56 stores · curated ORBIS register
Japanese pastry keeps its wagashi calendar close to the old cities, which is why the sweet changes with the month. Kyoto's Kagizen Yoshifusa serves kuzukiri chilled kudzu-starch noodles at a 300-year-old Gion confectioner. Kanazawa's Koshiyama Kanseido makes the Kaga Goshiki Namagashi, the five-colored Edo-period wedding confection. Sapporo's Senshu-an Main Store has turned out Japanese and Western-style sweets since it was established in 1921. Lacquer boxes and Western-style cases share the list, three centuries apart in places. Seasonal pieces do not wait for shipping; eat them in the week you are there.
Izusan, Atami, Shizuoka
Official confectioner to Izusan Shrine, this historic wagashi maker is best known for its Tsurukichi yokan. The sweet bean jelly anchors a range of traditional Japanese confections.
Best for Yokan and traditional Japanese confections
9-157 Kami-Kawabata-machi, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka 812-0026, Japan / Fukuoka / Japan
Official history dates the Harada confectionery line to Kan'ei 7 / 1630; Crossroad Fukuoka lists the current Kami-Kawabata honten at 9-157.
Best for Confectionery from a house whose official history dates to 1630.
Fukuoka
Chidoriya Souke traces its confectionery back more than three centuries, built around the bean-paste Hon-Chidori Manju. The Fukuoka house also makes castella and sable sold through its shops and online store.
Best for Chidori manju and castella
Hakata-eki-mae, Hakata, Fukuoka
Josuian makes Hakata wagashi from its base by Hakata Station, best known for Tsukushi-mochi, kinako-dusted mochi served with brown-sugar syrup. The confectioner also turns out monaka and seasonal strawberry and grape daifuku.
Best for Tsukushi-mochi and daifuku
Hakata, Fukuoka
Matsuya Riemon has made keiran somen since 1673, spinning sweetened egg yolk into fine golden threads counted among Japan's three great confections. The Hakata house sells the delicate sweet in boxed skeins from its Fukuoka shops.
Best for Keiran somen egg-thread confection
Nakasu-Kawabata, Hakata, Fukuoka
Suzukake has made Hakata wagashi since 1923, working from the teachings of first-generation master Saburo Nakaoka. The Nakasu-Kawabata main shop pairs a confectionery counter with a tearoom serving seasonal sweets that rotate monthly.
Best for Seasonal Hakata wagashi and a tearoom
Hakata, Fukuoka
Toundo has baked Niwaka-senpei since 1906, crisp egg biscuits shaped like the half-mask of Hakata Niwaka street comedy. The family firm sells the senpei boxed with a paper mask from its Hakata base.
Best for Niwaka-senpei egg crackers
Miyajima, Hiroshima
Momijido is the Miyajima confectioner credited with creating Age-momiji, a deep-fried momiji manju on a stick served hot from its Omotesando shops. The company makes classic baked maple-leaf cakes alongside the fried version and its momiji-shaped nut snacks.
Best for Age-momiji fried maple cakes
Miyajima, Hiroshima
A long-established Miyajima confectioner, Yamada-ya bakes momiji manju and is known for Toyoka, a chewy maple-leaf cake wrapped in a thin skin around chunky adzuki bean paste. The company runs its own directly operated shops around Hiroshima and offers hands-on baking sessions at its Miyajima main store.
Best for Momiji manju and Toyoka cakes
Nishi-Kamakura (West Kamakura)
Chanoko is a Nishi-Kamakura wagashi shop that has passed recipes from father to daughter for over a century, making small-batch sweets from rice and beans with minimal preservatives. Its lineup runs from monthly seasonal confections to standing items like manju and sekihan mochi, sold both from the shop and by mail order.
Best for Seasonal wagashi and manju
Near Hase-dera, Hase, Kamakura
Chikaramochiya has made Gongoro chikaramochi, a soft rice-cake wrapped in sweet bean paste, for over 300 years and nine generations from the same shop near Hase-dera. The confections are still produced without additives, using the mochi-pounding method the family has kept since the Edo period.
Best for Gongoro chikaramochi rice cakes
Komachi-dori / Wakamiya-oji, Kamakura
Toshimaya has baked its butter-rich hato sabure, a dove-shaped sablé biscuit, in Kamakura since the Meiji era, and the recipe and pigeon silhouette have stayed the local souvenir of choice ever since. The company operates multiple shops around the city and Kanagawa but remains a single family confectionery business rather than a national chain.
