Ramen

• 1. Introduction

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  Ramen, the Japanese noodle soup, is sold in more than 24,000 shops across Japan. Around 5,000 of them are in Tokyo alone. In December 2015, a shop called Tsuta, in Tokyo's Sugamo district, earned a Michelin star. Yet for a long time the dish was looked down upon, partly through racial prejudice against the Chinese and partly because it was cheap food of the working class. Today it counts as a national dish. Its name raises a stranger puzzle, because it borrows a Chinese word for a dish that ramen does not descend from. Who brought the soup to Japan, who named it, and how did it win over the whole country?

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• 2. A Borrowed Name

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  The Chinese word lāmiàn, written 拉麵, means pulled noodles, and ramen took its name from it. The two dishes, however, have no direct relation. Lamian belongs to the cooking of northern China. Ramen noodles are cut, not pulled, and how the dish came to borrow the word is still unclear.

  The word first appeared in Japan in Seiichi Yoshida's 1928 book, How to Prepare Delicious and Economical Chinese Dishes. Yoshida explained how to make it from flour and kansui, an alkaline water, kneading by hand and stretching the dough, with an illustration. He judged the result better for soup or cold noodles than for baking. Yet his ramen meant genuine hand-pulled lamian, not the noodle soup.

  The most plausible explanation begins with the end of World War II in 1945. Millions of Japanese settlers were sent home from China. Many had met lamian in northern China, including in Manchukuo, the Japanese-backed puppet state. Back in Japan, they may have applied the same word to southern Chinese noodle dishes that looked superficially similar. The first mention of ramen as a dish, in Hatsuko Kuroda's Enjoyable Home Cooking in 1947, fits that timing. The dish itself, though, had been simmering in Japan's Chinese community since the 1880s.

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• 3. Chinatown Roots

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  A diary kept at Shōkoku-ji Temple in Kyoto mentions eating noodles made with kansui in 1488, the earliest such record in Japan. That was a curiosity, not the start of a food tradition.

  One tale dates ramen to the 1660s and to Zhu Shunsui, a neo-Confucian scholar who fled Manchu rule. He advised Tokugawa Mitsukuni, who supposedly became the first Japanese person to eat ramen. But the noodles Mitsukuni ate combined lotus root starch with wheat flour. That differs from chūkamen, the noodles made with kansui.

  By 1884, Chinese noodle soups were popular in Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki and Hakodate, though mostly among Chinese immigrants themselves. Historians consider this late 19th century route the more plausible one. Most Chinese settlers in Yokohama Chinatown were Cantonese, followed by Shanghainese. That is why ramen descends largely from southern Chinese noodle dishes, especially Cantonese ones.

  The immigrants called their dishes by specific names, such as char siu tang mian for roast pork noodle soup and rousi tang mian for sliced pork noodle soup. The Japanese lumped them all together as Nankin soba, meaning Nanjing noodles. Nankin was their label for newly imported Chinese things, and Chinese settlements were called Nankinmachi, or Nanjing Town. Chinese students were the keenest customers, since they missed the food of home and found Japanese food bland.

  A law passed in 1899 let resident foreigners own businesses outside their designated settlements. Together with rising demand for labor, it spread Chinese immigrants across Japan. By 1900, restaurants serving the cooking of Guangzhou and Shanghai offered noodles with a few toppings in a broth flavored with salt and pork bones. Other Chinese immigrants pulled portable food stalls. By the mid-1900s, these stalls announced themselves with a charumera, a musical horn whose name comes from the Portuguese charamela. Some vendors still do, using a loudspeaker and a looped recording.

  A Japanese entrepreneur would soon open a restaurant devoted to the dish, aimed squarely at Japanese customers.

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• 4. Rairaiken and Renaming

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  Rairaiken, which opened in Asakusa, Tokyo, in 1910, is regarded by ramen expert Hiroshi Osaki as the first specialized ramen shop. Its Japanese founder, Kan'ichi Ozaki, hired twelve Cantonese cooks from Yokohama's Chinatown. Ozaki had grown up in Yokohama, where he tasted Chinese food firsthand and saw how popular noodles were in Chinatown. That set him apart from most Japanese of his day. Early bowls were wheat noodles in broth topped with char siu, arranged for Japanese tastes. The menu also carried wontons and shumai. The shop is sometimes seen as the origin of Japanese-Chinese fusion dishes such as chūkadon and tenshindon.

