Who invented ramen?
Ramen came to Japan with Chinese cooks in the port of Yokohama, and Rairaiken in Tokyo, opened in 1910, is called the first ramen shop. Momofuku Ando invented instant ramen in 1958.
Ramen1 bowl of restaurant ramen650kcal
Noodles from China
Ramen is a Japanese icon, but it started as Chinese food. Britannica says Chinese traders arrived in the port of Yokohama in the early 1880s, built a Chinatown and opened restaurants. Noodles in broth were on the menu. Britannica links the name to la mian, Chinese for pulled noodles, while Wikipedia says the dish owes more to noodle soups from southern China. Early on the Japanese called it Nankin soba, Nanjing noodles, after the Chinese city.
The first ramen shop
In 1910 Kan'ichi Ozaki opened Rairaiken in Asakusa, Tokyo. Wikipedia says he hired twelve Cantonese cooks and adjusted the dish for Japanese customers. Time Out describes it as a soy sauce ramen, made with whatever was available. The dish was now called shina soba. Rairaiken closed in 1944, during the war, reopened in 1954, moved in 1965 and shut for good in 1976. In October 2020 the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum brought it back, working out the old recipe with the founder's descendants.
After the war
Ramen became everyday food after 1945. Rice was short, and Wikipedia notes that the United States flooded Japan with cheap wheat flour to deal with the food crisis. Street stalls sold noodles to people who needed something hot and cheap. Shina had become an insult, so the name changed to chuka soba, Chinese noodles. Nissin tells how Momofuku Ando saw a long line in the cold outside a black market ramen stall near Osaka Station.
Ando's shed
That line stayed with Ando. In a shed behind his house in Ikeda, near Osaka, he worked alone for a year, by Nissin's account sleeping about four hours a night. The breakthrough came in the kitchen. He watched his wife fry tempura and saw the batter give off its water in the hot oil. Frying cooked noodles the same way dried them and left them ready for hot water. Chicken Ramen went on sale on 25 August 1958. Cup Noodles followed on 18 September 1971.
What it is today
Today ramen has a museum in Yokohama, opened in 1994, and fierce regional pride. Sapporo is known for miso ramen, and Hakata in Fukuoka for tonkotsu, a cloudy pork bone broth. A typical bowl is wheat noodles in broth with sliced pork, maybe an egg, nori and spring onion. The broth carries a lot of the salt and the fat, so how much of it you drink makes a big difference. Instant ramen is still the cheap meal it was built to be.