Ramen's Origin Stories
Part 1 — 16.09.2020: The mythical one
Have you ever wondered how ramen, one of the most famous Japanese dishes, has come to be?
In the history of ramen legends intertwine with facts, as the dish was being constantly reinvented throughout the eras. We know about three possible origin stories.
The first of them is the oldest and feels like a legend as it takes place during the Japanese feudal epoch, the Edo period (1608–1868).
The first person to have ever supposedly eaten a dish similar to ramen is said to be Tokugawa Mitsukuni, landlord (daimiyō) of Mito (now in Ibaraki prefecture). Mitsukuni is one of the most widely known and celebrated people in the Japanese history.
He enjoyed travelling across the country in disguise, which made him famous to the point that storytellers started telling of his adventures and their stories made it to Meiji period without losing their popularity.
In one of them Mitsukuni’s appetite for exotic food is satisfied by his Chinese counsellor, a former refugee, who suggests the use of certain spices. The landlord was said to be an udon (Japanese wheat-flour noodle) enthusiast, so he listened to his counsellor’s advice and spiced his noodle-soup with Chinese ingredients, such as garlic, green onions and ginger.
This supposedly was the first meeting between the Japanese noodle-soup and Chinese cuisine, which was used two centuries later by the ramen industry, which took advantage of Mitsukuni’s popularity and made him the mythical founder of ramen.
Part 2 — 23.09.2020: The historical one
The second origin story is more historically-founded, as it takes place in the 19th century and was inspired by Japan’s westernisation efforts.
The shogunate (the old feudal system) could not withstand the external pressure of the West, craving to open new commercial routes, and the internal pressure of southern landlords who wanted to modernize the country.
These tensions led to the abolishment of said feudal system, which was replaced by an imperial government inspired by western political systems. Thus began the Meiji period (1868–1919), an era of ‘renovation’ and deep socio-cultural reforms.
One of the core changes implemented by the newly formed imperial government was the adoption of western-like dietary habits. The Meiji government needed to reshape its population’s bodies to make them stronger and more fitted for war and heavy tasks of the building industry. Therefore, meat consumption was vastly encouraged in order to maximize the daily intake of proteins and catch up on the West.
As for ramen per se, at first it was through the presence of Chinese traders in the newly opened ports of Japan (Yokohama, Kōbe, Nagasaki) that a popular Chinese dish, La-mien, was enjoyed as Nankin soba, in reference to the former name of Yokohama’s Chinatown :Nankin machi (meaning Nankin city). Nankin soba was a noodle-soup dish served with some sliced pork belly as a topping.
The first written mention of this new dish was found in an 1884 advertising print for a restaurant situated in the foreigner residential district of Hakodate.
Nankin soba became popular throughout the country as soon as foreigners were not restricted anymore to port towns thanks to a law promulgated in 1899. Chinese traders soon started to wander through the cities with their pushcarts where they could quickly prepare and sell their cuisine. One could argue that the traditional food stands selling ramen (yatai) were born prior to the final formation of the product they were selling.
Part 3 — 30.09.2020: The practical one
The third and final origin story of ramen is more related is more related to modernity and the urban lifestyle of the early 20th century.
It is said that the final refinement to the dish was made by Ozaki Kenichi, a white-collar worker who decided to quit his job to open a Chinese food restaurant: the Rai-Rai Ken. The restaurant was opened in 1910 in the Asakusa district in Tokyo and was the first Chinese food shop owned by a Japanese national. Ozaki thought of a way to satisfy the majority of his customers – wage workers – in the fastest and most efficient way. Thus Tokyo style ramen was born: A soy sauce flavoured noodle-soup with a variety of toppings mainly composed of pork belly slices (chashū); fish cakes (naruto); boiled spinach and roasted seaweed (nori). This dish was known as Shina soba and rapidly became popular because of its good taste and cheap price. The possibility to eat it really fast and go back to work without wasting too much time was another secret to its success. If we adjust the price at which Shina soba was sold to inflation and to modern prices, one bowl of it costed about 300 hundred yen (or roughly 2.50 euros). It did not take too long for this dish to become a hit – a cultural phenomenon, even. Shina soba came to be associated with modern city life and its seemingly infinite range of entertainment. Asakusa and its entertainment quarters were, without a doubt, the centre of the popular cult that was forming around Shina soba. Pushcarts waited for the visitor to come refill their stomachs after a long day spent in movie theatres and cafés. Shina soba rapidly became a must for everyone who wanted to fully enjoy the Asakusa experience.
To sum up, ramen is a Japanese dish with origins intimately related to Chinese immigrants, but refined in the times when Japan rushed its industrial development and discovered the thrill of modern city life.
If you want to learn further about Ramen, we highly recommend you to read 'The Untold History of Ramen' by George Solt
Written by Marty Borsotti