The rice is a bright yellow. Gardenia pods are steeped in water until the water colours, and the rice is cooked in that. Nothing else is done to it. The taste is more or less the taste of plain rice; the whole intervention is visual.

The story is that when the Usuki domain was short of money, the lord had this made instead of the red rice served on celebration days, because azuki beans had become too expensive. Azuki were an expensive item then. The colour of the occasion was kept and the substance of it was quietly replaced.

A second explanation exists. The great lord of this region was a Christian convert who traded with Portuguese and Spanish ships, and some people think the dish is an imitation of a Spanish rice they saw. Neither account has won, and the two are not really compatible.

Alongside it comes a soup called kayaku, made from lizardfish or another white fish, with vegetables and tofu simmered together. That half of the meal came from the merchants rather than from the castle. They were at their busiest over the new year, so they made a cauldron of it on the last day of the year and reheated it through the first three days of January while they worked. Two classes of the same small town, meeting on one tray.