How Reliable Is Allergy Labeling?

ANSWER

Japan's food labeling rules require a small number of major allergens to be disclosed on packaged food, with a longer list of additional allergens recommended but not legally required — meaning a package can be technically compliant while still leaving out an allergen you personally need to know about if it falls in the recommended-only category. "Manufactured in the same factory as" wording is a further layer of caution worth reading carefully, since it signals cross-contamination risk rather than a listed ingredient. The much bigger gap is restaurants: unlike packaged food, restaurant meals in Japan generally carry no legal labeling obligation at all, so a menu with no allergen information isn't unusual or non-compliant — it's simply outside what the law requires. Because exact mandatory/recommended allergen lists are periodically revised, treat the specific counts as a general picture rather than a guaranteed-current number, and if you have a severe allergy, plan around asking directly (ideally with a printed allergy card) rather than relying on labeling alone.