Wagashi

About this book

English books about wagashi teach you to make a few dozen sweets. This book does the travellers' job instead: a field guide to the sweets themselves.

200 entries in eight parts, each in one fixed format — Roots, Taste & Ingredients, Makers & Place, Where to Buy & Taste, and Pairing with Tea. Thirty hand-shaped fresh sweets (nerikiri blossoms, scissors-cut chrysanthemums, steamed konashi); thirty mochi and rice sweets from strawberry daifuku to the east–west sakura mochi divide; yokan, jellies and chilled cafe classics; baked dorayaki, taiyaki, castella and the manju families; thirty festival and ceremonial sweets that date the year; thirty-five regional meibutsu from Ise's akafuku to Okinawa's court biscuits, including Japan's three great manju; dry wasanbon sweets and sugar craft; and the makers, beans, sugars and tea-pairing grammar behind the counter.

No per-shop prices or hours are asserted — shops change them; the town, the season and the tradition do not. Keeping times are given as honest ranges, and famous Western-style souvenirs on the same gift shelf are labelled plainly as boundary entries, so you always know what is wagashi and what is its neighbour.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.