Chocolate has been made and eaten in Japan since the 1870s, and has been among the country's most popular confections since the 1960s. As of 2015, Japan was the largest consumer of chocolate in Asia. Within the country, chocolate is regarded as a foreign food, and is most often eaten as bars or as products targeting premium markets. Some chocolates made in Japan are unusual internationally, produced in shapes such as mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and in a broader range of flavors. Matcha-pairings are particularly popular. A large share of Japan's chocolate is sold around Valentine's Day.
Chocolates were first sold in Japan as the country emerged from a period of isolationism (sakoku). Manufacturers initially formed their chocolate products from chocolate purchased from overseas, and struggled to gain market share against producers of the traditional Japanese confection wagashi. Chocolate began to gain popularity in the early 20th century as manufacturers marketed it as nutritious and hygienic, and in 1918 Morinaga & Company began producing the first chocolate made in Japan.
Over the following decades, consumption of chocolate increased and corporations like Meiji Co. entered the industry. Production was paused in World War II as cocoa bean imports were halted. After the war, American G.I.s stationed in Japan distributed chocolate to children, making a great impression. Following the war, advertisements began to target children as the primary chocolate and by the mid-1960s chocolate had become the highest selling confection in Japan.
Forms Within Japan, chocolate is fundamentally considered a foreign food. Domestically, the city of Kobe is most associated with chocolate, having hosted a large foreign population at the turn of the 20th century. In contrast with South Korea where most chocolate is incorporated into baked goods like cookies and cakes, most chocolate is eaten as chocolate bars and in products catering to a premium market. In bakeries, chocolate is used to fill anpan.
A distinction is observed between chocolates made locally and those made internationally. Those made in Japan are typically sold in convenience or grocery stores. Many resemble chocolates sold elsewhere in both flavor and form, though some are distinct, such as products shaped to resemble mushrooms (Kinoko no yama) and bamboo (Takenoko no sato). Other distinctions come from the popularity of flavors such as matcha, and the presence of some that are unusual outside of the country, such as purple sweet potato and sun-dried tomato. Chocolates are not limited to single flavors, with some containing three or more. Chocolates made in Europe are sold in department stores and those serving upmarket clientele, reflecting the high regard European chocolate is held in. By contrast, American chocolate is viewed as far inferior to that made in Europe, and is rarely sold.
History
Early history
Records of chocolate in Japan date to at least 1797 in Dejima, an artificial island off Nagasaki which was one of the few places in Japan where foreign trade was permitted. The first records describe a drink made in the European manner—hot, with eggs and sugar. Drinks were the primary form chocolate was consumed in, and it was not until the mid-19th century that the modern solid eating chocolate was invented. 18th century Japan was very familiar with European sweets, and those introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th and 17th centuries were particularly popular. Despite this, chocolate would not gain popularity until later.
In 1853, the Perry Expedition forced the end of Japan's semi-isolationism, which had for centuries curtailed the influence of the Western world. What exactly could be learned from the Western world was not immediately clear to Japan's politicians and intellectuals, and in 1871, a group of prominent figures set out on the Iwakura Mission to visit the United States and Europe and learn about industrialization. In January 1873, the expeditionists toured a large factory in France—likely Menier—which manufactured chocolate bars. Reports of their impression vary: food historian Tatsuya writes that the product and production impressed them, and says the Iwakura Mission returned to Japan with an impression of chocolate as "luxurious, portable and modern", while food historian Kushner describes the contingent as repelled by the odours of butter and milk.
Japanese chocolate bars The first chocolate bars produced in Japan appeared four years later in 1879, made by Yonezu Fūgetsudō, a confectioner in the Ryōgoku district of Tokyo. Fūgetsudō had by then been in the confectionery business for twenty years, working in both the Western () and Japanese () traditions of Japanese sweets. Though he had never left Japan, he took frequent trips to Yokohama, a city south of Tokyo, where a large foreign settlement existed. On one of these trips he met Tanito Shunjirō, a pastry chef working at a French confectionery company, from whom Fūgetsudō likely learned chocolate making. Fūgetsudō began selling his chocolate in 1888. Because he lacked the technology to process cocoa beans himself into chocolate, he purchased processed ingredients from foreign companies, a practice followed by all chocolate makers in Japan for the next 30 years. Fūgetsudō's first newspaper advertisements promoted a connection between chocolate and France.
