April 2025 | Goods From Japan

Japanese Chocolates 日本のチョコレート

Japanese chocolates

Today, Japan is a major producer of chocolate, the varieties on offer are endless and deeply ingrained in popular culture.

On Valentine's Day, girls traditionally present chocolates to their favored boy, on White Day (March 14th) boys reciprocate with their own chocolate gifts to the respective girl.

There are chocolates that students present to each other before exams, often inscribed with personal well-wishing messages. Manufacturers adapted quickly to that custom and leave blank spaces on the packages for exactly that purpose.

Add to that an abundance of imported chocolates, mainly Belgian and Swiss, and Japan becomes a chocolate wonderland.

Foreign visitors took notice. Soon, some of the most original Japanese chocolates became favorites in the West as well. Hard to find favorites, that is. Typically, those craving the treats need to rely on friends visiting Japan to buy them a few packages, carrying them back home in their suitcases.

Before going into the specifics on the most iconic Japanese chocolates, both in Japan and oversees, let's have a brief look at the history of Japanese chocolate.

Taichiro Morinaga

Taichiro Morinaga (1865-1937) is widely credited as the pioneering entrepreneur popularizing chocolate in Japan.

Morinaga, a native of what is now Saga Prefecture in Kyushu, moved to Yokohama in his youth and tried his hands at various businesses. They all failed and with no prospects left, Morinaga moved to San Francisco at age 23, opening a hardware store in the city. At that time, Morinaga discovered American milk candy and he fell in love with the sweet immediately. Not being able to obtain a real apprenticeship at an American candy manufacturing company, Morinaga joined one such company as janitor. Moving slowly into actual candy manufacturing work, Morinaga stayed with the company for 11 years.

By then feeling confident about producing his own candies in Japan, Morinaga moved back and opened his first candy shop in Akasaka, Tokyo in 1899.

The milk candy Morinaga's small enterprise produced became very popular among the families of Western diplomats and expatriates but also caught on with the tastes of local Japanese.

The step up to chocolate production was still risky. At the time in Japan, chocolate had the reputation of being unpleasantly bitter. Something Western sailors would eat to keep up their strength on their long journeys to Yokohama.

To introduce his sweet milk chocolate, Morinaga had to start and operate his own dairy farm as the milk supply in Japan was still insufficient for any larger milk-based industrial production.

In 1918, Morinaga's company was the first to mass-produce sweet milk chocolate in Japan. It immediately became very popular, leading the way to Morinaga & Company becoming one of the largest sweets producers in Japan, branching out into biscuits, jellies, cocoa drinks and many other products.

Visit any Japanese supermarket or convenience store and you will find lots of Morinaga products all over the shelves.

The Morinaga Company laid the groundwork, the products of the company are still reliable essential items.

The job of tuning taste levels a further notch up however was left to Morinaga's immediate competitors. The iconic products discussed below are made by large manufacturers closely following Morinaga's footsteps but getting vastly more innovative in the long run.

Meltykiss on a supermarket shelf

Meiji Meltykiss

Chocolate maker Meiji started out in 1916 as Tokyo Confectionary Co., handling imported Western confectionaries and dairy products. Soon, Meiji developed its own dairy and sweets products, introducing Meiji Milk Chocolate in 1926. The chocolate became a huge success with Japanese customers, it is still sold today in every Japanese supermarket in a wrapper almost identical to the original packaging from 1926.

Fast forward to the year 1992. In that year Meiji introduced Meltykiss, "a seasonal chocolate product … to represent the tranquility of winter by creating chocolate as smooth as snow," as the company website states in corporate advertising poetry.

Milk chocolate Meltykiss

Meltykiss is indeed a delicious treat. Originally introduced as soft cubes of milk chocolate, by now versions with dark chocolate, strawberry, matcha and other flavors are also available.

Meltykiss is only available in winter "because the distinct, smooth textures of the chocolate treat only come out when stored at temperatures lower than 23°C." (Quote from the company website again).

Buy a 5-pack set of Meltykiss from GoodsFromJapan

Kinoko no Yama and Takenoko no Sato mix packs on a supermarket shelf

Meiji Kinoko no Yama & Takenoko no Sato

In 1975, Meiji introduced Kinoko no Yama (Mushroom Mountain) chocolate cookies. As the name promises, those cookies are shaped like small mushrooms. Though the fun-looking packages appear to be aimed at children, those cookies soon became also a favorite among many adults. They go very well will a cup of strong coffee.

In 1979, Meiji followed up with the Takenoko no Sato (Bamboo Sprouts Hometown) chocolate cookies. Those are shaped like bamboo sprouts. More importantly, eggs and almonds were added to the cookie dough. Enhancing the taste on one hand but making them off-limits to people with respective allergies.

Buy an 8-bag Kinoko no Yama and Takenoko no Sato Mix Pack

Pocky Sticks on a shelf

Glico Pocky Sticks

Closely following up on the success of the Morinaga and Meiji confectionary companies, Riichi Ezaki (1882-1980) formed the Ezaki Glico Company in 1922 in Osaka. Confectionaries, dairy products and processed foods have been the focus of the company ever since. Glico is one of the big players in this field in Japan.

Among internation chocolate lovers, however, Glico is most famous for its Pocky Sticks, chocolate-coated biscuit sticks, introduced in 1966.