Best for Hato sabure butter cookies
Kobashi
A historic Kanazawa confectioner specializing in jiro-ame malt syrup. Founded in 1830; its traditional syrup is a Kanazawa specialty.
Best for Jiro-ame malt syrup, a Kanazawa specialty made since 1830
Ame no Tawaraya has made jiro-ame -- a thick, amber malt syrup boiled down from rice and barley -- in Kanazawa's Kobashi-machi district since 1830, making it one of the city's oldest continuously operating confectioners. According to the shop's own account, the syrup was first developed after its founder saw local mothers unable to produce enough milk to nurse their infants; jiro-ame, naturally sweet and nutrient-dense, was formulated as a substitute food for newborns, and for generations afterward it was given to nursing mothers, pregnant women and the convalescent to help them regain strength, a use documented by the Ishikawa Prefecture Food Association among the region's traditional foodstuffs. The syrup itself, made without refined sugar, can be eaten directly off a spoon or folded into savory cooking as a natural sweetener for vegetables, fish and meat. The shop expanded the same base ingredient into two further forms: Amenko, soft kneaded granules, and Tawarakko, made by reducing jiro-ame further until it hardens into an easy-to-lick candy sold as Kanazawa's signature souvenir sweet, marketed under the name Okoshi Ame. Now run by president Hideaki Tawara, the shop continues to work from its original Kobashi-machi address, nearly two centuries after it began making syrup for babies who could not otherwise be fed.
Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Founded in 1975 by Kuniko Asano, recognized as Japan's first female metal-leaf manufacturer, Hakuichi grew into an eleven-store Kanazawa company built around a city that produces over 98 percent of the country's gold leaf. Its flagship Hakukokan complex sells gold-leafed lacquerware, cosmetics, and confections, and includes a renovated Higashi Chaya teahouse known for gold-leaf-topped soft serve.
Best for Gold leaf souvenirs and gilded lacquerware
Higashi Chaya District
Kanazawa confectioner since 1934, specializing in kintsuba bean sweets in a restored machiya at the Higashiyama Chayagai geisha district entrance.
Best for Kintsuba bean sweets since 1934
Kintsuba Nakataya represents one of Kanazawa's enduring confectionary traditions, established in 1934 by the Nakada family. The shop occupies a beautifully preserved machiya—a traditional wooden townhouse exemplifying Edo-period architecture—at the gateway to the historic Higashiyama Chayagai geisha district. The first floor operates as a retail store selling the company's wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets), while the second floor houses Wami, a sit-down sweet shop. The signature kintsuba is prepared using high-quality Hokkaido Dainagon azuki beans, which hold their integrity during boiling and carry natural sweetness. Popular items extend beyond classical kintsuba to include cheesecakes featuring these beans and tarts topped with various pulses (chickpeas, green peas, walnuts). The business hours run 9:00–17:00 daily (last orders 16:00), positioning it as a convenient stop for visitors exploring the adjacent historic district.
Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Koshiyama Kanseido has made handmade Kanazawa wagashi since 1888, including Kaga Goshiki Namagashi, the five-colored Edo-period wedding confection, and kikatou sugar sweets for Hinamatsuri. The shop cultivates its own bean paste in-house.
Best for Kaga Goshiki Namagashi, the five-colored Edo-period wedding confection
Koshiyama Kanseido has made wagashi in Kanazawa since 1888, when it opened in the Yasue-cho district; the shop has since moved to Owari-cho but has kept the handmade methods it started with, including cultivating its own bean paste rather than buying it in - a step the shop treats as the single most important factor in its flavor. Its best-known item is Kaga Goshiki Namagashi, the five-colored fresh confection developed in the Edo period specifically for Kanazawa weddings and still served at them today, alongside kikatou, the sculpted sugar sweets traditionally displayed for Hinamatsuri, Girls' Day. The everyday range includes Himuro Manju, a steamed bun made using a fermented starter culture passed down within the shop, seasonal nerikiri shaped and colored to match the month, and regional standards like sakura mochi and a lotus-root mochi. A newer offshoot, Kanazawa Dorayaki, extends the same fermented-bean approach into a dorayaki built around fermented azuki paste. Across more than 135 years, the shop has stayed close to its original brief - traditional Kanazawa confections made by hand, tied to the city's specific calendar of weddings and seasonal festivals rather than a generic wagashi lineup sold everywhere in Japan.
