Shichimi Togarashi: Japan’s Seven-Spice Blend, What’s in It and Where It Came From

Shichimi togarashi traces back to a shop in Edo, now Tokyo, in 1625, and at first it was sold at temple and shrine gates for its supposed medicinal benefits. Today it’s Japan’s table shaker of ground chile mixed with sansho pepper, sesame and other aromatics, also sold as Japanese seven-spice or nanami togarashi. There’s no single recipe: the three historic makers each use a different seven. One of them, in Kyoto, says it chose everything but the chile for fragrance and aims for aroma over heat.

At a glance

What’s in it

Nippon.com, comparing the blends of the three historic shops, calls chile, sansho and sesame the standard members. The rest vary.¹ Here are four published lists, each as its source gives it:

Yagenbori’s mandarin peel comes from the unshu mandarin.² Just One Cookbook adds that some regional blends use ginger, yuzu peel, shiso or poppy seed.⁴ None of these lists is “the” recipe. They just show the range.

Shichimi, ichimi and nanami

Ichimi is red chile alone; shichimi is chile with other spices. Just One Cookbook lists nanami togarashi as another name for shichimi. See nanami togarashi.

Not a cousin of five-spice

The English names sound alike, but shichimi has almost nothing in common with Chinese five-spice powder. Britannica lists five-spice as fennel seed, cassia, cloves, star anise and Szechuan pepper.⁶ Put that next to the table above and the only overlap is a Zanthoxylum pepper (Szechuan pepper in one, sansho in the other). Five-spice has no chile at all.

Flavor

Chile brings the heat, and everything else brings aroma. Shichimiya Honpo says it chose every ingredient in its blend except the chile for fragrance, that it aims for aroma over heat, and that the quality of the sansho decides the flavor.³ Yagenbori, which uses both raw and roasted chile, says roasting mellows the heat and brings out a toasty smell.² Sansho’s part is a numbing kind of heat. PepperScale, which translates the name as “seven-flavored pepper,” calls the blend pretty spicy next to other Japanese foods.

A good shichimi tastes bright and citrusy first, then toasty and nutty from the seeds, with the chile showing up last.

History

Nippon.com, a Japanese publication, gives the usual account. In 1625, Karashiya Tokuemon, working near the Ryogoku bridge in Edo, took his cue from herbal medicine (kampo) and blended chile with various other ingredients. The district was called Yagenbori after its V-shaped moat, which looked like a yagen, a tool for grinding crude drugs into powder. At first the blend was sold at temple and shrine gates for its supposed medicinal benefits.¹ Yagenbori, the shop that still trades under that name, gives the same founding year, 1625, and names Tokuemon as its founder. PepperScale gives the same year and shop.

Nippon.com names Yagenbori, Yawataya Isogoro in Shinshu (Nagano) and Shichimiya Honpo in Kyoto as Japan’s “three great shichimi.”¹ Shichimiya Honpo says it was founded in the Meireki era of the Edo period.

Two claims get repeated a lot that we couldn’t trace: that Japan used chiles only as medicine until 1625, and that the blend took off thanks to soba. We don’t present either as fact.

How shichimi togarashi is used

Just One Cookbook lists ramen, udon and soba, gyudon, tonjiru, yakitori and hot pots as its usual homes. Katzer describes it as mainly a table condiment for noodle soups and hot pots. PepperScale adds sushi to the list.

Beyond those, it suits anything grilled, fried or rich: chicken skewers, tempura, karaage, seared tuna, roasted vegetables, even buttered popcorn. Sprinkle it on at the table instead of cooking it in. On rice, use it alongside furikake or gomasio, not in place of them.

Buying and storage

Read the ingredient list, since blends differ (see the table above). Just One Cookbook says to keep it away from humidity and moisture and store it somewhere cool. No source gives a shelf life. Smell it now and then: a blend that smells only of chile has lost a lot of its character.

Safety

Every list above includes sesame, which the FDA lists among the major food allergens.⁷ Check the label if you avoid sesame.

Several blends include nori or aonori. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements lists seaweed, nori included, among the best food sources of iodine, and says amounts vary a lot between seaweeds.⁸ We didn’t find a published iodine figure for shichimi, so we don’t suggest it as an iodine source.

Health claims

Shichimi was first sold for its supposed medicinal virtues, and its ingredients often get credited with benefits for bones, digestion and the thyroid. We found no evidence that the blend, in the amounts you sprinkle on food, supplies meaningful vitamins or minerals or treats any condition, so we don’t make those claims.

Substitutes and related pages

Chile flakes plus a little ground sansho or Sichuan pepper, sesame and grated citrus zest gets you close, though we didn’t find a tested ratio. See shichimi togarashi substitutes, sansho pepper, Szechuan pepper, red pepper flakes, black sesame seeds, poppy seeds, shiso and Japanese spices.