Autumn-sown, early-summer-harvested wheat and barley were traditionally grown as a second crop on rice paddies left fallow over winter, a practice called 二毛作 (nimōsaku, double-cropping) that let the same field feed two different harvests across a year rather than sitting empty for months.
New Year's zōni soup splits almost as sharply as the toshitori-zakana divide a few kō back: eastern Japan generally grills square mochi in a clear dashi broth, western Japan simmers round mochi in white miso, with the boundary running roughly through Gifu's Sekigahara. Parts of Shimane and Tottori serve a sweet azuki-based zōni closer to a dessert soup than either regional standard.
Tradition holds it should be finished before the New Year actually arrives — leaving noodles uneaten into the new year is considered to undercut the whole point of the custom.
Many temples let visitors take a turn striking the bell themselves — a rare chance to physically take part in a ritual usually just heard from a distance.
"After treading the wheat fields, a foot-bath — and a slim three-day moon overhead."
Many Japanese supermarkets close or run reduced hours for the first few days of January — a genuinely practical reason osechi is designed to keep well without daily shopping.
With the country split roughly down the middle on both mochi shape and broth, it's a more contested question in a mixed-regional household than it might seem.
Hakuun's poem is set weeks ahead of what this kō itself describes — mugifumi doesn't start until the shoots are established, sometime in the depth of winter still to come — but it's the poem this kō's wheat is quietly walking toward. The sprouts under the snow right now don't know yet that a farmer will eventually be pressing them gently back down for their own good. Is there something in your own life growing right now, invisibly, that will eventually need a firm hand rather than just time to turn out well?