Ote-machi, Kanazawa
Kanazawa confectioner founded 1625, official sweets-maker to the Kaga domain's Maeda clan; known for its Choseiten sugar sweet. Its main store, in Owari-cho since founding, relocated to Ote-machi in 2011.
Best for Historic wagashi and yokan
Morihachi has made wagashi (Japanese sweets) in Kanazawa since 1625, when it held the position of official confectioner to the Kaga domain under the Maeda clan. Its best-known product, Choseiten, a pressed-sugar confection, is often cited among Japan's most celebrated traditional sweets. The main store stood in Owari-cho, its original home, for nearly four centuries before relocating to a newly built shop in Ote-machi, across from the Ohi Art Museum, in February 2011. The Ote-machi location now houses not just the retail shop but also the Kanazawa Confectionery Woodblock Museum, displaying the carved wooden molds historically used to shape rakugan and other sweets, plus a tea lounge and hands-on rakugan-making sessions.
Kyu-Karuizawa, Karuizawa
Boulangerie Asanoya has baked bread in Karuizawa since 1933, a history the company documents on its own site alongside its current stone-oven methods. The bakery sells through its Kyu-Karuizawa storefront and an online shop that ships bread and pastries nationwide.
Best for Stone-oven bread, baking since 1933
Motomachi
Juchheim traces its Japanese roots to Kobe, where German confectioner Karl Juchheim reopened his baumkuchen business in the early 1920s after the Great Kanto Earthquake forced him out of Yokohama. The Motomachi honten still bakes the ring-shaped layered cake he introduced to Japan, alongside seasonal European-style confections.
Best for Baumkuchen gift box
Higashinada-ku (Mikage)
Konigs-Krone opened as a Western confectionery in Kobe's Mikage district in 1977, building its name on the custard-filled Crone pastry sold across its Kansai stores. The company still runs a Mikage honten and a hotel of the same name in the neighborhood where it started.
Best for Custard pastry souvenirs
Chuo-ku
Morozoff began as a chocolate shop in Kobe in 1931, founded by a family of Russian confectioners who had settled in the city. It has since grown into one of Japan's best-known Western-style sweets makers, still tracing its identity back to that original Kobe shop.
Best for Chocolate and cheesecake gifts
Gion, Kyoto, Japan
Documented in Gion since at least 1695 across 15 generations, Kagizen Yoshifusa reopened in 1955 and turned its chilled kuzukiri - kudzu-starch noodles in black sugar syrup - into a nationwide dessert draw by the 1970s.
Best for Kuzukiri chilled kudzu-starch noodles at a 300-year-old Gion confectioner
Kagizen Yoshifusa has worked from Gion since at least 1695, when temple records first place the confectioner in the neighborhood surrounding Yasaka Shrine; an inscription dated 1726 and a run through fifteen generations back up the shop's own account of its age. For most of that history it served the district's temples, shrines and restaurants as a supplier rather than a storefront, and its now-signature kuzukiri only became a shop-floor specialty after the business reopened in 1955 - chilled ribbons of kudzu starch, cut thin and served with black sugar syrup, made from kudzu sourced from Morino Yoshino Kuzu Honpo in Ouda, Nara. By the 1970s word of mouth had turned it into a destination dessert, drawing visitors from across Japan rather than just the neighborhood. The wagashi side runs on the same seasonal logic Kyoto confectionery is built on, with sweets designed around the turning of the year rather than a fixed line. Alongside the original shop, Kagizen opened ZEN CAFE and a gift shop on a side alley south of Gion-machi in 2012, pairing a more contemporary room with the same kitchen, and a small gallery, Ku Kagiya, sits nearby hosting exhibitions tied to the neighborhood's craft scene. The core appeal hasn't shifted with the additions: a chilled bowl of kuzukiri, made the same way, in the same district, for the better part of three centuries.
Ichijo, Kyoto, Japan
Toraya has made wagashi since the early 16th century, when it began supplying confections to the imperial court in Kyoto before following the court to Tokyo in 1869. Its Kyoto Ichijo shop, near the old Imperial Palace, still occupies ground tied to that founding relationship and sells confections shaped to the season.
