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One of the earliest memories of my childhood in Kahului, Maui, is of mochi pounding, probably on one New Year’s Eve at the back of my mother’s fish market. I can still see Mrs. Sakane, who lived there in a small cottage rented rom my mother, turning over the cooked rice while her teenaged son did the pounding with a heavy wooden mallet.

Flash forward about 70 years. I witnessed mochi pounding a week ago at at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii in Moiliili. The JCCH has sponsored this annual event for the past 20 years, highlighting the cultural significance of activities related to New Year, or oshogatsu, among local Japanese.

Pounding rice to make mochi cakes was just one of many Japanese cultural traditions, including taiko drumming, classical dancing, martial arts and bonsai cultivation, featured at the JCCH festival. Rather than view mochi pounding as another quaint custom that has been retained over the generations, it can be understood as a cultural practice that contributes to the maintenance of Japanese ethnic identity in Hawaii.

A small minority of Japanese actually engages in mochi pounding in the islands. Other observances include going to a Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple on New Year’s Day to offer prayers for good fortune during the coming year, although most Japanese have been Christian for decades and so also don’t participate in this activity.

The importance of mochi is that it is a necessary ingredient in ozoni, a primarily vegetarian soup that many Japanese families eat together as their first meal on New Year’s Day. Family recipes vary considerably, and some include fish or chicken in their ozoni but never red meat in accordance with Buddhist tradition.

Having spoken with numerous Japanese students while teaching at the University of Hawaii Manoa for more than 20 years, I believe ozoni consumption is still the most prevalent New Year’s tradition among local Japanese, although it is declining in frequency.

I have written about New Year’s cultural practices among island Japanese as an example of what has been called “symbolic ethnicity.” This concept , who argued that it explains how “white ethnic groups” in the U.S., such as Irish, Italians and Jews, have maintained a distinct ethnic identity, despite their assimilation into a white racial identity.

Gans contended that, rather than a full range of cultural activities, those groups have retained a limited number of traditional practices that are sufficient for sustaining their ethnic identity over time. These cultural symbols especially include annual holidays when families gather together to celebrate with special foods, such as St. Patrick’s Day among Irish or Rosh Hashana among Jews.

New Year’s customs and observances among Hawaii Japanese are a great example of that symbolic ethnicity. As noted above, the particular special food they have on New Year’s Day is not so much mochi but ozoni. Other traditional foods, such as kazunoko, or herring roe, are eaten later as part of a larger meal that includes non-Japanese dishes and is celebrated with extended family members and friends.

What makes ozoni consumption an especially significant symbol of Japanese ethnic identity is that it is made and eaten only on New Year’s Day. You won’t find ozoni on the menu at a Japanese restaurant or a packaged version of it at a Japanese supermarket, although they will sell the ingredients, such as frozen mochi and dried seaweed.

Given the long decline of the Japanese language and Buddhist religion among island Japanese and their acculturation into local and American cultures, New Year’s customs provide a cultural basis for their ethnic identity. These traditional practices and their associated meanings are unambiguously Japanese in origin and thus enable local Japanese to have a clear awareness of how they are culturally different from other ethnic groups in the state.

In this way, New Year’s activities contribute to the maintenance of Japanese ethnic identity in Hawaii. But it is not the only factor because having Japanese ancestry is another major reason that their ethnic identity has persisted over the generations.

Symbolic ethnicity is also evident among other ethnic groups in Hawaii, such as Chinese who observe Chinese or Lunar New Year, celebrated with family dinners at home or at a Chinese restaurant. The special food they consume is gau, made of glutinous rice and taro, although unlike ozoni it can be purchased at Chinese shops and eaten at other times of the year.

Other ethnic groups, particularly those with considerable immigrant segments such as Koreans and Filipinos, don’t engage in symbolic ethnicity because, at least for immigrant families, ethnicity can be said to be substantive. Rather than expressing and retaining their culture primarily through the observance of an annual holiday, Filipino immigrants do this on a daily basis by speaking a Philippine language at home and following Philippine cultural norms in family relationships.

Another symbol, although not cultural, of Japanese ethnicity in Hawaii also occurs in January — the opening of the Legislature. Since the 1954 elections ushered Democrats into power, Japanese have been the largest group in the Legislature, which is the base of Japanese political power in the state.

This plurality is still the case at about one-third in both the House and Senate, if legislators who are of mixed Japanese ancestry are included. Another consideration is that both chambers are divided into numerous factions — and Japanese can be found in every one of those factions.

Both Senate President Ron Kouchi and House Speaker Scott Saiki are Japanese, and the gavels they wield are much more powerful than mallets for pounding mochi.