Glico soon expanded the range of the flavors. Today, Pocky Sticks are available with strawberry chocolate, matcha flavored chocolate, almond chocolate and many other variations.

Variations of Pocky Sticks

While the classic chocolate sticks in the red package are always available, the other variations are often sold only seasonally. Winter tends to be the best time to find a large variety of Pocky Sticks on Japanese supermarket shelves.

Buy classic Pocky

Kit Kat

Nestle Kit Kat

Kit Kat was first launched by Roundtree's of York, England as a working man's chocolate wafer in 1935. "Have a break… have a Kit Kat", the famous advertising slogan from 1958, sums up those early days of Kit Kat. Roundtree's introduced Kit Kat to Japan in 1973 as a very British treat.

In 1988, Swiss food conglomerate Nestlé acquired Roundtree's and with it the Japanese Kit Kat franchise.

It took until about the year 2000 but then Nestlé Japan handed Kit Kat development and marketing to a creative Japanese team.

The term 'creative' cannot be overstated here. After some initial trials with different Kit Kat flavors, the team went simply wild.

While new flavors like strawberry and matcha have by now become standards available in every supermarket, the Japanese team went much further.

A great variety of seasonal products were introduced, sometimes lasting only one single season. Famous pastry chefs were hired to work on those flavors, developing Kit Kat wafer bars in a multitude of shapes and tastes only sold in the most high-end shops in the most up-scale neighborhoods. Like, say, Tokyo's Ginza.

In addition, regional Kit Kat flavors are marketed as omiyage gifts. Japanese traveling somewhere like to bring souvenirs, often foods, back to their friends and family.

So, Kit Kat relating to the typical flavors a certain region is associated with are sold in local souvenir shops alongside the actual products from the respective region. Like sweet potato in Okinawa, wasabi in Shizuoka, yama imo (Japanese mountain yam) in Kyushu or salty plum in Yamanashi.

In the process, all connections to the old British image of Kit Kat were expunged. Kit Kat became 100% Japanese despite the Nestlé logo printed on every package.

Extra Rich Dark Green Tea KitKat 10-Pack

Matcha Kit Kat (left) and classic Kit Kat

Buy Iconic Chocolates from Japan

Good luck with your Kit Kat hunting in Japan! The Don Quijote megastore in Shibuya, Tokyo is said to offer the greatest variety on Kit Kat products anywhere in the country… but for the regional flavors you still have to travel to the various regions.

The most common Kit Kat products, as well as various varieties of the other chocolates described above can easily be ordered here at Goods from Japan.

Goods from Japan offers a variety of Japanese foodstuffs and ingredients.

Purchase a range of Japanese food and chocolates from GoodsFromJapan.

Aizuwakamatsu Hand Painted Candles

Masu Wooden Sake Boxes

Ramune

Sayama Green Tea

Shichimi Togarashi

Yanai Goldfish Lanterns

Yatsuhiro & Tatami

Yuzu Kosho Spice from Kyushu

by Johannes Schonherr

Japan Book Review: The Samurai

The Samurai

by Endo Shusaku

ISBN: 978-1-80533-03-87
Pushkin Press, 1980
368 pp; paperback

Set in the same 1600s era as his more famous book Silence, author Endo Shusaku again weaves a riveting story based on historical people and events. Silence is the more famous of the two stories Endo wrote about Japan's "Christian Century" as it was later turned into a renowned movie by Martin Scorsese.

The Samurai

This story focuses on two main characters. One is a low-ranking rural warrior, samurai Rokuemon Hasekura, and the other is Franciscan friar Father Velasco, who has spent some years proselytizing in Japan. Hasekura, the eponymous samurai who is docile and duty-bound, is plucked out of obscurity to travel to Nueva Espana (Mexico) to try to open trade with Mexico. He hopes that a successful mission will help his clan get back their ancestral lands which they lost while fighting on the losing side of a recent war. Velasco, who is overly impressed with his own piety, will do anything to help Japan become a Christian nation, and to be named bishop of Japan by the Pope. Yes, his motives are sometimes found to be less than pure.

The reader definitely doesn't have to be a follower of religious history, or really even Japanese history, to be captured by the story. Those that are such followers, might find the real-life complications between the Jesuit and the Franciscan Catholics interesting…and sad.

The samurai and Velasco, who is fluent in Japanese, are the first to set sail from Japan using Japan's untested shipbuilding capability. Both survive the trip, but others do not. Mexico fails to give either Hasekura or Velasco what they want, and their multi-year voyage continues.

As with most of his other books, Endo's writing engrosses the reader with its characters, whether those characters are sympathetic characters or not. The reader must get used to Endo switching between first- and third-person narratives, but will get the hang of it eventually.

There is a helpful and quite interesting seven-page postscript written by Van C. Gessel (the translator of the book from the original Japanese), which discusses how close Endo's characters are to real-life individuals. Don't pass over the postscript.

After a bit of a slow start, readers will be moved by the dilemmas, decisions and disappointments that the main characters (and pretty much all of the auxiliary characters) must deal with. The reader could easily feel sorry for perhaps every character in the book, but life was not easy for many people in 1600s Japan as it was transitioning into the Tokugawa shogunate.

While moving constantly between historical adventure, travel narrative, political drama and varying interpretations of faith, The Samurai is challenging, thought provoking and deep.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections.

Buy this book from Amazon USA | UK | Japan

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