Best for Traditional wagashi tied to the imperial court
Matsuyama / Japan
Founded in 1883 near Dōgo Onsen, Tsuboya is the originator of the three-colour Botchan dango immortalised in Sōseki's novel, still hand-rolling each skewer in small batches. Buy them at the little Matsuyama shop or through the online store.
Best for Wagashi, botchan-dango, confectionery
Nagasaki / Japan
Established in 1830, this Nagasaki confectioner near Meganebashi bridge is known for moshiho-gusa mochi, kangiku dried sweets and made-to-order Nagasaki castella. The Suwa-machi shop also sells seasonal specialties such as zabon-zuke candied citron and festival sweets for the Boys' and Girls' Dayseasons.
Best for Wagashi, castella, confectionery, food
Nagoya / Japan
Mochibun has made Nagoya uiro for more than 360 years, offering seasonal flavors from mango and white peach to matcha and warabi-textured versions. The confections are available at its Nagoya shops and through a full online store with monthly limited Tsukizuna uiro.
Best for 360-year-old Nagoya uiro in seasonal flavors, plus the monthly limited Tsukizuna uiro
Nakatsu / Japan
Founded in 1927 by Iwao Harada, this Nakatsu, Oita confectioner still makes matcha gateau, uguisu-bean Warai-ekubo, hand-crafted maru-boro cookies and Hokkaido red-bean monaka from its Okinodai shop, three generations later, shipping nationwide through its online store.
Best for Hokkaido red bean, hand-made since 1927 by the Harada family in Nakatsu
Kashiho Maruendo was founded in 1927 by Iwao Harada, the grandfather of the shop's current proprietor, in Nakatsu, Oita Prefecture, and the name itself carries the founding intent: a wish to "round people's hearts" through comfort and deliciousness, spreading small circles of happiness one sweet at a time. Three generations later, the shop still runs from the same Okinodai neighborhood storefront, open six days a week and closed Wednesdays outside holidays. The signature line runs from Matcha Gateau, described as a moist cake balancing the bitterness of green tea against a rich crumb, to Warai-ekubo, bite-sized treats filled with uguisu (warbler) bean paste, hand-crafted maru-boro cookies made by traditional methods, and monaka - wafer shells filled with red bean paste sourced from Hokkaido, one of Japan's most respected regions for the ingredient. That mix of matcha-forward Western-style cake and classic wagashi wafer work reflects a shop making both traditional and creative Japanese and Western sweets rather than specializing narrowly in one register. Orders can be placed in person at the small storefront, which has room for only six parking spaces, or shipped nationwide through the shop's online store - a modest footprint for a confectioner that has now been baking under the same family name for close to a century.
Nakatsu / Japan
A small confectioner in a Nakatsu residential neighbourhood, Kanei makes nama-choco busse, walnut monaka and rare-cheese mizu-manju with restrained sweetness. Seasonal cakes and tarts are served in its cafe space, and its sweets ship nationwide via an online store.
Best for Wagashi, confectionery, cakes, food
Obuse / Japan
Obusedo makes chestnut confections in Obuse, the town famed for chestnuts, using house-cooked kuri-an in everything from traditional kuri-kanoko and yokan to Mont Blanc and baked sweets. Its shops and eateries cluster in a restored quarter of old warehouses, drawing crowds each autumn for the seasonal Suzaku chestnut dessert.
Best for House-cooked kuri-an chestnut sweets, from kuri-kanoko to Mont Blanc
Obuse / Japan
Sakurai Kanseido has made chestnut sweets in Obuse for seven generations and two hundred years, from kuri-kanoko and kuri-yokan to marron financiers and frozen Mont Blanc. Its confections are sold at the honten and several directly run shops and cafés, as well as through the company's online store.
Best for Kuri-kanoko, kuri-yokan, marron financiers, and frozen Mont Blanc chestnut sweets
Osaka / Japan / Online
Namiyoshian is a long-established Osaka wagashi house whose Okunamba flagship pairs a sweets counter and bakery with a first-floor cafe and third-floor gallery. Alongside the shops in Fukushima and around Osaka, the site runs an online store selling fresh nama-gashi, baked sweets and gift assortments.
