ears ago, I had my first manju, a traditional Japanese confection, at Benkyodo, a shop in San Francisco’s Japantown. It was a mochi manju—sweet glutinous rice (that’s the mochi part) around an even sweeter red bean filling. I thought it was delicious, but the combination of the gumminess of the mochi rice and the graininess of the mashed beans is not for everyone. In the 1987 indie film , directed by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki, the
