Word.ws English Dictionary

anpan

anpan noun: a Japanese sweet roll most commonly filled with red bean paste.

anpan: a Japanese sweet roll most commonly filled with red bean paste
Image: Ocdp, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

anpan (countable and uncountable, plural anpan or anpans)

  1. A Japanese sweet roll most commonly filled with red bean paste.
    • Anpanman, a male hero whose head is composed of anpan—a doughy snack filled with sweet bean paste, is the central character in a children’s book (/cartoon/comic/toy) series in Japan.1992, 91st Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, American Anthropological Association, →ISBN, page 40
    • Japanization of practice is reflected in the food used, such as the bread and anpan buns as a substitute for Korean rice cakes.1999, Jeffry Thomas Hester, Place-Making and the Cultural Politics of Belonging in a Mixed Korean/Japanese Locale of Osaka, Japan, University of California, Berkeley, page 187

Examples of anpan in a sentence

  • At once, Tanuki changed himself into a little girl holding a plate with four anpan (buns filled with red bean paste)—the Tengu’s favorite food.2000, Rena Krasno, Floating Lanterns and Golden Shrines: Celebrating Japanese Festivals, Pacific View Press, →ISBN, page 46:
  • For those familiar with the anime “Anpanman,” the title character is so named because his head is the shape of an anpan bun.2005, Satomi Ikezawa, translated by William Flanagan, Othello, volume 3, New York, N.Y.: Del Rey Books, →ISBN:
  • Anpan was a huge success and the bakery was immediately commissioned to serve the emperor’s court, which made their reputation solid.2016, Machiko Kusahara, “Proto-Media Art: Revisiting Japanese Postwar Avant-garde Art”, in Christiane Paul, editor, A Companion to Digital...
  • Anpan is a sweet bread filled with red bean paste (it’s what Kurtz pictures on the first page of this story).2017, Petos, translated by Kevin Steinbach, Interviews with Monster Girls, volume 5, Kodansha Comics, →ISBN:

Forms of anpan

pluralanpan
pluralanpans

Origin of anpan

From Japanese あんパン (anpan), from あん (an, “bean jam”) + パン (pan, “bread, pastry”).

Questions about anpan

What does anpan mean?
Anpan means a Japanese sweet roll most commonly filled with red bean paste.
How do you use anpan in a sentence?
At once, Tanuki changed himself into a little girl holding a plate with four anpan (buns filled with red bean paste)—the Tengu’s favorite food.
What part of speech is anpan?
Anpan is a noun.
What is the plural of anpan?
The plural of anpan is anpan.

Words near anpan in the dictionary

  1. anoxygenic photosynthesis
  2. anoxyhæmia
  3. anoxæmia
  4. anoying
  5. ANP
  6. anpan
  7. anpans
  8. Anping
  9. anpirtoline
  10. ANPP
  11. ANPR

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: anpan (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “anpan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/anpan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.