From luxe to everyday: the untold history of adzuki beans

In Taiwan, adzuki beans are an everyman''s food, appearing in street snacks like wheel cakes and sweet soup. But these unassuming red beans were once the pinnacle of sophistication. During the Japanese colonial era, desserts made with the beans could only be enjoyed by the wealthiest families. In tonight''s Sunday special report, we take you on a journey through time, to explore the history of this timeless treat.

During the Japanese colonial period, basic goods were in short supply, meaning most crops were grown for their value as sustenance. Sweets were a real luxury, so farmers didn’t cultivate produce for use in desserts. If you were to ask most farmers back then what an adzuki bean was, chances are they would say they’d never seen one. During the Japanese rule, popular Japanese treats made with adzuki, such as wheel cakes, stuffed mochi, and sweet buns, started arriving to Taiwan, where they were only enjoyed by a select few.

Hu Chuan-an
‘The Taste of Washoku’ author
During the Japanese colonial period, Taiwan got imagawayaki, that is, adzuki bean wheel cakes. Adzuki beans were very expensive back then, so they would ship them in from China or Japan. They were things that only the more affluent people could afford to eat.

Adzuki beans have a revered place in Japanese cuisine. They aren’t just used to make pastries for traditional tea ceremonies. Their nutritional value and beautiful color made them a staple at religious rites after the 7th century, when Buddhist doctrine banned the consumption of four-legged animals in Japan.

In Taiwan, 50 years of Japanese colonial rule deeply ingrained in people’s minds the idea that adzuki bean were luxurious and precious. The Japanese left, but the love for adzuki bean stayed behind.

After World War II, adzuki beans remained scarce and cherished. But as they began being cultivated in Taiwan, they started appearing in daily life, in the form of treats such as adzuki beans on ice in summer or adzuki bean soup in winter. Precisely because of their exclusivity, the beans were popular as religious offerings.

Lee Pi-lien
Red tortoise cake baker
Offer rice cakes for riches. Offer a tortoise for longevity. Eat them for good luck, peace, happiness and beauty.

In rural areas, red tortoise cakes were once a delicacy made only for special occasions.

They’re made with glutinous rice dough dyed white and red and stuffed with a dark-colored filling. The tri-color scheme lines up perfectly with the three main characters in the “Oath of the Peach Garden,” an event in the novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.” That’s why now, when bakers make the cakes, they often recite the names of the three brothers. Today, it would seem that the cakes have always been stuffed with adzuki beans. But actually, the adzuki bean filling is an example of Taiwan-Japanese fusion developed after the war.

Hu Chuan-an
‘The Taste of Washoku’ author
During the Japanese colonial period and even before, Taiwanese red tortoise cakes would be filled with mung beans, sesame, or salty ingredients. Adzuki beans were very expensive, so most households couldn’t use them. Older people might have thought, “During the Japanese colonial period, only rich people could afford to eat adzuki beans. But now I can afford them, too, so let’s put them in the red tortoise cake.”

The craze for adzuki beans fueled their cultivation in Taiwan.

Adzuki bean farmers have to avoid the spring and summer, when pests proliferate and diseases spread. To truly thrive, the plants need to be kept between 25 and 30 degrees. That makes the autumn season in Kaohsiung and Pingtung the ideal time and place for cultivation. The first adzuki bean fields appeared here in the 1960s.

At the beginning, farmers who grew adzuki beans there were a very small minority. That’s because for the autumn harvest, most farmers opted for crops such as sweet potatoes for feeding their pigs or soybeans for making soy sauce.

Tsai shun-fa
Kaohsiung Agricultural Improvement Station
The Kaohsiung Agricultural Improvement Station started cultivating adzuki beans in 1968. Originally local varieties featured smaller beans. And their quality was a bit lower. To make the crops better for our farmers, we started work on improving the cultivars.

The agricultural station developed varieties that were easier to cultivate, while producing larger beans and yielding bigger harvests. These new cultivars were offered to farmers. At this point in time, division of labor was rising in Taiwan’s agriculture sector, making small farmers more willing to try new crops.

Wandan historian
Pigs were starting to be raised on hog farms. So, other farmers stopped raising pigs, and therefore they stopped growing sweet potatoes. Then, the adzuki beans ar

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