Japanese Sweets (Wagashi)

Japanese sweets (wagashi) have been strongly influenced by Chinese sweets (togashi) and sweets from the West, especially Spain and Portugal (nanbangashi). Many Japanese confections, made primarily from rice and azuki bean paste, are quite sweet. Japanese sweets are closely associated with the tea ceremony and are often elaborate and created to evoke the seasons. One way of categorizing Japanese sweets is by water content.

Unbaked sweets (namagashi) come in a full range of quality, from the fancy to the everyday. Nerikiri (made from white kidney bean paste and soft sticky rice paste, mochi), gyuhi (a softer type of mochi) and yurine kinton (made from seasonally harvested lily bulbs) are types of dough used to craft fine-quality Japanese sweets. Those of everyday quality are called nami namagashi. Some types of namagashi are categorized as asanama to indicate that they should be eaten on the same day they are made. These less fancy, more popular, sweets include mochi varieties like daifuku mochi (a rice cake stuffed with sweet bean paste), sakura mochi (a sweet pink-colored rice cake stuffed with sweet bean paste and wrapped in a pickled cherry tree leaf), kashiwa mochi (a rice cake wrapped in an oak leaf), and kusa mochi (made with mochi rice and Japanese mugwort), as well as kusadango (dumplings made from mochi and Japanese mugwort) and kanoko (azuki beans and chestnuts on a bed of red bean paste).

Partially baked sweets (han namagashi) such as ishigoromo (wafer cakes) and monaka (two crisp wafers sandwiching a bean jam filling) stay fresher longer than namagashi, while dry Japanese sweets (higashi) stay fresh for a very long time. Dry Japanese sweets include okoshi (popped rice coated with sugar) and rakugan (colorful sweets made by molding sugar and soybean flour into decorative shapes).

Other sweets include steamed delicacies such as manju (steamed buns filled with sweet bean paste) and mushi yokan (steamed bean jelly made with agar and red bean paste); saomono (block-shaped sweets) such as yokan (bean jelly), uiro (steamed cake made of rice flour, sugar, and water), and kingyokuto (boiled agar jelly, water, and sugar); yakigashi (baked sweets) such as kuri manju (manju with chestnuts) and dorayaki (a sandwich of two pancakes filled with red bean paste); kakemono (beans or small rice balls covered with sugar) such as kokonoe (sweet flavored drinks made from sugar-coated rice crackers) and goshiki mame (five-colored beans); ame-gashi (hard candy); and sato-zuke (candied fruit).

Western sweets (nanbangashi), which were transmitted from Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands via the foreign port of Dejima in the 16th century and then evolved further in Japan, in their own Japanese way, can also be described as a type of Japanese sweets. These include kasutera (sponge cake), boro (egg cookies), aruhei-to (sugar candy), karumera (caramel), and konpeito (tiny colored candies). The popularity of foreign sweets, which require a great deal of sugar to make, helped increase demand for sugar during the Edo period (1603–1867).

As highways across Japan improved and expanded, Edo-gashi, Kyo-gashi, and other regional sweets were introduced nationwide, and certain areas became known for certain confections and local specialties. Most of the Japanese sweets we know today took form in the Edo period.

The origin of Japanese sweets is said to be tsubaki mochi (sticky rice paste containing smooth red bean paste sandwiched between two camellia leaves). This sweet has been around since the early Heian period. It is thought that tsubaki mochi comes from the tsubai mochii mentioned in Utsuho monogatari (Tale of the Hollow Tree; late 10th century) and Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji; early 11th century) and is the very first type of the Japanese sweet.