Best for Wagashi, Japanese sweets, confectionery, cafe
Various locations, Osaka
Japan's 'half-baked' cheese tart — crispy pastry with a molten cheesecake centre that oozes when you bite. The Dotonbori flagship always has a queue.
Best for Cheesecake tart.
Osaka / Japan
Senba Toraya is a wagashi maker of more than 90 years in Osaka's Bakuromachi, crafting and selling traditional and seasonal Japanese sweets from carefully chosen adzuki beans and rice, and counting Namba Shrine among its patrons. There is no dine-in space, though it added a summer-only shaved-ice offering enjoyed on the bench out front.
Best for Wagashi, Japanese sweets, seasonal confectionery, handmade
Osaka / Japan
Tsuruya Hachiman has made wagashi at Osaka's Koraibashi since 1863, carrying on the recipes of an older Kyoto-style confectioner. The shop mills and cooks its own bean paste in house, selecting materials for each sweet from decades of experience.
Best for Wagashi, Japanese sweets, confectionery
1-20 Higashi-Sapporo 3-jo 5-chome, Shiroishi-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 003-0003 / Sapporo / Japan
Kinotoya Shiroishi Honten is Sapporo's representative Western pastry house; founding shop on Nango-dori in Shiroishi. The range centers on fresh house baking and regional pastry, with production associated with Japan.
Best for Western pastry from Kinotoya's founding shop on Nango-dori.
Aurora Town, Sapporo
A Hokkaido food specialist selecting dairy products, seafood, vegetables, breads, confectionery, and regional pantry goods from across the island. The shop is operated by the Hokkaido department store Marui Imai.
Best for Hokkaido dairy, seafood, breads, and regional pantry goods
Kita Kitchen is a Hokkaido food-specialty shop operated jointly by Hokkaido Hyakka and the Sapporo department store Marui Imai, describing itself as a 'dosan shokuhin select shop' — a select shop for goods produced within Hokkaido. Its stated concept, per the operator's own materials, is to curate 'foods that we who live in Hokkaido would want to eat every day', positioning the range around everyday regional eating rather than tourist souvenirs, though its Sapporo flagship in particular also draws heavily on visitor traffic. The Aurora Town branch, at Odori Nishi 2-chome in Sapporo's Chuo-ku underground shopping arcade, is the flagship location, operating within the footprint of Marui Imai's main store; Kita Kitchen has since expanded to three further locations — Shin-Sapporo's Sanpia Plaza, Aeon Mall Asahikawa Station, and a New Chitose Airport branch in the domestic terminal, the last positioning it to reach travelers as well as residents. Across its stores, the shop stocks a rotating selection built around Hokkaido's core agricultural and marine strengths: dairy products, seafood, vegetables, breads, confectionery, and other regional pantry staples sourced from producers across the island. As a department-store-operated select shop rather than a single-producer stall, Kita Kitchen functions closer to a curated grocery hall — presenting Hokkaido's food landscape through one retailer's edit rather than any single maker's own range.
Tanukikoji, Sapporo
A Japanese confectionery shop making and selling dango, mochi sweets, and wagashi using Hokkaido-grown beans and wheat. The Sapporo business was established in 1960 as an offshoot of Otaru Niikuraya.
Best for Dango, mochi, and wagashi made with Hokkaido-grown beans and wheat, since 1960
Tanukikoji, Sapporo
A Sapporo confectionery shop selling Japanese and Western-style sweets from its city-center main store. Senshu-an was established in 1921.
Best for Japanese and Western-style sweets from a Sapporo confectioner established in 1921
Yanaka, Tokyo
Kayaba Bakery makes natural-yeast breads and seasonal pastries in a restored Yanaka townhouse. The counter suits take-away food shopping, while coffee and seating add a small hospitality element.
Best for Natural-yeast breads and pastries in a restored machiya townhouse
Tokyo
Nihombashi Mitsukoshi in Tokyo spreads its departments across a main building and an adjoining building. Clothing and accessories share the store with household goods as well as jewellery or art. Food and confectionery occupy lower floors, giving shoppers a different stopping point from the fashion departments above.
