Chapter 2: The Western-Japanese Dessert Pipeline

It wasn’t until the 8th Century when Japan was introduced to cane sugar by Chinese traders.^[6] Up until that point, the Japanese primarily used honey, fruits, and amazura (a syrup derived from a particular vine) as their means of sweetening.^[7] Sugar became especially integral in the production of wagashi, which were sweets commonly served during tea ceremonies.^[8] Wagashi is hugely intertwined in Japanese culture, with its origins dating back two-thousand years, when ground up nuts were rolled into what is now known as mochi.^[9] That being said, there is no standard definition of what wagashi is, rather, it’s a class of dessert with many types: yokan, rakugan, monaka, mochi, etc.^[10] 

Over the thousands of years, wagashi evolved and became more refined, these treats were not simply about flavor but also about artistry and sensory experience.^[11] Wagashi highlight their natural ingredients, using no dairy and being far less sweet (usually) than their western counterparts.^[12] Traditionally such sweets are also consumed with unsweetened tea (either matcha or steeped), which further tends to balance the sweetness. Their ingredients are carefully selected to align with the seasons, reflecting nature and traditional celebrations. They are also predominantly plant-based, making them lighter in comparison to desserts in the West which typically consist of the heavy usage of dairy products, baking, and richer, sweeter ingredients.^[13]        

Other than the aforementioned Chinese introduction to cane sugar and the initial import of Chinese sweets (karagashi–literally “Tang-dynasty sweets”) from the Nara through the Heian periods, wagashi faced little external developmental influence due to Japan’s Edo-period isolation policy.^[14] However, to say wagashi developed entirely in isolation would be imprecise. Prior to the Edo period, Japan experienced substantial influence from Portuguese and Spanish traders in the 16th century, known collectively as the Nanban-jin (“Southern Barbarians”). These European visitors introduced sweets such as konpeitō (sugar candy), kasutera (Castilian sponge cake), and aruheito (a molded candy), all of which became foundational to the evolution of Japanese confections, even though they–like the earlier karagashi and the later yōshoku of the Meiji period–stood distinctly marked by their names as foreign. These Iberian sweets were not only novel in form but also introduced ingredients like refined sugar, eggs, and wheat flour—ingredients that would eventually reshape Japanese tastes and methods.^[15] This meant wagashi’s evolution was mostly understood as Japanese and reflected Japanese tastes and the social zeitgeist of what was desirable in a ritual sweet.^[16]

The Meiji period in the late 19th century saw the end of the isolationist era and with it brought in a prosperous (and tumultuous) series of exchanges with the outside world.^[17] With the introduction of foreign appliances, ingredients, and techniques, the variations of wagashi began to flourish into a multitude of new variations and styles — even including baked wagashi!^[18] 

To bring this paper back to our beloved Swiss roll, it would make sense that it would be somewhere around this time that the Swiss roll made its debut in the freshly globalized archipelago. However, once again, the dessert’s origin breaks any sort of logical thought and was actually believed to come in the 20th century.

The sponge cake’s origin is unclear in regards to its emergence in Japan, however it is generally accepted that it was popularized in the country after World War II. It is hypothesized to have been brought over by the American troops occupying the country after the war concluded.^[19] However, one could note that the British had brought Swiss rolls into their territory of Hong Kong during the late 19th century, and Japan’s invasion of Hong Kong could have easily given them the treat.

Similarly to how Japan used foreign influence to innovate their wagashi in the 16th century from Portuguese models, they used their own influence to innovate the foreign recipes brought to them post-Edo era. In our example of the Swiss roll, a common Japanese variant was the creatively named Matcha Swiss Roll.

Matcha, the finely ground green tea powder, did not originate in Japan but became deeply intertwined with Japanese culture through centuries of tradition. Its roots trace back to Tang Dynasty China (7th–10th centuries), where powdered tea was first used.^[20] In the 12th century, the Japanese Buddhist monk Eisai, after years of studying Buddhism in China, returned to Japan with both the seeds and the knowledge of preparing powdered green tea in the Zen Buddhist tradition.^[21] By planting these seeds, Eisai reaped an ingredient that would become an iconic element of Japanese cuisine for generations to come.^[22] 

Boasting a slightly bitter yet rich flavor and a vibrant green color, as well as the understanding that it was a “Japanese” ingredient, matcha became an ideal candidate for new variants of wagashi (which some purists may not include as wagashi) that were otherwise strongly inflected by Western ingredients (such as dairy and eggs) and techniques (such as baking).^[23] The mastery of the ingredient became a key component in Japanese confectionery, and thus it’s fitting that its flavors were incorporated into foreign desserts such as the Swiss roll to really make the variant of the dessert Japanese.