Sugar Road: tracing the history of famous Fukuoka sweets that developed along the Nagasaki Kaido

While Japan may have imposed the sakoku policy during the Edo period, it did not mean the nation was hermetically sealed from the world. Throughout the sakoku era, the Nagasaki Kaido was the one road connecting Japan to China and the West. 
It is 228km in length. Between its starting point in Kokura, Kitakyushu and Nagasaki, the only port in Japan that permitted international trade under the direct control of the Shogunate, were 25 staging-post towns (towns that prospered as transportation hubs).

Nagasaki Kaido was a vibrant thoroughfare travelled by all sorts of people from the daimyo lords from all over Kyushu on their way to or from Edo under the sankin-kotai “alternative attendance” system, samurai on their way to perform security duties in Nagasaki and Dutch East India Company chief traders  visiting the Edo shogunate, as well as everyday merchants and artisans plying the route on foot. It also prospered as an artery for imported goods and new technologies and culture from other countries to the rest of Japan.
The sugar flowing from Nagasaki to the rest of Japan found its way into the communities along the road together with sweet-making techniques, giving rise to a blooming patchwork of unique confectionery cultures.

Sugar first reached Japan during the Nara period (8th century). It was not used as a food at the time but rather, as a medicine in very small quantities.
It only began to be imported in bulk in the late 16th century in trade with the Portugese. Luís Fróis, a priest from Portugal, traveled to Kyoto to obtain permission for a Christian mission, where it is recorded that he presented Oda Nobunaga with kompeito candy in a glass jar.
In the Edo period, Portugese ships were banned from entering Japanese ports under the sakoku policy, and Dutch and Chinese ships carrying goods from Asia and Europe started to arrive instead. One of their key products was sugar, of which bulk importation began in the 18th century.
 

Westerners Arrive in Japan (1596 –1615) / Screens of the Portogueses Arriving in Japan
Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture

Sugar imported to Nagasaki by foreign vessels, particularly Dutch and Chinese ships, was first landed on Dejima island or elsewhere in the port. It would then be bought wholesale by Nagasaki Kaisho (clearinghouse), the Tokugawa shogunate agency that oversaw trade in the port. Sugar was then auctioned off to Japanese merchants. The majority of those merchants carried their sugar onward to Osaka by ship, but sugar found its way around Nagasaki in all sorts of ways outside of the official trade routes.
 

Views of the Chinese and Dutch Factories in Nagasaki
Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture

Views of the Chinese and Dutch Factories in Nagasaki
Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture

The Edo period was also the time when sugar reached Fukuoka Prefecture. Then, both Fukuoka and Saga domains were tasked by the Tokugawa shogunate with the security of Nagasaki. Each domain would dispatch 2,000 samurai warriors every other year to Nagasaki. Procurement of food and other materials for the contingent was costly and the Nagasaki security requirement posed a heavy fiscal burden for the domains. 
In order to reduce the cost, Fukuoka domain established a goods storage and sales facility in Nagasaki. More trusted merchants were eventually allowed to run wholesale businesses, and an exclusive sugar transportation route for direct importation of sugar to Fukuoka was created to bypass the existing Osaka route. Saga domain did much the same, which explains why the two domains of northern Kyushu have been so heavily laden with sugar since the 18th century.

Toward the end of the Edo period, the Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed between Japan and the United States, opening ports all around Japan to the world, starting with Yokohama. As a result, the relative status of Nagasaki as a trading port would steadily decline. What is more, railways started operation in Kyushu in 1889. The prosperity of the Nagasaki Kaido dwindled.
However, the Sugar Road never closed. In 1904, a sugar refinery was established in Moji, Kitakyushu City fed by sugar imported from Taiwan, giving birth to the “second Sugar Road” in northern Kyushu.

At the same time, investment was flowing into the coalmines of the Chikuho region from the industrial conglomerates Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Furukawa. Once the Imperial Yahata Steel Works were established, Fukuoka Prefecture developed as the leading edge of modern industrialization in Japan based on mining and steel production. For the laborers working in the coalmines and steelworks, sugary sweets were treasured as a snack that could quickly boost energy levels. 
The railway, developed to transport coal, was also tasked with carrying sugar and beans, the ingredients of confectionery. Trains loaded with these ingredients of yokan (sweet jelly) were certainly a fitting sight on the modern Sugar Road.

More than 400 years have passed since sugar gained a true foothold in Japan. The sugar-based food culture that took root via the Sugar Road developed to reflect the characteristics of each region through people's ideas and ingenuity, and is still cherished and passed down to this day.
If you visit the communities along the Nagasaki Kaido, you too can get a close-up view of the sweet makers’ skills or even try making your own sweets. As you savor the famous confectionery presented here, do not forget the rich history of sweets made possible by the Sugar Road.