Okashi: The Traditional Japanese Sweets

Okashi are Japanese confections that are made from a wide variety of ingredients including fruit, grain, nuts, and flour. They may be naturally or artificially flavored and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They are produced by a number of methods including baked, fried, pressed and fermented.

Okashi is the broad term for sweets and snacks so there are other terms that differentiate the different types of okashi based on what they are made of. Wagashi are the traditional Japanese sweets often made from naturally-based ingredients like red beans, rice flour and grains.

There are enjoyed with tea and may be accompanied by fruit and nuts. Gashi, pronounced like kashi, means sweet while the wa portion of the word means Japanese. Outside of Japan one well known wagashi is mochi.

Wagashi can be broken down further into three categories, based on water content. Nama gashi have a water content of 30% or more. They are consumed soon after making because they are highly perishable and sometimes require refrigeration to extend their shelf life. These include daifuku and dango. This type of wagashi is soft because it is often made with a red bean paste called anko and mochi. 

Han-namagashi have a water content between 10-30 %. One kind is monaka, a type of wafer made from mochi rice that is sandwiched together with a sticky filling. The third type is higashi which have a water content of 10% or less and are called dry wagashi due to the low moisture. They have the longest shelf life of the three, typically a couple of months. Many higashi tend to be cookie-like in texture.

The other type of okashi is called dagashi. Da means low, a name given because they are inexpensive. There are an estimated over 5000 types of dagashi. These include factory made sweets like hard, chewy and powdered candy, chocolate as well as savory dagashi like rice crackers, chips and seaweeds. Okashi has been expanded to also include modern snacks that are fairly well recognized in the West such as pocky and kit kat.

In addition to the many defining characteristics of wagashi and dagashi, they are also packaged very differently. Dagashi typically comes in bright packaging meant to attract children. Wagashi is sometimes packed in intricate pouches and attractive, unusually shaped paper packages. Some are packed into boxes, which are even separated to avoid the separate pieces from touching each other or packaged in clear material to show of its appealing appearance.

Origin and Significance

Okashi can be traced back into Japanese history to at least the 1600’s. Okashi originally referred to fruit and the first okashi were fruit based. They were reserved for tea ceremonies.

Today, the tea isn’t necessary to enjoy okashi and Japanese sweets hold a fascination for the rest of the world particularly America where Japanese candy stores and subscriptions boxes are quite popular.