Six ingredients · fourteen snacks · one castle town.
For more than four centuries, Kanazawa was the seat of the Maeda clan — Japan's wealthiest feudal domain after the shogun himself. With wealth came patronage: of tea ceremony, of Noh theatre, of refined wagashi. The city remains one of Japan's three great wagashi capitals alongside Kyoto and Matsue, and produces 99% of the country's gold leaf.
The historic seat of the Maeda clan — Japan's wealthiest feudal domain after the shogun. Home to Kenrokuen garden, the Higashi Chaya teahouse district, and one of Japan's three great wagashi traditions.
The hot-spring villages of Yamashiro, Yamanaka, Katayamazu and Awazu — and the home of kaga bocha (加賀棒茶), the roasted-stem hojicha that perfumes most of Kanazawa's modern sweets.
A coastal city of rice paddies and the kilns of Kutani-yaki — the brilliantly painted porcelain that for centuries plated Kanazawa's tea sweets. Today, also the gateway to Ishikawa by air.
The harbour town at the foot of the Noto Peninsula. Home to Wakura Onsen and to centuries-old mochi-makers — Daikoku-ya's daifuku is among Hokuriku's most beloved.
Famous for Wajima-nuri lacquerware and its thousand-year morning market — and for the resilience of its sweets makers after the 2024 Noto earthquake. Many ateliers are rebuilding; we feature them with care.
The far tip of the Noto Peninsula — and the last place in Japan where salt is still made by the agehama method, hand-poured across sand under the sun. The mineral salt of Noto closes many Kanazawa sweets.
Almost every classical Kanazawa sweet — and most of its modern descendants — can be traced back to six ingredients drawn from the Maeda domain. This is the raw material of the Hokuriku pantry.
Hammered to one ten-thousandth of a millimetre, edible and tasteless, kinpaku is the single most recognised image of Kanazawa. It crowns the city's wagashi, dusts its castella, and gilds even its soft-serve.
A houjicha made not from leaves but from roasted tea stems — light, toasted, almost caramel in aroma. Once presented to the Showa Emperor, it now flavours half of contemporary Kanazawa confectionery.
Made by hand-pouring seawater across sand under the sun — the last surviving agehama saltworks in Japan. Mineral, slightly sweet, and the closing note in many of Kanazawa's salted-caramel sweets.
Hokuriku's heavy snowfall and clean water make it one of Japan's great rice belts — and its mochigome, pounded into mochi and dried into kashi, is the structural backbone of Kanazawa wagashi.
Hokuriku is one of Japan's premier sake regions — and Kanazawa's confectioners use both the spirit and its lees (sake-kasu) to perfume bonbons, biscuits, and aged castella. Faintly funky, faintly sweet.
The Hokuriku coast's cold rain produces a particularly aromatic yuzu — bright, almost piney. It threads through the prefecture's modern wagashi and is the defining citrus of Kanazawa's winter sweets.
The fourteen confections below form the canon of contemporary Kanazawa snacking — from court-era wagashi to the national-brand regional editions you can only find in Hokuriku. We've labelled them so the lineage is legible. From those six, these fourteen.
A plum-blossom-shaped wagashi gilded with kinpaku — eaten across Ishikawa at New Year for four centuries. The crest of the Maeda clan was a plum, and Morihachi's recipe predates almost every other Kanazawa sweet on this list.
One of Kit Kat's most refined regional editions — made with Kaga's roasted-stem houjicha. Toasted, caramel, faintly tannic. Sold only in Ishikawa and select Hokuriku stations.
Pressed sugar wagashi moulded into seasonal motifs — plum, chrysanthemum, snow. Dry, dissolving, designed to be eaten with thick matcha. The quietest sweet in Kanazawa's repertoire.
The Hokuriku-only Pocky, dipped in a Kaga-bocha hojicha chocolate. Bittersweet and roasted — distinctly different from any matcha or kinako variant on the mainland.
A traditional castella sponge laid with a single sheet of edible Kanazawa gold leaf. From Hakuza, the gold-leaf workshop in the Higashi Chaya teahouse district.
The Hokuriku-region Tirol-choco, with a kaga-bocha houjicha cream centre. A small bite — and one of the few national-brand editions that meaningfully captures the toasted character of the original tea.
A square block of sweet azuki bound by the thinnest possible mochi crust, browned on each face. Kanazawa's interpretation is denser and less sweet than the Edo original — quietly considered one of Japan's best.
