Yokan is anko's most architectural form: bean paste cooked with sugar and agar (kanten, a seaweed gelatin), then poured into a mold and left to set into a firm, sliceable block. Neri yokan is dense and almost fudge-like; mizu yokan uses more water for a lighter, jellied version eaten chilled in summer. It keeps for ages, which historically made it a prized gift.

Wagashi 101: A Field Guide to Japan's Traditional Sweets

Q: What is the difference between daifuku and manju?

It's rice versus wheat. Daifuku is a small round of pounded glutinous-rice mochi wrapped around a core of anko. Manju is a bun — wheat-flour dough wrapped around anko and usually steamed — which gives a softer, breadier bite. That single rice-versus-wheat distinction is the whole difference between them.

Q: What is anko, and what's the difference between tsubuan and koshian?

Anko is sweetened paste made from azuki beans, and it's the ingredient almost every wagashi orbits. Tsubuan is chunky — the beans are boiled with sugar but left whole, skins and all. Koshian is smooth, pushed through a sieve until the skins are gone and the paste is silk; it's the more common of the two in fine confectionery.

Q: How can I tell how long a wagashi will keep before I buy it?

Ask whether it's namagashi or higashi, because wagashi are classified by moisture. Namagashi hold roughly 30% or more water and must be eaten fresh; higashi sit at 10% or less and keep for weeks; half-dry ones live in between. That one fact tells you both how delicate the sweet is and how long you can hold onto it.

Q: Is mochi ice cream a traditional wagashi?

Not in the traditional sense. Mochi ice cream — ice cream wrapped in a thin mochi shell — is a real wagashi-adjacent treat, but a modern one that was popularized abroad. It is not what a Japanese grandmother means by mochi.

Walk into a Japanese confectionery — a wagashi-ya — and the case in front of you is doing several different things at once. Some of those sweets are pounded rice. Some are steamed wheat buns. Some are bean paste set firm enough to slice with a wire. They all answer to the umbrella word wagashi (和菓子, "Japanese confection"), but lumping them together is like calling a baguette, a brownie, and a panna cotta "dessert" and stopping there. The differences are the whole point.

Almost everything in that case orbits one ingredient: anko, sweetened paste made from azuki beans. It shows up in two forms you'll meet constantly. Tsubuan is chunky — the beans are boiled with sugar but left whole, skins and all. Koshian is the smooth one, pushed through a sieve until the skins are gone and the paste is silk; it's the more common of the two in fine confectionery. Learn to spot anko and the dough wrapped around it, and most wagashi sort themselves out.

The mochi family: pounded rice

Mochi is glutinous rice — mochigome — steamed, then pounded in a wooden mortar (usu) with a mallet (kine) until it turns into a stretchy, chewy mass. Plain, it's barely sweet. It's texture more than flavor: the springy backbone of a dozen other sweets.

Daifuku is the one most people have actually eaten — a small round of mochi, maybe four centimeters across, wrapped snugly around a core of anko. The name reads "great luck," a happy accident: it started as daifuku mochi, "big-belly rice cake," and since fuku (belly) and fuku (luck) sound alike, the kinder spelling won. The famous variant is ichigo daifuku, a whole fresh strawberry tucked in beside the bean paste — the tart fruit cutting the sweetness is the entire trick. It's a 1980s invention and a seasonal one, at its best from winter into spring when strawberries are.

Dango are small dumplings of rice flour, usually three to five threaded on a skewer. They're chewier and denser than daifuku, and they're defined by their glaze: mitarashi dango wear a glossy sweet-savory sauce of soy, sugar, and starch; hanami dango come pink, white, and green for cherry-blossom season.

A note that trips people up: mochi ice cream — ice cream wrapped in a thin mochi shell — is a real wagashi-adjacent treat, but a modern one, popularized abroad. It is not what a Japanese grandmother means by mochi.

The baked and griddled: dorayaki and manju

Dorayaki breaks the bean-paste-in-rice pattern. It's two small discs of castella-style sponge — faintly honeyed, closer to cake than to a Western pancake — sandwiched around tsubuan. The two-layer form we know dates to 1914, from the shop Usagiya in Ueno, Tokyo; the name nods to the dora, a flat gong the cakes resemble. It's the sweet famous as the favorite food of the cartoon cat Doraemon, it travels well, and it's often the first wagashi people abroad recognize.

Manju is a bun — wheat-flour dough wrapped around anko and usually steamed (sometimes baked or fried). Wheat, not rice: that's the whole difference from daifuku, and it gives a softer, breadier bite. The form arrived from China by the Kamakura period, and today regional manju are everywhere as omiyage, the boxed souvenirs you carry home from a trip, every town selling its own.

The set sweets: yokan

Yokan is anko's most architectural form. Bean paste is cooked with sugar and agar — a seaweed gelatin called kanten — then poured into a mold and left to set into a firm, sliceable block. (Agar's arrival in the 1600s is what made the modern version possible.) Neri yokan is dense and almost fudge-like; mizu yokan uses more water for a lighter, jellied version, chilled and eaten in summer. You take it in neat rectangles, and a good one has a clean, deep sweetness with a slight snap as you bite. It keeps for ages, which historically made it a prized gift — the kind of sweet that built houses like Toraya, a Kyoto confectioner serving the Imperial Court since the late 1500s.

The artistry tier: nerikiri and jonamagashi

At the top of the case sit the jonamagashi (上生菓子), the soft, sculptural pieces shaped like camellias, maple leaves, or drifting snow. Most are nerikiri: a pliable dough of white bean paste (shiroan) bound with a little gyuhi (a soft, sweetened mochi) or yam, tinted in gradients and shaped entirely by hand with simple wooden tools. These are the wagashi made expressly for the tea ceremony — meant to be eaten in two or three bites before a bowl of matcha — and they change with the season, which is the entire reason they exist. (More on that in the seasonal guide.)

A few you'll meet next

Monaka — anko sandwiched between two thin, crisp wafers of toasted mochi. All about the contrast of shatter and softness.
Taiyaki — a fish-shaped (sea bream) cake filled with anko or, increasingly, custard; a street snack since around 1909, not a refined sweet.
Higashi — bone-dry pressed-sugar sweets, often little molded shapes made from fine wasanbon sugar, served with thin tea. The opposite of the juicy fresh ones.
Warabimochi — a wobbly, translucent jelly made from bracken starch, dusted with roasted soybean flour (kinako) and dark kuromitsu syrup.

How to order

Two questions cut through the whole case. First: is this namagashi or higashi? Wagashi are actually classified by moisture — namagashi hold roughly 30% or more and must be eaten fresh; higashi sit at 10% or less and keep for weeks; the half-dry ones live in between. That single fact tells you both how delicate the sweet is and how long you can hold onto it. Second, when in doubt, point at what's in season — a good wagashi-ya rotates the case constantly, and the seasonal pieces are where the shop puts its best work. You don't need the vocabulary to enjoy any of it. But knowing that mochi is rice, manju is wheat, and yokan is set bean paste means you'll never again mistake one pleasure for another.