are a springtime treat made with sweet rice and sweet azuki (red bean) paste. They are made by soaking sweet rice for approximately six hours. The rice is then cooked, and a thick azuki paste is hand-packed around pre-formed balls of rice.

A very similar treat, , uses a slightly different texture of azuki paste, but is otherwise almost identical. It is made in autumn. Some recipe variations in both cases call for a coating of soy flour to be applied to the botamochi/ohagi after the azuki paste.

The two different names are derived from the Botan (peony) which blooms in the spring and the Hagi (Japanese bush clover or Lespedeza) which blooms during autumn.

Ohagi is named after the bush clover

Lespedeza

Lespedeza is a genus of some 40 species of flowering plants in the pea family , commonly known as bush clovers or Japanese clovers...

 (hagi), which flowers during autumn. The editors of the English-language Rurouni Kenshin

Rurouni Kenshin

, also known as Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai X, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki. The fictional setting takes place during the early Meiji period in Japan. The story is about a fictional assassin named Himura Kenshin, from the Bakumatsu who becomes a wanderer to...

comic book volumes said that ohagi "is said to be especially delicious" when consumed with matcha

Matcha

refers to finely-milled green tea, most popular in Japan. The cultural activity called the Japanese tea ceremony centers on the preparation, serving, and drinking of matcha. In modern times, matcha has also come to be used to flavour and dye foods such as mochi and soba noodles, green tea ice cream...

, or green tea.

Botamochi is the modern name for the dish "Kaimochi (かいもち) mentioned in the Heian Period text Ujishui Monogatari (宇治拾遺物語).