A Japanese convenience store snack or drink label carries more regulated information than it looks like it does: nine allergens the law requires by name, twenty more it only recommends, and an ingredient list ordered by weight with no furigana anywhere to help you sound it out. None of that shows up in a phrasebook, because a phrasebook teaches you to order food, not to read the fine print on the package already in your hand. Most English language guides to Japanese food labels still quote seven mandatory allergens. That number is two years out of date. Here's what the label in front of you actually says, checked against the rules as they currently stand.
The nine allergens Japan requires by law
Japan's Food Labeling Act names a short list of allergens a manufacturer has to declare, no exceptions. The list grew twice in the last three years, and a guide still quoting seven items missed both changes.
| Allergen | Kanji or kana | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Shrimp | えび | Mandatory |
| Crab | かに | Mandatory |
| Wheat | 小麦 | Mandatory |
| Buckwheat | そば | Mandatory |
| Egg | 卵 | Mandatory |
| Milk | 乳 | Mandatory |
| Peanut | 落花生 / ピーナッツ | Mandatory |
| Walnut | くるみ | Mandatory since March 2025 |
| Cashew nut | カシューナッツ | Mandatory since April 2026 |
Walnut joined the mandatory list first, in March 2025. Cashew nut followed in April 2026, with manufacturers given a grace period to sell through packaging printed under the old rules. Twenty more allergens, soy (大豆) and sesame (ごま) among them, sit on a separate list the government only recommends. A maker can leave soy off a label and stay completely within the law, which matters if you're avoiding it: its absence doesn't mean a product is soy free, it might just mean nobody was required to say so.
How the ingredient list is actually built
Ingredients run in descending order by weight, heaviest first, printed in kanji and kana with no furigana anywhere on the package. That's the part a phrasebook can't prepare you for. You're not translating individual words, you're parsing a dense list with zero reading hints, under store lighting, usually with someone waiting behind you at the register.
Two notation styles show up depending on the maker:
- Individual notation (個別表示): each allergen gets tagged right where the ingredient appears, in parentheses next to it.
- Batch notation (一括表示): every allergen gets grouped once at the very end of the ingredient list, after a phrase worth memorizing on sight, 原材料の一部に, meaning "this product's ingredients include," followed by the allergen names and 含む (fukumu, contains).
A real label using batch notation might close with something like (一部に小麦、卵、乳成分を含む), "contains wheat, egg and milk as part of its ingredients." Miss that one closing phrase and you miss every allergen on that label, because none of them appear anywhere else on the package.
What a label does not tell you
Japan has no equivalent of a blanket "may contain traces of" warning. Cross contact gets a separate, voluntary line instead, something close to 本製品は、小麦・卵を含む製品と共通の設備で製造しています (this product is made on equipment shared with products containing wheat and egg). It shows up often on baked goods and instant noodles, but nothing requires it. Its absence proves nothing either way. If a shared equipment line matters to you and you don't see one on a package you're unsure about, that's a question for store staff, not a green light to assume there's no risk.
Reading the shelf without guessing
- Find the ingredient list first, usually printed on the back or side panel under the header 原材料名 (genzairyoumei).
- Scan for individual tags in parentheses next to specific ingredients. No tags there means the label is using batch notation instead.
- Go straight to the end of the list on a batch label and look for 原材料の一部に or the shorter 一部に, followed by 含む.
- Check for a separate shared equipment line, usually its own short sentence below the main ingredient block. It is never guaranteed to exist.
- Cross check against the recommended twenty if you're avoiding soy, sesame, almond or anything else outside the mandatory nine. The label owes you nothing extra on those by law.
Reading one unfamiliar kanji at a time against a phone dictionary works fine for a single word. It falls apart on a label packed with eight or ten ingredients plus a closing allergen clause, all in characters with no furigana. A camera translator that reads the whole panel in place turns that into one glance: the ingredient list, the batch allergen phrase and the shared equipment line translated together, in the order they're printed, before you've committed to buying anything.
Back to reading without a shelf in front of you
The same skill, a wall of kanji with no furigana and no picture to guess from, is exactly what makes a raw manga volume hard for a new reader too. If a convenience store label was your first real fight with dense, unglossed Japanese on this trip, reading raw manga in English is a lower stakes place to keep that reading speed moving once you're home. The full method for translating manga bubble by bubble uses the same in-place approach as a camera held over an ingredient list: the original text replaced, not captioned underneath. And if you're deciding which app earns a spot on your phone for the rest of the trip, the comparison of manga translator apps covers which camera tools are actually built for dense small print, labels included, rather than clean restaurant menus.