Being vegan in Japan is a harder problem than being vegetarian in Japan, and not by a small margin. The vegetarian has one ingredient to work around. The vegan has three, and two of them arrive after the dish has already been described to you.
Dashi first, because it is still the main event
Dashi is the stock underneath most savoury Japanese cooking, and it is usually made with katsuobushi — dried, smoked, fermented skipjack tuna — frequently alongside kombu seaweed.
It is in miso soup. It is in simmered vegetable dishes. It is in the dipping sauce for tempura and cold soba. It is in most udon and ramen broths, and in a great many dressings.
It is almost never written down, because to a Japanese kitchen dashi is not an ingredient. It is the water. A bowl of simmered vegetables containing nothing but vegetables is frequently not vegan for exactly this reason.
Then egg, which is in more than you would guess
Tempura batter is usually flour, egg and water. Some fresh noodles are made with egg. Tamagoyaki is egg by definition, and it turns up as a component of other dishes rather than as its own order.
Then the mayonnaise
Japanese mayonnaise is egg-yolk based and is used far more widely than the word "mayonnaise" suggests to a British or American reader. It is drizzled over okonomiyaki and takoyaki, folded into salads, squeezed onto grilled vegetables, and served as a dip with fried things. Like the bonito flakes scattered on top at the last moment, it goes on after the menu was written.
Between dashi, egg and mayonnaise, the pattern is consistent: the problem is almost always something added rather than something cooked in.
The word that actually helps
精進料理 (shōjin ryōri) is Buddhist temple cuisine. It is vegan by construction — no meat, no fish, no bonito dashi, and traditionally no alliums either. Kombu dashi is used instead. If you learn one term for this trip, learn this one.
It appears near major temples, at some ryokan, and in dedicated restaurants in Kyoto and Tokyo.
ヴィーガン (vīgan) is increasingly recognised in cities and increasingly meaningless outside them. ベジタリアン (bejitarian) is worse: it is widely understood to mean "no large pieces of meat", which does nothing about the stock, the egg or the mayonnaise. Naming the ingredient beats naming the category almost every time.
Dishes that are usually a reasonable starting point
- Inari sushi — rice in sweet fried tofu pouches, usually with nothing else involved
- Zaru soba — cold buckwheat noodles served plain, with the dipping sauce on the side, so you can ask before you use it
- Goma-dōfu — sesame "tofu", usually made with sesame paste and kudzu starch rather than soy or dairy, and a shōjin staple
- Yasai itame — stir-fried vegetables, where the seasoning rather than the vegetables is the thing to check
"Usually" is doing visible work in all four. None of them is a guarantee, and the same dish differs between two kitchens on the same street.
The questions worth asking
出汁は昆布ですか、鰹ですか。 Dashi wa kombu desu ka, katsuo desu ka? "Is the dashi kombu or bonito?"
卵と乳製品は入っていますか。 Tamago to nyūseihin wa haitte imasu ka? "Does this have egg or dairy in it?"
精進料理はありますか。 Shōjin ryōri wa arimasu ka? "Do you have shōjin ryōri?"
These are ordinary questions a kitchen can answer in a second. Announcing a dietary category invites a polite yes that means something other than what you hoped.
Preference, or something stricter
If you are vegan by preference and a trace of bonito in a dipping sauce is an annoyance rather than a failure, Japan is workable. Convenience stores, department-store food halls and the Indian and Nepalese restaurants in every mid-sized city all help.
If you are strict — trace dashi matters, mayonnaise on the side is not a fix — then temple cuisine, dedicated vegan restaurants and self-catering are the plan, not the fallback. Book the shōjin places ahead. In smaller towns there may be nothing, and that is worth knowing before the train rather than after.
TableSage flags dashi, bonito, egg and mayonnaise on a scanned menu, along with the other things that never get printed. It will not tell you a dish is suitable — recipes vary and the kitchen has the final word — but it will tell you what to ask.
More detail: Vegan at a Japanese restaurant, How to read a Japanese menu, and the ingredients menus leave out.
