‘When I die, I would like to come back as a rice ball’

“When I die, I would like to come back as an onigiri.”
With these words, Yumiko Ukon, the owner of rice ball specialist shop Onigiri Bongo in Tokyo’s Otsuka neighborhood, lowered the sheet of paper from which she was reading her speech to a captive audience and took a bow. A few hours later, as Japan’s first-ever Onigiri Summit was winding down, I was granted a five-minute audience with Ukon.
“You mentioned in your speech that you’d like to be reborn as a rice ball,” I said. “What flavor?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied, looking directly into my eyes. “Onigiri isn’t about the shape — it’s about soul. The filling doesn’t matter. I want to be an onigiri someone made with their whole heart.”
It was a Friday afternoon in Otemachi in early February when I found myself at the inaugural Onigiri Summit, a public relations bonanza for all things rice ball related, hosted by the Onigiri Society, an association founded in 2014 by columnist Yusuke Nakamura.

Niche and arbitrary though it may seem, the Onigiri Society is by no means unusual in its existence. A cursory internet search unearthed similar associations dedicated to yakitori, fundoshi (traditional loincloth), takoyaki (octopus dumpling) parties, overwork and wanting to go home (the last two are likely mortal enemies). There is even the Japan Associations Association. A group dedicated to onigiri is practically humdrum by comparison.
Anything is worthy of deep study if you take it seriously enough. This is certainly the case with rice balls. Taking the Onigiri Society’s online certification revealed everything I did not know about this dish: For example, that the first ekiben (railway bento) consisting of two rice balls was first sold in 1885 at Utsunomiya Station; or that there are 1,800 to 2,000 grains of rice in a standard onigiri.
In the Onigiri Society’s multiple-choice online test, the final question quizzes you on the secret to making the best onigiri. Surprise! The answer is neither the method of cooking the rice, the amount of salt, nor the amount of pressure applied — it’s your feelings. Perhaps if I had read the Onigiri Charter beforehand, I would have understood onigiri’s role as a “communication tool to tell love and appreciation,” and therefore the “one and only tool for expressing gratitude and affection.”
Alas, there was a distressing dearth of rice balls on arrival at the Onigiri Summit; I was given to understand that food would be served at the end, presumably so that people would sit through the schedule of presentations instead of eating and leaving.
The first third of the Onigiri Summit consisted of four themed “talk sessions” — panelists taking turns talking at the audience rather than with each other. Asahi Kasei Corporation’s specious sales pitch on “30% more energy-efficient” aluminum foil doesn’t change the fact that we should be phasing out single-use packaging, be it foil or plastic (Kureha Corporation’s clingfilm representative was conspicuously absent from the environmental panel).

One of the more baffling panel sessions was the “women’s session” — theoretically a dialogue between four female onigiri-makers, and in practice four consecutive speeches with little in common between the panelists except for the fact of their gender and vocation. In her speech, Miyuki Kawahara, the founder of Rice Republic K.K., described rice balls as a “canvas of pure white rice” with limitless potential. Indeed, the phrase “the infinite possibilities of onigiri” cropped up so often during the summit that I began to wonder how bad the hangover would be if I used the phrase as the pretext for a drinking game.
Much was made of the virtues of rice balls: healthy, delicious, accommodating of any and all fillings, easily digestible, and convenient, especially if you only have one hand free.
Surely the same could be said of the sandwich? Not according to Yosuke Miura, the third-generation owner of Onigiri Asakusa Yadoroku, the oldest onigiri specialist in Tokyo.
“Things that go in sandwiches can be used in onigiri, but fillings that go in onigiri can’t necessarily be used in sandwiches,” asserted Miura, before pausing to glance around the room. “There’s no one from the Sandwich Association here, I assume?”
There was one speaker who had slightly more humble ambitions for his city’s main product. According to Susumu Kojima, “the only mayor representing the Kanto region,” Fukaya, Saitama Prefecture, grows the best negi (green onions) and broccoli in all of Japan.
“I’ve joined the summit in the hopes that all of you might want to use negi as onigiri filling,” said Kojima during his self-introduction. “While Fukaya’s produce is unlikely to ever be the star of the show, I hope that we can continue to support rice balls from the shadows.”
It’s good to know one’s limits; the world does not need a broccoli rice ball.
Onigiri have come a long way in the global cultural consciousness; Japan’s ever-dominant soft power (along with the rice ball emoji) has ensured that there’s no mistaking the quintessential white triangle with black nori for anything else — the most infamous example being the 1997 English dub of a Pokemon episode localizing onigiri as jelly-filled doughnuts.
Nevertheless, there seemed to be a general consensus among the speakers at the Onigiri Summit that rice balls were not sufficiently well-known overseas, at least not with the same ubiquity as sushi or ramen. It was vital that efforts be made for everyone else to understand the allure of this extremely Japanese food — never mind the inconvenient existence of rice ball variants like Italian arancini, Malaccan chicken rice balls, and Hindu pinda.
Representing rice product manufacturer and distributor Shinmei Holdings, Akito Suzuki took a different tack, suggesting that cultivating onigiri soft power would contribute to broader efforts to support the Japanese rice industry.

