Vinegared rice, laid on a magnolia leaf and folded shut. No dish is involved. The leaf is the plate, the wrapper and the handle, all at once.

It was made for the rice planting. You carried it out to the paddy or up into the hills and opened it there. No chopsticks are needed and your hands stay clean; when you have finished, you throw the leaf away. There is no washing up at any point in this meal, which is the whole design, and the reason it belongs to the busiest weeks of the farming year.

Magnolia leaves contain hinokitiol, a compound that suppresses bacterial growth, and the leaves are said to resist mould as well. Combined with the vinegar in the rice, that made the parcel keep through the hot, humid weeks when planting happens and food spoils fastest. So the leaf serving as tableware is also, quietly, doing the preserving.

What goes inside varies by district. In the eastern part of the prefecture there might be seven or eight things — river fish cooked down in sweet soy, vinegared mackerel, shredded omelette, red pickled ginger. In Hida some households put in myoga and vinegared rice and nothing else at all. The same leaf, closed around two entirely different meals.