Tsuji Culinary Institute: Japan's largest cooking school, its France campus near Lyon, and what a Tsuji trained chef in my books says about learning the basics

Tsuji Culinary Institute is the school a Japanese cook most often means when they say they went to cooking school. It was founded in Osaka in 1960 by Shizuo Tsuji, an educator and researcher of French cuisine who befriended Paul Bocuse and Jean Troisgros, and it has grown into the Tsujicho Group, which calls itself Japan’s largest culinary and confectionery institute and counts more than 140,000 graduates. It has schools in Osaka and Tokyo and a campus in France near Lyon. It appears here because it is the one Asian school with documented alumni in the Michelin alumni studies, and because Ryuki Kawasaki, who held two stars at Mezzaluna in Bangkok when I interviewed him, went there from high school.

What the school is

The Osaka tourism board’s profile of the Tsujicho Group gives the history the school’s own English pages leave out. Shizuo Tsuji opened the school in Abeno, Osaka in 1960. He then made repeated trips to Europe to deepen his understanding of cuisine, befriended chefs including Bocuse, Troisgros and Bernard Loiseau, and wrote French Cuisine: Theory and Practice, which became a textbook at the school. In 1980 he opened a French school in the Rhône department, so that students could learn French cooking on French ground. The group has since added courses in Japanese, Chinese and Italian cuisine and in confectionery, and today runs two vocational schools, Tsuji Culinary Institute and Tsuji Confectionery Institute, with further schools under the Ecole Tsuji name in Osaka and Tokyo.

The school’s own Osaka page describes it as Japan’s largest culinary and confectionery institute, with facilities for Western, Japanese, Chinese, confectionery and baking work. It is a senmon gakko, a Japanese vocational school, and the page describes its graduates going on to qualify as chefs, pâtissiers and confectionery hygiene masters. In the field it is the Japanese counterpart to FERRANDI in Paris or the Culinary Institute of America: the large national school whose name every employer in the country recognizes, and one less known abroad than the alumni evidence below suggests it should be.

Programs and how they are taught

Tsuji organizes its programs by cuisine and by length, and the Osaka page sets them out. The Culinary Course runs as an Advanced Culinary Arts and Management Course of three years, a Culinary Arts and Management Course of two years and a Culinary Arts Course of one year, with students choosing a specialization in Western, Japanese or Chinese cuisine. Two courses are devoted to Japanese food alone: the two year Japanese Culinary Arts and Business Course and the one year Japanese Culinary Course. The Confectionery Course runs as a two year Confectionery Arts and Management Course and a one year Confectionery Hygiene Master Course. Some courses allow a student to qualify in both cooking and pâtisserie.

Teaching is in Japanese. The practical component the school emphasizes is Restaurant Simulation Practice, held in classrooms built as working restaurants so that students cook and serve as they would in a job; the page says it is open to students on the two and three year management courses.

The program that most distinguishes Tsuji is the France Study Abroad Course. The school describes it as about ten months: roughly five months of study at the French campus, which the page places near a château on the outskirts of Lyon, under a French student visa, followed by roughly five months of on the job training in restaurants and pâtisseries across France, including three star establishments. The school’s FAQ adds that applicants choose the course under the Culinary Arts Course or the Confectionery Hygiene Master Course, can sit an entrance examination designated for it, and receive a free preparatory class covering French life, classes and basic French; students in other departments can also apply after enrolling; and graduates of the two Japanese cuisine courses are not eligible. That five month stage is the closest thing in the school to the apprenticeship my books describe. The FAQ also mentions a scholarship system for the France course.

Who it is for and how to get in

The school’s FAQ answers the question a nervous applicant asks first: asked whether it is all right never to have cooked before, it says no worries. The Osaka and Tokyo admission pages carry the entry requirements, and the FAQ refers students to apartments through a national student housing service. The FAQ also lists what tuition does not cover: textbooks, the white uniform, a knife set, an alumni association fee and accident insurance, with practical training materials included. Fees and intake dates change each year and the school’s site carries them.

