Japanese sweets: dango, taiyaki, daifuku and more explained

Oct 7, 2026

By Jihye Dschihä

Japanese sweets range from fine confections that capture the seasons to cheap treats for children. Here we explain the best known: dango, taiyaki, daifuku, dorayaki and a few more.

What is the difference between wagashi and dagashi?

和菓子 (Wagashi) are traditional Japanese confections. They are usually made from plant-based ingredients such as rice, beans and sugar, and they play heavily on the seasons. According to Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, there is no fixed definition. Incidentally, the word 菓子 (Kashi) originally referred to fruit and nuts.

駄菓子 (Dagashi) are the opposite: cheap sweets and snacks, mainly for children. They cost around 10 to 200 yen and were traditionally sold in small shops called dagashi-ya. Their heyday was from the 1950s to the early 1980s. According to the English Wikipedia, there are still around 50 such shops in the Tokyo area today.

お菓子 (Okashi), finally, is simply the polite word for sweets of all kinds.

What are dango?

団子 (Dango) are small dumplings made from rice flour and glutinous rice flour, often served on a skewer. The best-known kinds:

Mitarashi dango (みたらし団子) are grilled and coated with a glaze of soy sauce, sugar and starch. According to tradition, they come from a teahouse near Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto, and their shape is said to imitate the bubbles in the shrine's purification pond. The sweet glaze is much more recent, though; sources date it to the Taishō period or the postwar years.
Hanami dango (花見団子) are pink, white and green and belong to cherry blossom season in spring.
Tsukimi dango (月見団子) are white, round dumplings eaten at the moon-viewing festival in autumn. In eastern Japan they are stacked into a pyramid; in the west they are oval and wrapped in bean paste.

What is taiyaki?

たい焼き (Taiyaki) literally means "baked sea bream": a fish-shaped waffle cake, usually filled with 餡子 (Anko), sweet red bean paste. In Japan, the sea bream is a symbol of good luck and used to be an expensive fish. Taiyaki made the lucky fish affordable for everyone.

The shop Naniwaya in Tokyo, which began selling taiyaki in 1909, is considered its inventor. The Japanese Wikipedia, however, considers it likely that others sold similar cakes earlier. Taiyaki got a new boost in 1975 from the children's song "Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun."

What is daifuku?

大福 (Daifuku) means "great luck": a small, round mochi, usually filled with anko. It used to be called "harabuto mochi," roughly "big-belly mochi," among other names. The new name plays on the fact that 腹 (belly) and 福 (luck) are pronounced the same. By the end of the 18th century, daifuku was already popular.

A more recent variant is いちご大福 (Ichigo daifuku), with a whole strawberry inside the bean paste. It appeared in the 1980s, and several confectioners claim to have invented it. It is eaten mainly in spring.

Mochi (餅) itself is a rice cake made from steamed and pounded glutinous rice. Japan's Ministry of Agriculture calls it Japan's oldest processed food.

What other Japanese sweets are there?

Dorayaki (どら焼き): two small pancakes made from castella batter with bean paste in between. "Dora" means gong; according to one explanation, the first dorayaki were baked on a gong. Dorayaki is also known as the favorite food of the cartoon character Doraemon.
Yōkan (羊羹): a firm block of bean paste, agar and sugar. The name goes back to a Chinese mutton soup; in Japan, the meat was replaced.
Konpeitō (金平糖): small sugar candies with little bumps. The name comes from the Portuguese "confeito," and in 1569 the Portuguese missionary Luís Fróis gave the warlord Oda Nobunaga a small glass bottle of them.
Ramune (ラムネ): lemonade in a bottle sealed with a glass marble. The name comes from the English "lemonade." Sources differ on when ramune came to Japan, sometime in the late 19th century.

Why are wagashi so seasonal?

Many wagashi reflect the season in their shape, color or ingredients. Nerikiri, for example, an artfully shaped confection, is modeled on the flowers, animals and festivals of the season. In spring, people eat 桜餅 (Sakura mochi), pink mochi with bean paste wrapped in a salted cherry leaf, especially for the Girls' Day festival Hinamatsuri on March 3. In autumn, tsukimi dango and sweets with rabbit motifs belong to the moon-viewing festival.

Where can I get Japanese sweets?

If you want to taste your way through Japanese snacks, our Oyatsu box contains 25 sweets and snacks from Japan. Japanese KitKats are a world of their own, with flavors you can hardly get elsewhere, for example in our large pack with nine Japanese flavors. And our Japan category shows everything from Japan at a glance.