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A plant that may be totally ignored as just some kind of nondescript grass growing by the roadside, or yanked as a “weed” when found sprouting without permission in the garden, may become sought after and valued as a “wild herb” as soon as it is recognized as having a use in our daily lives.
The Japanese have long cherished wild plants for the way they appear at particular times each year as everyday reminders of the season. Not surprisingly, these wild plants play an important role in many of the traditional festivities and observances conducted to mark the passage of the seasons.
One of those traditions is nana-kusa-gayu, literally “seven herbs rice gruel,” a special New Year dish prepared on January 7 that, as the name suggests, involves adding the leaves of seven plants available in many warmer areas at this time of year—dropwort, shepherd’s purse, cudweed, chickweed, henbit, turnip, and radish—to rice gruel. These plants are referred to collectively as haru no nana kusa, the “seven herbs of spring,” and are synonymous with the arrival of spring in Japan. Despite the fact that the month of January is still very much the middle of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the first month of the year falls under spring according to the lunar calendar used in Japan until 1872, and that categorization has stuck to this day.
One hypothesis traces the origins of Japan’s seven herbs rice gruel to China, and specifically to a soup prepared there during New Year that contained seven types of greens. However, there was also a traditional dish prepared in Japan by adding seven types of grain or bean to rice gruel, and a rival theory contends that young greens were mixed in to this dish to create the forerunner of today’s seven herbs rice gruel. An old document has been found that makes the claim that the dish made its first appearance as one favored by the emperors reigning in Japan between in the late ninth and early tenth centuries A.D., but it is thought that the Japanese populace had been sampling the delights of nana-kusa-gayu since long before then.
Traditionally the seven plants used in the dish were collected on the previous day and then chopped fine by the women of the household, who would deliberately create a lot of noise with their chopping while at the same time singing a special Seven Herbs song. This custom is thought to have been an expression of two desires. One is for good health and fortune over the coming year, sealed by the eating of the seven herbs (which, incidentally, are now known to be rich in minerals and to possess diuretic properties and aid digestion). The other desire is for bountiful harvests, the singing and cacophony created by the vigorous chopping of the herbs being designed—symbolically of course—to scatter the flocks of birds that would raid the crops come late summer.
While the tradition of nana-kusa-gayu remains, few people nowadays go out to pick the plants, buying them instead in neat packages at the local supermarket. But though the times have changed, the hopes and prayers of the Japanese people as they gather around the dinner table to eat their bowls of seven herbs rice gruel remain the same.
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