GARY KUBOTA / GKUBOTA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Maui High School students Robert Omura, Jason Baum and Wendee Murayama will be attending the New Vision Awards ceremony in New York City tomorrow. The three were named as winners in producing the best documentary and best writing for their video "Mochizuki Time."
Maui students earn
national accolade
for documentaryThe video details a family's
tradition of making mochi
WAILUKU >> Maui High School sophomore Wendee Murayama videotaped her family's yearly get-together and mochi-making as a way to document her family custom and Japanese heritage.
Her video, "Mochizuki Time," not only documented family tradition that has been preserved through four generations but also won her national awards.
The video won the Kid Witness News' Spotlight Award for Best Documentary. It also won the Best Writing award in the competition sponsored by Panasonic.
Murayama, along with fellow student collaborators Jason Baum and Robert Omura, are among the nine school teams that won awards in the national competition. The winners also receive a paid trip to New York City to attend the award ceremony tomorrow at the Museum of Television and Radio.
The documentary, a little less than four minutes long, was written, recorded, and edited by Murayama. Baum, 17, and Omura, 16, served as her technical production advisers.
Murayama, 16, daughter of Allan and Cathy Murayama of Kahului, said she wanted to give the public a view of the culture and traditions of mochi-making in her family.
Through the making of the video, she learned more about her family history, Murayama said. She learned that her great-grandfather, the Rev. Sokyo Ueoka, founded a Zen Buddhist mission, Mantokuji Mission of Paia, which is a Maui landmark.
The mission, established in 1906, with its temple built in 1907, is east of Paia, next to a slope of weathered gravestones of immigrant sugar laborers and other mission members.
Her documentary recorded more than 30 family members, including some from Iowa and Oahu, gathering at the mission in December and January.
Murayama said at every year end her family and relatives from throughout the United States gather on Maui to celebrate Christmas, mochi-making, and the new year.
While the tradition of mochi-making is kept alive mostly in rural Japan, it is a yearly ritual in her family, Murayama said.
"Even though we moved from Japan long ago, we still practice the tradition," she said.
Murayama said for a short time, family and relatives from different occupations come together and work as one unit on a voyage of cultural renewal.
"It's just great when we can all get together," she said. "We're all on the same ship for one day."
Before each new year, her family members build a wood-burning fire to steam sticky rice in wood boxes, she said. About five to 10 pounds of the steamed rice then go into a stone vessel called "usu."
A wood mallet is used to pound the rice into a sticky paste to be shaped into flat, round cakes, which sometimes are filled with sweet azuki beans in the center.
The rice pastry stays edible for days and is often placed on a miniature Buddhist shrine in the home as an offering to ancestors. Japanese tradition says eating mochi ensures a long and healthy life.
Murayama said the most interesting part of the project was stepping outside her culture to write the script as an observer and producing a documentary that would be understandable to the general public.
Murayama has won an award for another documentary. She and Maui High students Rebecca Wunder and Caine Jette recently took first place for the best documentary in the state's History Day competition.
Their entry, "Fighting for the Right to Be Called Americans: The Story of the Nisei Soldiers," is a 10-minute production. They'll receive a paid trip to Washington, D.C., in June to participate in History Day activities.
