Yogashi

Yogashi (洋菓子), literally “Western confectionery,” covers cakes, cookies, chocolates, and other baked or dairy-based sweets adapted in Japan from European and American traditions. The term entered use during the Meiji era (1868 to 1912), when Japan’s rapid modernization brought a wave of Western food culture, and it was coined as a direct counterpart to wagashi, the newly named category for native Japanese confectionery, in much the same way “washoku” was coined to distinguish Japanese cuisine from foreign food.

Some yogashi has older roots than the Meiji-era term suggests. Castella, a sponge cake, arrived centuries earlier through Portuguese traders during the 16th-century Nanban trade period, well before Nagasaki’s Dejima trading post was even built, and was gradually absorbed into Japanese confectionery culture long before “yogashi” existed as a category name.