If you’ve ever had the opportunity to visit Japan, you’ll notice that wagashi aren’t just special-occasion treats. More often than not, wagashi will make an appearance in daily life as a casual after-dinner dessert. Far from being a sacred pinnacle of confectionary, wagashi are interwoven into many aspects of Japanese daily life. You just have to understand what “wagashi” means!
Japanese sweets are not sweet in the way Western desserts are sweet. There’s no aggressive taste of butter, sugar, cream, or chocolate. Wagashi, by contrast, is a far gentler experience.
The base of most wagashi is anko, sweet red bean paste. It can seem bland at first, but that mildness is the point. Many wagashi have been designed to accompany unsweetened matcha, and the interplay between the two is where the magic happens. One without the other feels incomplete.
So what is traditional Japanese wagashi?
In a nutshell, wagashi is a broad term used to describe “traditional Japanese confectionery”. The counter-term would be yogashi, which broadly means “Western confectionery”. So cakes are yogashi while mochi are wagashi. This simple distinction can get blurred when some yogashi have become so synonymous with Japan that they’re often thought of as wagashi when they’re not. More on that later
It’s probably useful to think of wagashi in terms of characteristics. Rather than try and remember whether a given confectionery is wagashi, or yogashi – it’s better to think of general characteristics of wagashi and go from there.
General characteristics of wagashi
- Wagashi generally are made from glutinous rice flour, or rice flour.
- Azuki bean paste plays an important role, either as filling or as a coating
- Traditional flavours are often matcha, hojicha, genmaicha, cinnamon, plain, mugwort, or yuzu
- Appearance is often highly symbolic, and/or seasonal.
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