Washoku, traditional Japanese cuisine, has been recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage. It is built on principles of seasonality, balance, and respect for ingredients. The peak season for an ingredient is called shun, and Japanese cuisine emphasizes seasonal ingredients throughout the year. In spring, brief cherry blossom season celebrates sakura through special food and drink, while sansai (mountain vegetables) and fukinotou, a bitter spring shoot, provide early seasonal bitterness thought to stimulate the appetite. Bitter foods more generally are a valued part of the palette. Summer brings fresh catches, autumn brings mushrooms and root vegetables, and winter, or the shun of toro, is when bluefin tuna are at their fattiest.
At the most refined end of the cuisine is kaiseki, a multi-course traditional meal emphasizing seasonality and artistry. Kaiseki follows structured tradition, in contrast to omakase, which means "chef's choice" and allows the chef to decide the meal freestyle. Both rely on principles like ichiju-sansai, the "one soup, three sides" traditional meal structure accompanied by rice, where rice is the meal and everything else accompanies it. Shojin ryori is Buddhist vegetarian cuisine, refined and seasonal, while the Okinawan diet, featuring plant-rich foods, fish, and minimal processed items, is one of the world's longevity diets, paired with the practice of hara hachi bu, eating to 80 percent full.
Presentation is essential to Japanese cuisine, with beauty considered as important as taste. Moritsuke is the art of food arrangement on the plate, often mimicking natural landscapes. Visual harmony follows the five-color principle (red, white, yellow, green, and black or brown) and the five cooking methods (raw, simmered, grilled, fried, and steamed). Pickles, called tsukemono, with varieties including the intensely sour umeboshi (salted pickled plums) and bright yellow takuan (pickled daikon), serve to cleanse the palate and balance umami. Above all, the cuisine seeks to highlight ingredients' intrinsic qualities rather than mask them, an approach that has been linked to a long-lived population with a balanced, varied, fish-rich, vegetable-heavy diet.