  Ozaki also renamed the dish, replacing Nankin soba with Shina soba. Japanese society of the time viewed Chinese civilization as inferior, and the new name reflected that imperialist outlook. Japanese food was washoku, Western food was yoshoku, and Chinese food was shina ryori. In the following decades, shina soba became the name most often used for ramen.

  After World War II, the word shina, meaning China, took on a pejorative sense through its ties to anti-Chinese racism and Japanese imperialism. Speakers replaced it with chūka. The new word draws on the Japanese reading of the official names used by the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China. Shina ryōri became chūka ryōri, and shina soba became chūka soba.

  The original shop left a long family tree. In 1925, a Chinese traveler named Fan Qinxing from Zhejiang province opened Genraiken in Kitakata as a tribute to Rairaiken. In 1933, Fu Xinglei, one of the twelve original chefs, opened a second Rairaiken in Yūtenji, in Tokyo's Meguro Ward. In 1968, one of Ozaki's apprentices opened Shinraiken, meaning New Raiken, in Chiba Prefecture. The original shop closed in 1976. In 2020, Ozaki's grandson and great-great-grandson reopened it inside the Shin-Yokohama Rāmen Museum.

  The dish spread far beyond that circle only after the war, when hunger pushed wheat to the center of Japanese meals.

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• 5. Hunger and Wheat

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  In December 1945, Japan recorded its worst rice harvest in 42 years. Rice farming had shrunk during the war, as production shifted to colonies in China and Formosa island. The American military occupied Japan from 1945 to 1952, and it flooded the market with cheap wheat flour to ease the shortages.

  During those same years, millions of Japanese settlers returned from China and other parts of East Asia. Many knew Chinese cooking and opened yatai, or food stalls, selling ramen. Some stalls added jiaozi, a staple of northern China that the Japanese called gyoza. The name was likely picked up in Manchukuo and derives from the Manchu word giyose.

  Between 1948 and 1951, bread consumption in Japan rose from 262,121 tons to 611,784 tons. Wheat also flowed into ramen, which many people ate at black market stalls to survive, because the government food distribution system ran about 20 days behind schedule. The Americans kept the wartime ban on outdoor food vending, yet flour was secretly diverted from commercial mills. Gangsters tied to the yakuza controlled nearly 90 percent of the stalls and extorted protection money from vendors. Thousands of ramen vendors were arrested during the occupation.

  By 1950, exchange controls on wheat flour were gone and vending restrictions had loosened. Private companies even rented out yatai starter kits of noodles, toppings, bowls and chopsticks. Ramen stalls offered a rare chance at small-scale postwar business. American campaigns also promoted the nutritional benefits of wheat and animal protein. Wheat noodles gained a place in a rice-based culture, and ramen became associated with urban life.

  In 1958, Momofuku Ando, the Taiwanese-Japanese founder and chairman of Nissin Foods, invented instant noodles. His Nissin Chikin Ramen went on sale that year, and the name ramen, written ラーメン, began spreading across the country. A Japanese poll later named instant noodles the greatest Japanese invention of the 20th century. Anyone could now approximate a bowl by adding boiling water. Today ramen is the most popular name, though chūka soba remains common in places such as Takayama, where it often signals a more classic style.

  From the 1980s, ramen became a Japanese cultural icon studied around the world, and local varieties reached the national market under their regional names. A ramen museum opened in Yokohama in 1994.

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• 6. Anatomy of a Bowl

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  A bowl of ramen has five components: tare, aroma oil, broth, noodles and toppings. Varieties are told apart mainly by their broth and tare.

  Ramen noodles, called chūkamen, descend from Chinese alkaline noodles known as jiǎnshuǐ miàn (鹼水麵). They rest on four basics: wheat flour, salt, water and kansui. Kansui is a mineral water containing sodium carbonate and usually potassium carbonate, and sometimes a little phosphoric acid. It gives the noodles a yellowish hue and a firm texture. Japan has no natural kansui, so before the Meiji Restoration in 1868 these noodles were hard to make. Its own origin is unclear, though it is said to come from Inner Mongolia.