Best for Department-store fashion, homewares and food in Tokyo
Mitsukoshi descends from Echigoya, the Nihonbashi kimono house founded in 1673 whose innovations — fixed prices, cash sales, cloth cut to customer need — anticipated modern retail by two centuries; the Mitsui family enterprise it began became both Japan's first department store, by its own 1904 declaration, and the seed of one of its great business houses. The Nihonbashi flagship, guarded by bronze lions modeled on Trafalgar Square's and centered on a soaring statue of the goddess Magokoro, is a designated Important Cultural Property where white-gloved elevator attendants and the morning opening ceremony preserve department-store ritual at its most formal. The basement food halls and the upper craft floors — kimono, lacquer, ceramics — carry the store's three-and-a-half centuries directly. Arrive for opening to see the bows; visit the craft floors for gifts with genuine lineage.
Time the visit for the ten o'clock opening bows at least once, and take the craft floors slowly — the kimono and lacquer departments are museums that sell.
Dazaifu Tenmangu approach (sando)
A confectioner working from a three-storey wooden Meiji-era building at the front torii of Dazaifu Tenmangu, grilling umegae-mochi one at a time in an open workshop. The listed heritage building also roasts chestnuts and runs a café, with nationwide frozen shipping.
Best for Freshly grilled umegae-mochi
Oyabe / Japan
Goromaruya has made wagashi in Oyabe's Ishido district for over 260 years, famed for its 'Usugori' thin-ice sweets first created in 1752. The confectionery sells its dry sweets and seasonal cakes at its Chuo-machi shop and through an online store.
Best for Wagashi, Usugori, Japanese confectionery
Miyajima / Japan
A Miyajima confectioner of roughly 140 years, baking momiji manju from house-made castella batter and adzuki paste. The shop on Miyajima-cho sells in person and ships through its online store.
Best for Confectionery, Momiji Manju, Wagashi
Yamanouchi / Japan
Hatakan Seido has made confections by hand in the Yudanaka-Shibu hot spring district of Yamanouchi since 1927, known for its 90-year-old recipe for koshian (smooth red bean paste) used in manju buns and dorayaki. The shop sells directly from its Nagano storefront, open daily from 8:30am to 6pm.
Best for Manju and dorayaki with a 90-year-old koshian recipe
Matsue / Japan / Online
Founded in Matsue during the Edo-period Horeki era (1751-1764) as official confectioner to the Matsue domain, Ichirikido still makes wagashi shaped by the tastes of 18th-century tea lord Matsudaira Fumai, preserving 1847 wooden molds alongside its shop and online store.
Best for Wagashi tied to the 18th-century tea lord Matsudaira Fumai
Ichirikido dates to Japan's Horeki era (1751-1764), founded by Mitsuya Sakubei as an official confectioner to the Matsue domain - a title that meant making sweets to the direct preference of the local lord. That lord, Matsudaira Fumai, ruled Matsue as its seventh daimyo and was himself a serious tea connoisseur, and historical accounts credit his refined taste with shaping several of the confections the shop still makes today, including a piece called Hime Kosode that evolved from an earlier design known as Oki no Tsuki. The connection places Ichirikido inside a real regional tradition: Matsue is ranked alongside Kyoto and Kanazawa as one of Japan's centers of confectionery, a status tied directly to the city's long-standing tea culture. The shop was renamed Ichirikido during the Meiji era by its sixth-generation owner, and it still holds physical evidence of that continuity - 18th-century confectionery manuals and wooden sweet molds dating to 1847, kept as working reference rather than museum pieces. Visitors can buy the wagashi at the Matsue storefront or order online, and the shop also runs hands-on wagashi-making sessions, putting a nearly 275-year lineage of lord-influenced confectionery within reach of anyone willing to shape the sweets themselves.
Himeji, Hyogo
Founded in the Genroku era as confectioner to Himeji's ruling Sakai clan, Iseya Honten built its name on Tamatsubaki, a pale mochi sweet shaped like a camellia bud that was presented to the Showa Emperor during his 1947 tour of Kansai. The shop still works from Nishi-Nikaimachi in central Himeji, with counters in the city's stations and department stores.
Best for Tamatsubaki and Himeji wagashi
Magome / Japan
Founded in 1864 in the Nakatsugawa post town, this confectioner is credited with originating kuri kinton and works chestnuts into seasonal wagashi, steamed yokan, and monaka. Sweets are sold at its main shop and Magome branch and shipped through its online store.