“Onigiri alone will not save Japanese agriculture or solve Japan’s self-sufficiency problem,” said Suzuki. “However, by popularizing onigiri (overseas), we hope to continue promoting delicious Japanese rice to the world.”
According to the Onigiri Society, one major rice ball trend to watch out for in the future is the “reverse import.” An example of this phenomenon is the California roll becoming popular in Japan. Little was said on precisely what form the reverse-import rice ball might take. It’s hard to imagine it’ll be the British fish and chips onigiri, the Swiss cheese fondue onigiri or the Alpine macaroni onigiri. Available at the Onigiri Summit, all three were part of an “Onigiri of the World” series of rice balls developed by Nico Nico Nori in collaboration with the Osaka University of Arts and to be sold during Expo 2025.
By the time I managed to make my way to the buffet table at the end of the summit, there was but one of these onigiri left — the fish and chips, which I later foisted on my British partner.
“Mother, father,” he said, grimacing dramatically. “I beg for clemency in light of what I am about to do.”
He then proceeded to eat two-thirds of the onigiri before I could even take a bite. In retrospect, I suppose there was only so much harm you could do to rice stuffed with deep-fried battered fish (and half a chip).

“I hate myself for saying this,” he said, “but it’s actually really good.”
Anyone who has ever watched Japanese TV will have encountered the national fervor for variety shows, which is why the apotheosis of the Onigiri Summit was the 3:30 p.m. variety show hour.
Emceed with pitch-perfect sunniness by veteran announcer Hitomi Ichinose, the summit’s variety show hour featured two media personalities: former track-and-field athlete So Takei and Koshihikari Mochida, whose shtick seems to be her extreme love for onigiri (her stage name is a rice varietal, koshihikari, playing on her legal name of Hikari). They were flanked by Onigiri Society chairman Nakamura and seven mayors who had traveled to Tokyo from cities around Japan to promote their onigiri-adjacent local products.
There’s something fever dream-like about a live variety show; it is banal yet utterly riveting. Mochida attributed her weight (104 kilograms, the same as baseball player Shohei Otani) to onigiri, stating that she eats over 300 convenience store onigiri a year. In between everyone trying to guess the top three onigiri fillings, Takei observed that Mochida resembled a rice ball, a statement which would have gotten him instantly canceled in the Anglosphere.
It wouldn’t be a variety show without an obligatory segment where the guests sample food and gush over it, which led us to the main event: “The Ultimate Onigiri.” This consisted of two rice balls made with koshihikari rice grown in Minamiuonuma, Niigata Prefecture, and Hakata salt from Imabari, Ehime Prefecture; accompanied by a variety of side dishes like pickled plum (Minabe, Wakayama Prefecture), salted salmon (Murakami, Niigata Prefecture) and soup made with crab (Uozu, Toyama Prefecture) and negi (Fukaya, Saitama Prefecture).
During this hour, I could almost believe that there was nothing on earth more important than watching fully grown adults discuss, with perfect gravitas, the relative merits of tuna mayonnaise over salted kelp and how it certainly deserved the top spot in the onigiri filling rankings.
There’s no denying the cultural significance of the rice ball. It’s comfort and nostalgia personified. Even I’m not impervious to its charms — one of my first ever meals in Japan 17 years ago was a mentaiko (pollack roe) rice ball. At one time or another, we are all Chihiro as she sobs while eating rice balls in “Spirited Away.” But there comes a point where an onigiri is surely just an onigiri.

Enter the heart-shaped Valentine’s onigiri. Devised as a collaboration between Asakusa-based pickled plum purveyor Ume to Hoshi and plum product producer Nakata Foods, the heart-shaped onigiri consisted of pickled plum paste, cream cheese, bacon and sliced cheese between two layers of plum vinegar rice and beetroot rice.
After the initial on-stage spiel, one of the owners of Ume to Hoshi, who had been holding the plate of rice balls, appeared to be struck by a brainwave. He turned to Hinata Homma, one of the fresh-faced members of idol group NGT48, who had been invited on stage to sample this bubblegum-colored concoction.
“Since this is a Valentine’s onigiri,” he said into the microphone, facing Homma and executing a perfect ritual bow for declaring one’s romantic feelings, “please, will you go out with me?”
He couldn’t have timed it better. This elicited a ripple of laughter from the audience, especially when Homma played along and gracefully accepted. She also said it was delicious, which is exactly what she would have been compelled to say under the circumstances. I would have liked to corroborate this for myself, but alas, the Valentine’s onigiri was not part of the onigiri smorgasbord at the end of the summit.
Even after all that, I couldn’t stop thinking about Ukon’s desire to be reincarnated as a rice ball, so before I left the Onigiri Summit, I posed a similar question to Miura, the owner of Asakusa Yadoroku. Would he want to come back as a rice ball, and if so, what flavor?
“Honestly, I’d like to be a whale,” said Miura. “In America, not in Japan, so I could just swim around and not get eaten.”
What flavor of onigiri would he have for his last meal?
“I’d really prefer something that wasn’t onigiri,” he deadpanned.