Soft Hokuriku mochi wrapped around a single, generous heart of azuki. Made since 1830 in the harbour town of Nanao — Hokuriku's most beloved daifuku.
Slow-cooked caramels finished with agehama-method Suzu salt. Mineral, faintly briny, deeply buttery — Japan's most considered salted caramel.
Soft mochi enrobing a yuzu-and-anko centre, made with the bright, faintly piney yuzu grown on the Sea of Japan coast. A winter sweet of the Noto Peninsula.
A castella sponge made with kaga bocha — toasted, lightly bittersweet, the colour of dark honey. From the Kaga tea house that famously prepared bocha for the Showa Emperor.
White chocolate bonbons centred with Ishikawa sake-kasu — the lees left from premium sake brewing. Faintly funky, faintly sweet, distinctly Hokuriku. Adults only.
A translucent yokan jelly, set with a single sheet of gold leaf floating like sunlight on water. The most photographed wagashi in Kanazawa.
A whole yuzu, hollowed, filled with sweet rice paste, steamed and aged for weeks. A 400-year wagashi tradition from Wajima — and one we feature in support of the town's makers rebuilding after the 2024 Noto earthquake.
These fourteen are the canon of Kanazawa confectionery as we read it. The Kanazawa edition of the FUJIRI box is currently in curation and will draw from this list — exact contents announced closer to launch.
The Maeda clan establishes its seat at Kanazawa — soon to become the largest feudal domain in Japan after the shogun itself. The wealth of the Kaga domain begins funding the patronage of tea ceremony, Noh, lacquer — and wagashi.
The house of Morihachi is established in Kanazawa as official confectioner to the Maeda. Its sugar-pressed higashi and gold-leaf fukuumeshi are still made by hand four centuries later — Kanazawa's oldest continuous wagashi maker.
The Maeda commission gold-leaf craftsmen from Kyoto and let them settle in Kanazawa. The city's humid Sea-of-Japan air proves ideal for hammering kinpaku — and today produces 99% of Japan's gold leaf.
Maruhachi Seicha's roasted-stem houjicha is selected to be served at the imperial enthronement ceremony. The choice elevates kaga bocha from a regional tea to a national one — and seeds its place in modern Kanazawa confectionery.
Direct high-speed rail from Tokyo opens — Kanazawa becomes accessible in under three hours. Tourism arrives in waves, and the national-brand regional editions (Kit Kat Kaga Bocha, Pocky Kaga Bocha) follow within years.
A magnitude-7.6 earthquake strikes the Noto Peninsula on New Year's Day. Many of Wajima and Suzu's historic confectioners and salt-makers are damaged. They are rebuilding — and we feature their sweets here in solidarity, not as souvenirs.
FUJIRI Dispatches are short editorial briefs from across Japan — the maker visits, the regional histories, the recipes that don't quite fit on a snack package. Sent occasionally, never noisy.
Subscribers also get the next box launch — including Kanazawa, currently in curation for Q4 2026 — before it goes public, with first-edition booklet access.
Kyoto and Kanazawa are the two great wagashi capitals of Japan, and the distinctions are subtle. Kyoto's tradition is older and more imperial; Kanazawa's grew under the Maeda clan, the wealthiest feudal domain. Kanazawa wagashi tends to be a touch richer, more generous with anko, and uniquely defined by kinpaku (gold leaf) and kaga bocha (roasted-stem tea).
The Kit Kat Kaga Bocha — a houjicha-flavoured Kit Kat made with roasted-stem tea from Kaga — is sold only in Ishikawa and select Hokuriku stations. Pocky has a parallel Kaga Bocha edition; Tirol-choco has a Kaga Houjicha bite-sized version. All three feature in our Kanazawa edition.
The Maeda commissioned gold-leaf craftsmen from Kyoto in the early Edo period; Kanazawa's humid sea-air proved ideal for hammering leaf thin enough to be edible. Today the city produces 99% of Japan's gold leaf, which appears on wagashi, castella, soft-serve, and the famous gold-leaf yokan.
With care. Several historic Wajima and Suzu makers were severely affected and are rebuilding. We feature them — Shibafune Kotobukido, Okunoto Salt — in solidarity with that recovery, not as souvenirs. A portion of every Kanazawa box goes to a Noto recovery fund.
Q4 2026, estimated. Curation is underway and we'll write to everyone on the waitlist with a firm date around two months out. First-edition subscribers will receive an editorial booklet on the Maeda clan and the wagashi houses they founded.
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