New York cheesecake is as far from Japanese cheesecake as a skillet supper of liver and onions is from a delicate slice of foie gras. One is heavy and slightly crude; the other is delicate and ethereal.

To taste Japanese cheesecake firsthand, the only logical thing to do was to hop a plane to Tokyo, then catch a bullet train down to Osaka. (The bullet train did not seem to travel any faster than the Connecticut stretch of Acela from Boston to New York, and the interior was no Orient Express. But Japanese trains run on time, a welcome change of pace.) Milk Street’s creative director, Matt Card, and I visited Rikuro’s main branch in the Namba shopping district. It was easy to find the store since there was a good half-hour line, which gave us plenty of time to watch as batter was made and poured into pans, then hot cakes were pulled out of wall ovens accompanied by a ringing bell. (New batches come out every few minutes.) The warm cakes are put into the display case and then branded on top with the store’s logo, a French-­looking chef complete with toque.

Back in my hotel room (each of us had bought his own cake), I tucked into it with a plastic coffee spoon and, despite the crude deep dive, realized that I was dealing with something that is more soufflé or sponge cake than cheesecake. It was light, cottony, velvety and, well, ethereal. (This unique texture is referred to as “fuwa fuwa” in Japanese.)

How did cheesecake get adapted by Japanese cooks? During the Meiji Period (1868-1912), a rice and cheese cake was introduced, but it never caught on. Jump to the 1960s and a Japanese chef, Tomotaro Kuzuno, traveled to Berlin, tasted German käse­kuchen and went on to create a lighter, less sweet version with the addition of whipped egg whites and the use of a bain-marie, giving Japanese cheesecake its signature airy, wobbly texture.

But there is more to the method than that. Our recipe begins by melting butter, cream cheese and milk in a saucepan—that’s right, the cream cheese is melted! Egg whites are whipped, a half cup of flour is whisked into the melted cream cheese mixture, egg yolks are added and then the whipped whites are folded in. The cake pan is filled with batter (it does require a water bath), the oven starts at 375 degrees and is immediately lowered to 300 degrees, and then after just over an hour of baking, the oven door is propped open and the cake sits for another 15 minutes.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that New York and Japanese cheesecakes engage in a full-frontal smackdown. The two styles have little in common. But there is nothing more exciting in the culinary world than when one culture borrows from another and comes up with something fresh and exciting. All hail Tomotaro Kuzuno!

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."