International students are a documented and growing part of the school. The FAQ says a number of international students study at both the Osaka and Tokyo schools. A Kyodo News report carried by the Jakarta Post in June 2018 put foreign enrollment at Japanese culinary schools nationally at 424 in fiscal 2017, up from 178 in fiscal 2010, and quoted the Tsuji operator saying its own foreign student count had more than tripled to 240 over those seven years, with most foreign students at Japanese culinary schools coming from elsewhere in Asia. The practical condition for a foreign applicant is Japanese: the courses are taught in it, and a student who cannot follow a demonstration in Japanese will struggle regardless of knife skills.

Alumni and what the studies document

Tsuji names no alumni on the pages I could read. The independent evidence is better than the school’s own publicity. Chef’s Pencil’s March 2026 study of 278 chefs leading Michelin starred restaurants in the United States found that 61 percent had attended culinary school and placed Tsuji among the schools most represented, at 1.4 percent of the sample, tied with FERRANDI Paris. It named Yuu Shimano of Restaurant Yuu in New York and Isao Yamada of Yamada as Tsuji alumni. The same publication’s May 2026 study of 181 Michelin starred chefs in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Nice lists Tsuji among the international schools whose graduates appear in French starred kitchens, alongside ALMA and the Le Cordon Bleu campuses. Both studies rest on public biographies and the authors say so.

What the chefs in my books say

One chef in my books trained at Tsuji. Ryuki Kawasaki was born in Niigata, helped his mother and grandmother in the kitchen as a boy, and went to the Tokyo school straight from secondary school.

“After high school I joined the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Tokyo. My first experiences in a professional kitchen were challenging, but I was just happy to be in the kitchen.” Ryuki Kawasaki, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

The school got him in the door. The education came from watching Michelin starred chefs work in France, Japan and the United States, which he calls his “a-ha” moment, and from years at the bottom. His advice is that of someone who has done both.

“For new and aspiring chefs, I would advise you to thoroughly learn the basics before longing for anything fancy. You must be ready to challenge everything.” Ryuki Kawasaki, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

“No one can become an expert chef overnight. It takes years of learning on the job before you can step out on your own and make your mark.” Ryuki Kawasaki, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

The other Japanese chefs in my books took other roads. Tetsuya Wakuda, who ran Tetsuya’s in Sydney for decades before opening Waku Ghin in Singapore, went to no school at all.

“I moved to Australia at the age of 22 and started as a kitchen-hand in a restaurant in Sydney. At the time, I had no language skills, no cooking skills, and no knowledge of food or techniques, but I was very curious and keen to learn.” Tetsuya Wakuda, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

Niki Nakayama of n/naka in Los Angeles found her vocation in Japan and trained in the United States.

“I started to consider a culinary career when I lived in Japan for one year after high school. But after spending a summer at my relative’s ryokan in Japan’s countryside, I knew that it was something I wanted to pursue. When I returned to the United States I enrolled in culinary school.” Niki Nakayama, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

Three Japanese chefs, three routes. What they share is the years afterward under people better than they were; Kawasaki says that as a junior he looked to his seniors and observed closely how they managed a big team.

How to decide

Tsuji is the right school for a student who wants to cook in Japan, who reads and speaks Japanese well enough to learn in it, and who wants the national credential Japanese kitchens recognize. It is also, through the France course, a serious route into French kitchens for a Japanese trained cook, and the alumni evidence in New York and France shows that route works. It is the wrong school for a student who cannot yet learn in Japanese. If you go, treat the school as Kawasaki treated it: the place that put you in a kitchen, where the real work began. Chapter 2 of The Luxury of Attention, The Apprenticeship, describes that work and why no one in my books skipped it. The Luxury of Attention (2026), Chapter 2

Sources

• Tsuji Culinary Institute Osaka (English)
• Tsuji Culinary Institute, FAQ (English)
• Osaka Info, Gastronomy: Tsujicho
• Jakarta Post (Kyodo News), Foreign cooks flocking to Japanese culinary schools (11 June 2018)
• Chef’s Pencil, 61% of America’s Michelin starred chefs are culinary school alumni (16 March 2026)
• Chef’s Pencil, How France trains Michelin starred chefs (28 May 2026)