  Machines from Japanese makers such as Yamato MFG have imitated hand-made noodle production since the mid-20th century. Many shops now prefer them to meet demand and improve quality. Noodles may be thick, thin or ribbon-like, straight or wrinkled. Ramen should not be confused with soba, udon or somen.

  Ramen soup usually starts with chicken or pork, and the base is often blended with dashi ingredients. These include katsuobushi, which is skipjack tuna flakes, niboshi, which is dried baby sardines, saba bushi mackerel flakes, shiitake and kombu kelp. Stocks fall into two camps. Chintan, from the Chinese qīngtāng, is a clear stock made by simmering and repeatedly skimming off foam and scum. It is the most common kind. Paitan, from the Chinese baitang, meaning white soup, is opaque and creamy, rivaling milk, melted butter or gravy depending on the shop. Cooks boil pork or chicken bones hard for hours so the bones emulsify into the broth. The best-known paitan is tonkotsu, meaning pork bone, a specialty of Kyushu, where it was born. Chicken-bone paitan is called tori paitan.

  Tare is the seasoning sauce that supplies salt and usually umami. Shio, meaning salt, is the oldest type. It combines cooking alcohols such as mirin and sake, umami sources such as kombu, niboshi and MSG, and salt. The soup stays light and clear, and the noodles are usually straight. Shōyu tare adds soy sauce to push salt and umami further. Putting soy seasoning in the bowl before the soup and noodles is a method used in noodle soups of Shanghai and Jiangsu, such as yangchunmian. Shōyu ramen usually has curly noodles.

  Miso ramen reached national prominence around 1965. This uniquely Japanese creation comes from Sapporo, Hokkaido. Its broth blends plenty of miso with oily chicken or fish broth, sometimes with tonkotsu or lard. The result is thick, nutty, slightly sweet and hearty. The noodles are typically thick, curly and slightly chewy.

  Chāshū, sliced roasted or red-cooked pork, is the classic topping. Others include negi, which is green onion, and menma, lacto-fermented bamboo shoots once called shinachiku. A seasoned boiled egg called ajitama is another. Nori, kikurage wood ear mushrooms, kakuni braised pork cubes, takana-zuke pickled mustard leaves, corn, butter and mayu black garlic oil also appear. Kamaboko, a formed fish paste, often comes as a pink and white spiral called narutomaki.

  Diners commonly add white pepper, black pepper, chili, sesame seeds or crushed garlic. Soup recipes and methods tend to be closely guarded secrets. Most tonkotsu shops offer kae-dama, a refill of noodles for a few hundred yen more that goes into the leftover soup.

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• 7. Regions and Shops

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  Gotouchi ramen, meaning regional ramen, has multiplied over recent decades, even though standard versions have been available nationwide since the Taishō period. Sapporo, capital of Hokkaido, is most associated with miso ramen, which suits Hokkaido's harsh, snowy winters. Typical toppings are sweetcorn, butter, bean sprouts, finely chopped pork and garlic, and sometimes local scallop, squid or crab. Hakodate is famous for salt ramen, Asahikawa in the north offers a soy sauce version, and many restaurants in Muroran serve curry ramen.

  In Kitakata, thick, flat, curly noodles sit in a pork-and-niboshi broth. The area inside the former city limits has the highest number of ramen establishments per capita. Locally, the word soba usually means ramen, and real soba is called nihon soba, meaning Japanese soba.

  Tokyo-style ramen pairs slightly thin, curly noodles with soy-flavored chicken broth. It usually carries a touch of dashi, because many old Tokyo ramen shops grew out of soba eateries. Ikebukuro, Ogikubo and Ebisu are three areas known for ramen. Yokohama's specialty is Iekei, with thick, straight noodles in a soy-flavored pork broth close to tonkotsu. Customers traditionally choose how soft the noodles are, how rich the broth is and how much oil they want. Wakayama ramen in the Kansai region uses a broth of soy sauce and pork bones.

  Hakata, a district of Fukuoka city in Kyushu, serves a milky tonkotsu broth with thin, straight, resilient noodles. Diners help themselves to crushed garlic, beni shōga pickled ginger, sesame seeds and spicy pickled mustard greens left on tables. The stalls of Hakata and Tenjin are well known, and chains specializing in Hakata ramen are found all over the country.

