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January 7 is the day of the Nanakusa or Seven Herb Festival. This day, many Japanese eat rice gruel that contains the seven medicinal herbs of spring as a prayer for good health in the coming year. The custom goes back to the Heian-period, when according to tradition the Emperor Saga was very fond of this broth, although it was in his time eaten on the first Day of the Rat. In the late nineth century, in the days of Emperor Uda, the custom came to be observed on January 7. The custom of serving the Emperor with a medicinal gruel on January 7 continued till the Tokugawa period, during which the Seven Herbs Festival came to be widely observed in the whole country.

The seven herbs are:

nazuna, or sheperd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)

hakobe, or chickweed (Stellaria media)

seri, or water dropworth (Oenanthe javanica)

gogyo or hahakogusa, cudweed (Gnaphalium affine)

hotokenoza, or henbit (Lamium amplexicaule)

suzuna or kabu, turnip (Brassica campestris)

and suzushiro or daikon, white radish (Raphanus sativus).

I must confess some of the English names above mean as little to me as the Japanese ones (with the exception of course of white radish, turnip and seri), but I trust in age-old wisdom and will have my bowl of medicinal gruel today!

And that is very easy in our modern times. In the past, these herbs had to be gathered, mixed and beaten with a willow-stick on the night of January 6. Now, conveniently, you can find packs of the herbs in supermarkets, sometimes already with the gruel added, so you only have to heat it.

[Food terms from Richard Hosking, A Dictionary of Japanese Food (Tuttle 1996); other information from We Japanese.]