higashi

Recently, a co-worker presented me with a pink box of obvious Japanese origin. The box was wrapped in a rice paper skin with one of those gold elastic bands with the neat little bow on top with Japanese script. Inside, beneath a leaf of delicate textured rice paper lay neat rows of little sculptured delicacies in various muted tints of color. She told me someone had presented this to her as a gift and she thought I might like to have it for its aesthetic qualities as a subject for one of my photographs. I accepted it, put it in my kitchen drawer (containing my candy supply) and promptly forgot about it.

This month, my issue of Saveur magazine arrived and contained therein was an article on "Higashi," the very confections I had sequestered away a few weeks earlier. Briefly (and this I did not know until I read the article), Higashi is composed of tinted sugar and rice flour. It is an integral part of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, but only from around the 18th Century when it was first introduced to the royalty and upper class ranks of Japanese society. The Japanese Tea Ceremony itself dates back to the 15th Century. Traditionally, Higashi  was sculpted to reflect the season. In Spring, as an example, Highashi were crafted to resemble cherry blossoms. Higashi is rarely found outside of Japan, but there is an American company, Chambre du Sucre (so why do they have a FRENCH name?), that imports these confections. Incidentally, these delights are made by the same Japanese company for 268 years.

And, I have yet to photograph them in a way to do them justice.