  Iwatsuki ward in Saitama City is known for tofu ramen. In Susaki City and other parts of western Kōchi Prefecture, nabeyaki ramen arrives boiling hot in an enamelled pot. It has a chicken broth, thin noodles, soy tare and a raw egg that poaches in the bowl. Nagoya's Taiwan ramen, despite its name, originated in Nagoya. It became famous in the 1980s during a fad for super hot food, with both a spicy broth and spicy minced meat.

  Many ramen shops have only a counter and a chef, and customers pay in advance at a ticket machine. Ramen also turns up in izakaya drinking establishments, lunch cafeterias, karaoke halls and amusement parks, and some restaurants in Osaka and Kyoto offer halal ramen made with chicken. The best bowls usually come from specialist ramen-ya, whose menus are short. Side dishes include fried rice, called chahan or yakimeshi, gyoza and alcohol. Decoration is often Chinese-inspired, and bowls may carry motifs such as dragons, phoenixes and the character for double happiness. Diners drink the soup with Chinese spoons, not the Japanese ladle called otamajakushi that is typical for soba and udon. From January 2020 to September 2021, many shops closed temporarily, and 34 chains had filed for bankruptcy by September 2020. Narrow shops with close seating made social distancing hard.

  Ramen shops often serve other Chinese-influenced noodle dishes. Tsukemen, or dipping noodles, comes with noodles and soup in separate bowls, hot or chilled. Aburasoba arrives without soup but with a small amount of oily soy-based sauce. Tantan-men is a Japanese version of Sichuanese dan dan noodles, in a reddish, spicy chili and sesame soup. Nagasaki champon has thicker noodles topped with stir-fried seafood in a starchy sauce. Soba and udon, the traditionally Japanese noodles, are almost never served in the same shops.

  Hiyashi-chūka is a chilled summer plate of ramen. It carries strips of omelet, ham, cucumber and tomato, with a vinegary soy dressing and karashi mustard. It was first produced at Ryutei, a Chinese restaurant in Sendai.

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• 8. Beyond Japan

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  In Korea, ramen goes by its original name, written 라멘, and also by ramyeon, a local variation made much spicier. Kimchi-flavored ramyeon is one version. Usual toppings are egg or vegetables such as carrots and scallions, while some restaurants add dumplings, tteok or cheese. Shin Ramyeon and Buldak Ramyeon are famous brands.

  In China, ramen is called rìshì lāmiàn, meaning Japanese-style lamian. Restaurant chains there serve it alongside Japanese dishes such as tempura and yakitori. In Japan, those dishes do not traditionally accompany ramen, which keeps company with gyoza, kara-age and other Japanese Chinese dishes. Elsewhere, Wagamama, a UK-based chain serving pan-Asian food, offers a ramen noodle soup. Jinya Ramen Bar serves tonkotsu ramen in the United States and Canada.

  Chef Antonio de Livier of Mexico City is credited with birriamen, a blend of birria and ramen. Its broth incorporates the consomé in which beef, lamb or goat was cooked. The variation later gained popularity in the Los Angeles area. In the English-speaking world, the global popularity of ramen has led some people to misuse the word for any noodle soup.

  Nissin Foods began exporting instant noodles from Japan in 1971, under the name Oodles of Noodles. One year later the product was rebranded Nissin Cup Noodles and packed in a foam container, which Japan calls Cup Ramen. International sales grew, and in North America the word ramen came to cover other instant noodles too. Some research has claimed that eating instant ramen twice a week or more raises the risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke, especially in women. Those claims have not been reproduced, and no study has singled out instant ramen as a cause. A 43 g serving does contain very high sodium, at least 1,760 mg in one packet, along with 385 kilocalories and 14.5 g of total fat.

  In Akihabara, Tokyo, vending machines dispense warm ramen in a steel can. A popular local ramen restaurant makes it in flavors such as tonkotsu and curry, with noodles, soup, menma and pork. A small folded plastic fork is included for a quick snack.

  Tampopo, a 1985 Japanese comedy billed as the first ramen western, follows a trucker who helps a widowed shop owner reach the top of her craft. The Ramen Girl, from 2008, features an American woman stranded in Tokyo after a breakup, who trains under a dictatorial Japanese master. In October 2010, an emoji called Steaming Bowl was approved for Unicode 6.0, showing noodles in steaming broth with chopsticks. It joined Emoji 1.0 in 2015.

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