The patient was a 57-year-old man. Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy revealed a 0- II c lesion at the anterior wall of the greater curvature in the lower third of the stomach, and the biopsy of this tumor gave the diagnosis of tubular adenocarcinoma. Abdominal contrast-enhanced computed tomography revealed many enlarged regional and non-regional lymph nodes. Because there was no definite evidence of lymph node metastasis, distal gastrectomy with D2 was performed. Histopathological examinations found the sarcoid reaction(SR)in lymph nodes, but could not demonstrate any cancer cells. SR is the epithelioid cell granuloma in lymph nodes found in patients without systemic sarcoidosis but with cancer. Early gastric cancer with SR is rare, with only 22 reported cases in Japan. SR is considered as one of the differential diagnoses when we find many enlarged lymph nodes in patients with early gastric cancer.