When Is Crab Season in Japan? 2026-27 Dates by Coast

When is crab season in Japan? It opens on November 6, 2026 and runs through March 20, 2027, for male snow crab along the San'in and Hokuriku coasts — a fixed date set by fisheries regulation, not a moving target. Female crab (called seko in the San'in dialect, seiko or koppe elsewhere) is legal only through December 31, so the window for that roe-rich half of the season is a lot shorter than the male season around it. Hokkaido runs on a completely different calendar: kegani and hanasaki crab are spring-through-autumn catches, not a winter thing at all. If you're booking a crab-kaiseki ryokan, budget from around ¥30,000 per person for a standard course and well past ¥60,000 for a tagged-crab plan — the town, the grade and the weekend all move that number more than the ryokan's name does.

One date runs the whole season — November 6

Every coast on the Sea of Japan side opens zuwai crab fishing on the same day: November 6. It isn't a marketing date, it's a fisheries-management rule set by the prefectures and enforced through the fishing cooperatives, and it has landed on November 6 every year for well over a decade. Boats leave port the evening before, hold offshore, and drop nets at midnight so the first catch of the season reaches the fish markets by morning. Tottori Prefecture, the largest San'in producer, publishes the opening and closing dates each year on its own site — the most recent seasons have all run November 6 through March 20, and nothing in the current regulation points to a change for 2026-27.

Closing day moves a little less cleanly than opening day. Male crab fishing stops on March 20 across San'in and at Fukui's Echizen port. That's a hard stop for the boats — it is not the same as the last day a ryokan will serve a crab-kaiseki plan, which can run a week or two past the fishing deadline while kitchens work through frozen and stored stock. Don't confuse the two dates when you're picking a travel window; more on that split in the coast-by-coast table below.

Coast by coast

The three Sea of Japan coasts share one regulation, which is why Kinosaki, Echizen and Kaga all open and close on identical dates — what changes between them is which port the crab lands at and what the town calls it, not the calendar. Male crab is a single legal category (zuwai crab) wearing three regional trade names.

Male, female, and the tagged ones

The crab most travelers picture — long legs, sold whole, the centerpiece of a kaiseki course — is always male. Female zuwai crab is a smaller animal, sold cheaper, and prized less for the leg meat than for the internal roe (kani-miso and two kinds of egg, uchiko and sotoko), which is why it gets its own name and its own short season through December 31 rather than sharing the male crab's run to March.

Above the standard male crab sits a tier of individually tagged, top-grade crab that each producing area brands and auctions separately: Tottori's Goki-sei, Kyoto and Kyotango's Kiwami, and comparable top-grade tags at other San'in ports. These crab are graded on shell width, weight, leg completeness and shell color, tagged at the dock, and sold at record prices — a single Goki-sei has fetched over ¥1 million at the opening-day auction in past seasons. The 2026 opening-day auction results and this season's tagged-crab pricing had not been published at the time of writing; expect the first results within a day or two of November 6.

Hokkaido is a different calendar

It's a common mix-up: Hokkaido is the part of Japan most associated with crab in general, but its two signature crabs run on a spring-to-autumn schedule, not a winter one. Kegani (hairy crab) season shifts port to port as the ice retreats — Okhotsk-side ports open in spring, Funka Bay runs through summer, and Kushiro/Nemuro pick up again in autumn — so there's no single Hokkaido kegani date the way there is a San'in zuwai date. Hanasaki crab, caught only off the Nemuro Peninsula, runs in two short windows split across spring and early autumn — check the current year's dates with Nemuro's fishing cooperative before building a trip around it. If a trip is built specifically around Hokkaido crab, winter is the wrong season for either of these two; it's the San'in and Hokuriku zuwai crab towns that are in season from November to March.

When to actually go

Three windows inside the same season behave differently for a traveler. Opening week (November 6 onward) carries the highest prices and the most media attention, but supply is still building and rooms are easiest to find on short notice. Year-end and New Year (late December into early January) is the tightest booking window of the whole season — it overlaps both Japan's peak domestic holiday travel and the seko crab deadline, so ryokan in Kinosaki and Echizen fill their crab-kaiseki plans months ahead. February is the calmest stretch: seko crab is gone, the holiday crowd has cleared, and male crab is at its heaviest after three months of feeding, which is when several producing areas report their largest average catch weights of the season. Of the five coasts in the table above, three (San'in, Echizen and the Kaga coast) share an identical November 6 – March 20 male-crab season, and only the two Hokkaido fisheries run outside winter entirely (checked September 2026).

Where to stay for it

This guide covers the calendar; picking a base is a separate decision, because the three main crab towns trade off differently on distance, price and crab type. A Kinosaki ryokan such as Nishimuraya Honkan is one example of the kind of property that runs a crab-kaiseki plan through the season — the guides below are where the actual prices and comparisons live. Our comparison of Kinosaki, Echizen and Tottori lays out that trade-off directly. If Tottori's two onsen towns are the fit, our Kaike vs. Misasa guide covers the split there. If Kinosaki is the pick — the easiest of the three to reach from Kyoto or Osaka — our Kinosaki crab-season guide covers plan pricing and which weekends sell out first. For a broader look at onsen ryokan booking in Japan outside crab season specifically, see our onsen ryokan hub.

Month by month

Trip Essentials for Japan

Things worth booking before you land, all in English:

• eSIM — Airalo's Japan eSIM: install it at home and data works as soon as you switch off airplane mode at Haneda, Narita, Kansai, or wherever you land.
• Tickets and day trips — Klook covers the Japan Rail Pass, teamLab tickets, and shinkansen-linked day trips; booking ahead skips the ticket-window line.

FAQ: Crab season in Japan

When does crab season start in Japan?

Male zuwai crab fishing opens on November 6 every year across the San'in coast (Tottori, Hyogo, Shimane), the Echizen coast in Fukui, and the Kaga coast in Ishikawa. It's set by fisheries regulation and hasn't moved off that date in recent seasons.

When does crab season end?

Male crab fishing closes on March 20. Female (seko) crab has a shorter window and stops on December 31. A ryokan's crab-kaiseki plan can keep running a week or two past the March 20 fishing deadline while stock lasts, so check the specific plan dates rather than assuming the fishing calendar and the menu calendar match exactly.

How long can I get female seko crab?

Only from the November 6 opening through December 31 — about eight weeks. It's the shortest window in the whole season and one reason year-end is the tightest time to book a room in Kinosaki or Echizen.

What does a crab-kaiseki plan cost?

Budget from around ¥30,000 per person for a standard crab-kaiseki course at a mid-range ryokan, and well past ¥60,000 per person once a tagged, top-grade crab is on the menu. The town, the room grade and whether the date falls on a weekend or over New Year all move that number more than any single ryokan's name does — our per-town guides linked above carry the specific ranges.