Once you know it, you’ll love it even more! The History of Japanese Ramen

The first time a Japanese person ate Chinese noodles was around 1665 in the domain of Hitachi Mito (the northern and central areas of modern-day Ibaraki), and it was the 2nd daimyo of the area, Tokugawa Mitsukuni. There are records that the Chinese Confucius scholar Zhu Zhiyu, who was friends with Mitsukuni, brought back soup and noodles from his own country. (That dish was also recorded and was recreated as Mito-han ramen and it can be eaten in ramen restaurants throughout Mito-shi in Ibaraki.) However, those Chinese noodles did not become popular among the commoners.

Around 1872, a number of Chinese restaurants began operating in Nankinmachi, Yokohama (now Chinatown). In 1884, Hakodate's Yowaken placed an ad in the Hakodate newspaper about a dish called Nankin soba, and it's possible that this was the first time that Chinese noodles were advertised in Japan. However, it is uncertain whether this dish is connected to modern-day ramen. After that, street stalls advertising Nankin soba began popping up throughout Yokohama's Chinatown.
In 1910, the very first ramen specialty restaurant in Japan that wasn't a street stall opened in Asakusa, Tokyo, called Rairaiken (no longer in operation). After that, from the early 1920s to 1937, ramen restaurants began opening all around the country, and it's said that this is when many restaurants that created regional ramen specialties opened.

*Photo is of the current Yokohama Chinatown.

After WWII (1945), returnees from China began opening ramen stalls throughout the whole country. Ramen was cheap, delicious, and nutritious, so it became beloved for fulfilling the needs of a poor, needy era.
After that, ramen restaurants continued to spread throughout the country, and in 1947 the first cloudy tonkotsu (pork bone) soup was created in Fukuoka. In 1955, in Sapporo, the first owner of Aji no Sanpei created the first miso ramen. Around the same time, the owner of Tokyo's Taishoken developed tsukemen, a style of ramen where you dip the noodles into the soup.

*Photo is for illustration purposes.