What Is Ohagi? Japan’s Seasonal Sweet Rice Balls for Fall

September is the perfect time to discover the wonders of Japanese traditional sweets. The windows of Japanese confectionery shops are filled with the delightful sight of ohagi, one of the simplest traditional Japanese sweets. The exquisite combination of lightly mashed glutinous rice and sweet red bean paste, called anko or an, creates an oval-shaped treat known as ohagi.

On the autumn equinox in Japan, people offer ohagi to honor their ancestors and then share the treats with family. While closely tied to this tradition, ohagi remains a beloved sweet that people enjoy throughout the year.

Team Musubi set out in search of delicious ohagi, and our journey led us to MATSUNARI, a hidden gem specializing in these traditional sweets. This delightful shop is tucked away in Roppongi Hills, one of the premier destinations in central Tokyo.

Ohagi is so much more than just a sweet treat—it embodies both flavor and cultural significance. It has been closely associated with Japan’s spiritual customs.

The origin of ohagi is believed to be firmly rooted in ceremonial food, dating back to the Heian period (794–1185 CE). Initially, ohagi was not sweet and was made with salted bean paste.

The Muromachi period (1336–1573 CE) marked a significant turning point in Japan's culinary history. During this era, sugar, a precious commodity traded with China and the West, arrived on the scene. This event brought a new and exciting flavor to Japanese food: ohagi began to be sweetened with sugar.

Initially, this sweet treat was served to the upper class and remained a luxury item for quite some time. However, as the mid-Edo period (18th century) unfolded, sugar became more readily available, and sweet ohagi began to be shared among the general populace, though it remained a cherished delicacy, reserved for momentous occasions such as ancestral memorial services and the equinox. Ohagi, made with azuki beans that ward off evil and rice that symbolizes a bountiful harvest, has been offered as a token of appreciation to the gods for the year's bounty and for the prosperity of the family and lineage.

It wasn't until the Meiji era (1868–1912 CE) that sweet bean paste ohagi became a daily favorite. Since then, ohagi has remained unchanged as our simple cherished sweet.

Ohagi was traditionally handmade in people's homes. In some areas, it was a staple food eaten between farm work.

In recent times, it has become common for people to purchase ohagi at Japanese wagashi shops during the spring and autumn equinoxes. In response to this custom, shops often prepare ohagi during these times. However, some shops specialize in ohagi and offer it year-round, making it possible to enjoy this treat anytime. MATSUNARI in Roppongi is one such shop whose specialty is ohagi.

MATSUNARI is located in the basement of the Roppongi Hills North Tower, a high-end complex in Tokyo’s Roppongi district. Office workers, shoppers, and tourists are drawn to the colorful ohagi displayed in the window. The small round ohagi are neatly arranged in boxes by color, and come in six flavors: yellow kinako (roasted soybean flour), green matcha, black sesame, and red strawberry, along with the two classic red bean pastes—chunky tsubuan and smooth koshian.

Step inside the charming Japanese-style shop, and you'll pleasantly savor the exquisite taste of freshly made ohagi right there in a softly lit room. For just 680 yen (approx. $5 at current exchange rates), you can select two ohagi of your choice, along with a teapot of delicious roasted green tea. Team Musubi had an opportunity to visit the shop on a weekday just before opening time. Manager Momoi Maiko was in the kitchen alone, preparing the ohagi.

Starting at eight o’clock, Momoi prepares ohagi by cooking a generous amount of glutinous rice and separately simmering Tamba Dainagon azuki beans from Kyoto, prized as the king of large red beans, with water and sugar to create this traditional treat. Once the glutinous rice has cooked for about an hour, she quickly spreads it out and shapes the piping-hot rice into golf-ball-sized portions with her hands. Imagine how hot it must be to shape freshly steamed rice with your bare hands.

With practiced ease, Momoi rolls the rice balls in her hands. “It was hard work at first,” she admits, “but I’ve grown used to shaping the hot rice by hand.”

A former pastry chef, Momoi reflects, “I never imagined I’d be drawn to the art of wagashi and end up becoming a Japanese confectioner.”

With her nimble hands, she manages to make a batch of thirty-six balls in about fifteen minutes. As she prepares the rice balls, she attentively keeps an eye on the condition of the azuki beans in the pot, simmered on low heat, inserting a paddle into the pot’s base and turning them over to ensure they are cooked with the right moisture. She carefully skims off the scum several times along the way to create a pure, clean-tasting red bean paste.

"We'll turn off the heat when we find the gloss on the bean paste's surface. We make sure that the beans should not turn whitish. That's a sign that beans have lost moisture. It's essential to ensure the bean paste is soft enough to hold in your hand, which indicates the appropriate amount of moisture."

Some bean paste is mashed and is strained multiple times to remove the skins, resulting in a silky koshian.

