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The semi‐enclosed marginal Japan Sea is sensitive to global changes and responds to orbital‐scale variability. Sediment core samples from Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Site U1423 were processed for detrital grain size and semi‐quantitative mineral analysis to assess the sediment characterization and depositional environment in the Japan Sea over the last 1200 ka. The mean grain data suggest the dominance of the silt size fraction over sand and clay in the whole period, while sand content increases dramatically between 600 and 150 ka. The end‐member energy modelling of grain size data suggests that sediment deposition took place under two energy conditions over the last 1200 ka. The low‐energy conditions observed during the middle Pleistocene transition (MPT) is mainly related to the wind deposition with the sediment characteristics being moderately to poorly sorted and coarse to nearly symmetrical skewed during global cooling and enhanced East Asian Winter Monsoon (EAWM) winds in the northern Japan Sea. Post MPT, periodic fluctuations between higher and lower energy conditions are observed, and the depositional environment is controlled by the EAWM wind, and precipitation intensity, glacio‐eustatic sea‐level changes and sea‐ice volumes. During the period, detrital sediments are poorly sorted and nearly symmetrically skewed, marked by the dominance of quartz, plagioclase and k‐feldspar. The spectral analysis grain size‐related data shows the presence of 228, 41 and 23 kyr orbital paced cycles, which are also observed in the Chinese Loess Plateau's normalized quartz mean grain size. This study is the first report of 228 kyr cycles from the Pleistocene Japan Sea sediments indicate that sediment deposition in the Japan Sea is associated with ~200 kyr eccentricity cycle as in the Chinese Loess Plateau.