A country manju, coated all over in sekihan, red rice, and steamed. That is the whole thing. The name comes from how it looks: the grains standing out on the surface like the burr of a chestnut.

The explanations for how it started are not flattering ones, which is a point in their favor. One says glutinous rice was expensive and putting a bun inside the red rice made the portion go further. Another says a farmer's wife, saving herself a step, put the sekihan and the manju into the same steamer and they came out stuck together.

Neither story is about abundance. Both are about doing more with less, and then finding that what came out of it was worth repeating on purpose.

This is wheat country by the off-season rotation, enough so that there is a local saying about manju in the morning and udon at noon. Konosu is given as the place it began, in what used to be Kawasato, and it spread through Kazo, Hanyu, and Gyoda. It is made for the spring, summer, and autumn festivals and for celebrations, an auspicious thing to have on the table. Red rice is already lucky, and it is what a household puts out when something has gone well. So is a sweet bun. This is both of them steamed into one object.