Restaurant allergen requirements in Japan
Allergens that must be declared in Japan
- Wheat
- Buckwheat
- Egg
- Milk
- Peanut
- Shrimp
- Crab
- Walnut
Source: Consumer Affairs Agency Notification No. 10 (specified raw materials).
A different list, and a two-tier structure
Japan’s system is built around specified raw materials that must be declared, with a further set of items recommended for voluntary declaration. The mandatory set is narrower than the EU fourteen but is not a subset of it — buckwheat is mandatory in Japan and absent from the EU list, and walnut was elevated to the mandatory tier as tree-nut allergy prevalence rose.
That asymmetry is the practical trap. A restaurant that tagged its menu against the EU fourteen has genuinely complete European data and an incomplete Japanese declaration, because buckwheat was never a field it recorded.
Buckwheat is the one to get right
Soba is buckwheat, and buckwheat allergy in Japan is taken seriously in a way that has no direct Western parallel — reactions can be severe. It also appears outside obvious soba dishes, in some tea, some confectionery and some coatings.
If you serve any soba, the cross-contact question extends to shared water and shared fryers, and that is a kitchen-process answer rather than a menu-copy one.
Seasoning carries the hidden allergens
Standard soy sauce contains wheat. Dashi contains fish. Miso varies by base. None of this is visible in a dish name, and all of it matters to a guest filtering for an allergen.
Record it against the item. A dish that reads as vegetarian and is built on dashi is exactly the case a filter has to catch and a description will not.
How Intermenu helps
Allergen tags are recorded once per menu item as structured data and render in every language you publish, so a guest filtering for an allergen gets the same answer whichever version of the menu they are reading. Nothing is inferred silently — the operator sees the mapping at upload time.