Minazuki : special uiro/rice cake for June 30th
Minazuki: the special rice cake sweet for Nagoshi no Harae (the old ritual)
The triangle-shape expresses a piece of ice. In the old lunar calendar June is the mid-summer. People could hardly get ice in the summer time, those days. In stead of ice, they had this sweets, ‘minazuki’ which looks like a piece of ice, asking for coolness.The sweet red beans are used for the topping.
Those days Japanese people believed red beans protect us from evils such as diseases, disasters and so on.