Azuki bean paste is the secret to the delicious ohagi. Making delicious azuki bean paste requires time and effort as well as experience. It is often said that an experienced artisan can “listen” to the sounds of the beans, which signal when to move to the next step. To make delicious azuki paste, you must soak the azuki beans in water to allow them to absorb water for a day. You must boil the azuki beans in a large pot once for a minute, and rinse the beans briefly under cold running water and drain again. Put the beans back in the pot with fresh cold water, bring it to a boil, and rinse it. This thorough process has an effect on removing the astringency and other impurities from the beans.

Put the beans back in the rinsed pot, and cook until the beans are completely cooked. Drain the beans, reserving the cooking liquid. Put the pot of beans back on medium-low heat, adding the sugar and salt in 3-4 batches. Continue cooking while stirring occasionally, until the sugar is completely melted and absorbed into the beans.

The creation of simple Japanese confections requires a time-consuming process. It is said that the method of making ohagi has remained relatively unchanged since the Kamakura period (1185–1333 CE).

The finished bean paste is then shaped into perfect balls, the same size as the rice ball, and thirty-six beautiful balls of each flavor are made. At MATSUNARI, the ohagi are shaped into small balls, a refreshing departure from the traditional oval shape.

The rounded bean paste is then rolled out flat by hand, and then a glutinous rice ball is placed inside and is wrapped around the paste to make the ohagi. This is the base for all flavors.

She makes six flavors in this way; chunky bean paste, smooth bean paste, kinako, black sesame, matcha, and strawberry. Each flavor has its own unique stuffing and sprinkles, on top of the classic bean paste flavors. The filling for kinako ohagi and ground black sesame ohagi is smooth bean paste, and matcha ohagi and strawberry ohagi are white bean paste made from boiled kidney beans. The matcha flavor is delightfully crafted with matcha and yomogi (Japanese mugwort) powders kneaded into the mochi. Each ohagi is coated respectively with sweetened kinako powder, sweetened ground black sesame, matcha and mugwort powder, or strawberry powder.

The shop’s most popular ohagi are the two simple red bean paste varieties, which are their signature items. Matcha and kinako follow as favorites among tourists.

"On weekends, we sell an average of over 100 per day, which allows us to cook glutinous rice two or three times a day," says Momoi.

Take-out orders start at just one piece. For dine-in, you can choose two flavors and enjoy them with a pot of hojicha, a fragrant roasted green tea.

We tasted six different varieties and discovered that ohagi is a unique way of enjoying rice. It beautifully combines the best of both white rice and mochi, offering a texture that is neither as soft as rice nor as sticky as mochi, which creates a firm yet silky consistency. This satisfying chew is guaranteed to delight your taste buds! The glutinous rice and smooth sweet bean paste intertwine in your mouth, creating a truly exquisite harmony of flavor and texture.

Momoi explains its secret: "When cooking glutinous rice, we actually add amazake (sweet fermented non-alcoholic sweet sake) in addition to water. The rice itself has a subtle sweetness, and adding amazake makes the glutinous rice smooth and rich."

The most common way to make glutinous rice is to steam it and then mash it halfway, but MATSUNARI's ohagi uses steamed whole rice without being mashed. Ohagi is characterized by the exquisite texture of the mochi rice and bean paste, which is simply divine. Some Japanese confectionery shops use a blend of glutinous and non-glutinous rice (white rice), but MATSUNARI simply uses 100% glutinous rice, sourced from Chiba, the north-eastern region of Japan.

"Foreign customers often ask me what kind of mochi this is because it tastes like rice but has a different texture," she says.

We savored the exquisite flavors of the classic bean pastes "koshian" and "tsubuan". They are sweetened just enough to enhance the natural flavor of the beans. The strawberry flavor in particular exceeded our expectations for ohagi. It was undeniably creamy and distinctly reminiscent of a Western-style pastry.

Momoi explains, "We have created new twists on classic ohagi to showcase their fresh appeal, incorporating exciting new ingredients and techniques, all while meticulously preserving the time-honored traditional manufacturing methods."

Ohagi is a traditional staple that is filling, making it a great option for those looking for a satisfying snack or meal. We found that MATSUNARI's petite-sized ohagi is not heavy on the stomach and is the perfect portion size to enjoy before and after a meal.

It's a delightful surprise to find such a nostalgic yet refined sweet in the vibrant high-end town of Roppongi. When asked why MATSUNARI chose to open the shop in Roppongi, Momoi said, "Roppongi is a very attractive town where tradition and innovation coexist. Our goal is to introduce the charm of Japanese sweets to more people by offering ohagi, a traditional Japanese sweet, in this vibrant place where various cultures from Japan and abroad intersect."

The shop is a vibrant hub, attracting a diverse range of people from all walks of life. You may find office workers stopping by during their lunch break or on their way home, local residents, elderly couples, couples in their 20s, and even foreign tourists. MATSUNARI's mission is very clear: to create a shop where people can enjoy ohagi as a familiar Japanese sweet. And indeed, they have surely succeeded.