Early sellers, including Fūgetsudō, sold both Western and Japanese confectionery in the one store. They struggled to break into the mature Japanese confectionery market, and by 1895 in Tokyo 20 Japanese-Western confectionery stores competed with 357 selling . Into this scene in the final years of the 20th century, major international chocolate makers, including Cadbury, J. S. Fry & Sons, Van Houten, and Menier began selling in Japan, although their audience is unclear, and may have only included foreigners and the wealthy. Consumers understood chocolate as modern and western, but also viewed it with some uncertainty; unsure of where it could fit in their daily diets, and how it was distinct from . Other causes for the limited consumption include the cheaper prices of Japanese alternatives, appealing for students, and according to Maekawa (2025) a lack of familiarity with milk and animal fats.
The connection to the west in the advertising of Western-Japanese confectioners was extensive, and sellers often claimed their products were "English-American copies". A store opened in 1899 by entrepreneur Taichiro Morinaga that only sold Western confectionery went further. Unlike Fūgetsudō, Morinaga grew up in Meiji era, and was recently returned from a decade in the United States where he had spent time studying confectionery-making in California. Outside his shop he hung a sign in English: "American fresh candy and chocolate", drew a clientele of the western-born wives of diplomats and politicians who also found his identity as a Christian confectioner appealing. The business earned him a request to deliver chocolate to the Imperial Palace. Part of Morinaga's choice to target western audiences came from his reputation in the Western-Japanese confectioner community, where he was ostracized for his foreign training and his past selling pottery. Further distance from other producers came from his desire to emulate the scale and form of the large Western chocolate companies rather than the small, local wagashi manufacturers.
Health claims The 1900 Paris Exposition marked a turning point in attitudes towards chocolate and wagashi. The world fair had been viewed as an important diplomatic opportunity by the Japanese government, and through their encouragement Japanese craftspeople sent tens of thousands of items. Among these included confections, mostly wagashi, and some producers were dispatched to Paris to make wagashi freshly on-site. Contemporary reports described a warm reception for the craftsmanship of the wagashi, and the dispatched contingent were awarded a silver medal at the end of the fair.
Despite the praise, many of the Japanese attendees were despondent. "This prize does absolutely nothing for us" said the Great Japanese Confectionary Association. Those present described a distinction that had been made clear between wagashi and western sweets: wagashi, developed to provide a visual accompaniment to green tea, was flavoured and scented so as not to distract from the drinking experience. Western confections on the other hand were produced for taste, and could contain nutritive ingredients such as milk and eggs. To them, this demonstrated a clear superiority of Western sweets.
Ingredients were not the only way that chocolate was understood to be more healthy. Until the entrance of western sweets in Japan, wagashi was made in the back of the shops they were sold in. In stores, confections were left out in boxes uncovered and exposed to the air. At the time of purchase, customers would express how much they wanted, and merchants would measure into bags or old newspapers, in some instances blowing air into bags to allow more sweets to fit. Contrasting with such conditions, chocolate and other western sweets were mass-produced in large factories, and were sold pre-measured and pre-packaged in silver foil or paper.
Confectioners in Japan reacted by altering their marketing. Less emphasis was put on the western associations of chocolate, and in its place chocolate was marketed for its purported healthfulness and its ability to be eaten anywhere, in any season. In winter they advertised chocolate as a source of energy, and in summer as a nutritious digestive. An example of this could be seen in marketing from Morinaga in 1918, which attested that "Chocolate is the perfect nutrient. By contrast to the best flour, it contains more than twice the amount of nitrogen and 15 times more fat with starch and pleasing aroma. Theobromine also heightens appetite and helps digestion". By 1905, figures in the confectionery industry were complaining about an excessive emphasis on nutrition, arguing that eggs and milk were being added to products to permit health claims at the expense of taste. Despite this, nutrition remained central to chocolate marketing until the 1950s.
Outside of advertisements, parents in the 1910s received contrasting advice from pediatricians on whether they should be feeding their children chocolate. One publication recommending mothers feed chocolate to their children came in 1912, based on the idea that it contained nutrients lacking in wagashi. A dissenting view could be read in 1916 from , with warnings that parents who fed chocolate to their children under the age of four may face overstimulation that impacted sleep.
Growth in industry By the 1910s, growing demand began drawing domestic and international firms into chocolate manufacturing. The Swiss firm Nestlé was among the first of these international organizations, setting up operations in Yokohama in 1912. Nestlé advertised its chocolates as an energizing food source that was to be eaten outdoors in line with other advertisers, although unusually for the time Nestlé's advertisements associated chocolate with children, which was then more common in Europe. Other companies that entered the market in the 1910s and early 1920s included in Kobe, founded by a Russian immigrant, and Ezaki Glico in Osaka.