Best for Kuri kinton, wagashi, confectionery
Honmachi, Bikan Historical Quarter, Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan
Kikkodo is the Honmachi confectioner credited with inventing murasuzume, the folded sparrow-shaped castella-and-red-bean sweet, in 1877 after Kurashiki's mayor named the confection. The shop still sells murasuzume alongside its baumkuchen and offers hands-on baking sessions from the same Bikan-quarter storefront.
Best for Murasuzume, Kurashiki's signature confection
Himeji, Hyogo
Kineya is a Himeji confectioner best known for Shosha Sennensugi, a green-tea sponge roll tied to Enkyoji Temple on Mount Shosha. It also makes Kinuta and Sara, tea-ceremony sweets commissioned for Himeji Castle's tea gatherings.
Best for Himeji Castle's tea gatherings
Kineya is a Himeji confectioner built around sweets tied to specific local landmarks rather than a generic wagashi line. Its best-known product, Shosha Sennensugi, is a green-tea sponge roll named for the thousand-year cedars lining the approach to Enkyoji Temple on Mount Shosha, and it's made under an arrangement that ties the confection directly to the temple rather than treating the name as a marketing flourish. The house also produces Kinuta and Sara, tea-ceremony sweets commissioned for Himeji Castle's own tea gatherings, connecting the shop to the castle's formal events rather than just its tourist trade. Since Himeji Castle's UNESCO World Heritage listing, Kineya has added confections that reference the designation directly, including Mikuni Koban and Shiho, extending the same landmark-driven approach to newer products. Beyond the historical line, the company makes sake jellies, custom-order cakes and seasonal confections, sold through its own shops, an online store, and department and convenience stores around the region - a wider retail footprint than most single-city wagashi makers manage, while the flagship products stay anchored to Mount Shosha and Himeji Castle specifically. The company is active about protecting that positioning too, working to prevent its products from being resold through unauthorized channels rather than letting the brand dilute through gray-market retail.
Motomachi
Kobe Fugetsudo has made its layered Gaufre wafer sandwich on Motomachi-dori since 1897, marking its 120th anniversary in 2017. The Chuo-ku honten still bakes and sells the confection that remains the company's defining product after more than a century.
Best for Classic gaufre wafer souvenir
Fujimi, Nagano
This small Fujimi patisserie bakes cakes and French confections each morning around seasonal fruit and Yatsugatake-grown ingredients, working between its shop counter and a separate LABO workshop. The counter opens Tuesday through Saturday, closing on Sundays and Mondays.
Best for Handmade French cakes and seasonal confections
727-1 Ishigaki, Ishigaki City, Okinawa
Marking its 100th anniversary in 2023, this confectioner created the original salt chinsuko, working Ishigaki's natural sea salt into the shortbread-like Okinawan cookie, and now makes more than thirty types of sweets from Yaeyama ingredients. Its shop sits in Ishigaki City, with a second counter inside the domestic terminal of Ishigaki Airport.
Best for Original salt chinsuko and Yaeyama confections
Futamiura, Ise
Ofuku Mochi Honke has hand-pressed red bean mochi in Futamiura since the Edo period, more than 270 years ago, when the shop supplied pilgrims walking to Ise Grand Shrine near the Meoto Iwa rocks. It remains the town's original confectioner, still selling its namesake ofuku mochi alongside sesame-wrapped mokari mochi.
Best for Ofuku mochi near Meoto Iwa
Honmachi, Gujo Hachiman
Confectioner founded in 1887 whose signature nikki-dama are hard cinnamon candies boiled and shaped by hand in small batches. The Honmachi shop also sells black-cinnamon sweets under the Gujo brand label.
Best for Handmade cinnamon candy
Takayama, Gifu
A confectioner in Takayama since 1890 making about thirty kinds of dagashi folk sweets from soybeans, sesame and peanuts, including its award-winning mameita bean crackers. The house also sells genkotsu kinako and black-sesame kokusen from its shop and online.
Best for Hida dagashi bean sweets
Oita / Online
This Oita confectioner reworks the local yaseuma dish into bite-sized wagashi, wrapping self-roasted, self-milled kinako filling in soft gyuhi. Free of preservatives and colorings, the sweets are ordered online and finished by hand with shichitou-i grass ties.
Best for Wagashi, confectionery, japanese-sweets, kinako
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