The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze 9780520958371

Citation preview

The Untold History of Ramen

california studies in food and culture Darra Goldstein, Editor 1.

Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices, by Andrew Dalby

2.

Eating Right in the Renaissance, by Ken Albala

3.

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, by Marion Nestle

4.

Camembert: A National Myth, by Pierre Boisard

5.

Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety, by Marion Nestle

6.

Eating Apes, by Dale Peterson

7.

Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet, by Harvey Levenstein

8.

Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, by Harvey Levenstein

9.

Encarnación’s Kitchen: Mexican Recipes from Nineteenth-Century California: Selections from Encarnación Pinedo’s El cocinero español, by Encarnación Pinedo, edited and translated by Dan Strehl, with an essay by Victor Valle

10. Zinfandel: A History of a Grape and Its Wine, by Charles L. Sullivan, with a foreword by Paul Draper 11.

Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World, by Theodore C. Bestor

12. Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity, by R. Marie Griffith 13. Our Overweight Children: What Parents, Schools, and Communities Can Do to Control the Fatness Epidemic, by Sharron Dalton 14. The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book, by The Eminent Maestro Martino of Como, edited and with an introduction by Luigi Ballerini, translated and annotated by Jeremy Parzen, and with fifty modernized recipes by Stefania Barzini 15.

The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them, by Susan Allport

16. Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food, by Warren Belasco 17.

The Spice Route: A History, by John Keay

18.

Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World: A Concise History with 174 Recipes, by Lilia Zaouali, translated by M. B. DeBevoise, with a foreword by Charles Perry

19. Arranging the Meal: A History of Table Service in France, by Jean-Louis Flandrin, translated by Julie E. Johnson, with Sylvie and Antonio Roder; with a foreword to the English-language edition by Beatrice Fink 20. The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir, by Amy B. Trubek 21. Food: The History of Taste, edited by Paul Freedman 22. M. F. K. Fisher among the Pots and Pans: Celebrating Her Kitchens, by Joan Reardon, with a foreword by Amanda Hesser 23. Cooking: The Quintessential Art, by Hervé This and Pierre Gagnaire, translated by M. B. DeBevoise 24. Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century, by Laura Shapiro 25. Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making, by Jeri Quinzio 26. Encyclopedia of Pasta, by Oretta Zanini De Vita, translated by Maureen B. Fant, with a foreword by Carol Field 27. Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy, by John Varriano 28. Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, by Janet Poppendieck 29. Breaking Bread: Recipes and Stories from Immigrant Kitchens, by Lynne Christy Anderson, with a foreword by Corby Kummer 30. Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History, by William Woys Weaver 31. Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar: Stories of Food during Wartime by the World’s Leading Correspondents, edited by Matt McAllester 32. Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism, by Julie Guthman 33. Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics, by Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim 34. Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia, edited by Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas 35. The Cookbook Library: Four Centuries of the Cooks, Writers, and Recipes That Made the Modern Cookbook, by Anne Willan, with Mark Cherniavsky and Kyri Claflin 36. Coffee Life in Japan, by Merry White 37. American Tuna: The Rise and Fall of an Improbable Food, by Andrew F. Smith

38. A Feast of Weeds: A Literary Guide to Foraging and Cooking Wild Edible Plants, by Luigi Ballerini, translated by Gianpiero W. Doebler, with recipes by Ada De Santis and illustrations by Giuliano Della Casa 39. The Philosophy of Food, by David M. Kaplan 40. Beyond Hummus and Falafel: Social and Political Aspects of Palestinian Food in Israel, by Liora Gvion, translated by David Wesley and Elana Wesley 41. The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America, by Heather Paxson 42. Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds: Recipes and Lore from Rome and Lazio, by Oretta Zanini De Vita, translated by Maureen B. Fant, foreword by Ernesto Di Renzo 43. Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History, by Rachel Laudan 44. Inside the California Food Revolution: Thirty Years That Changed Our Culinary Consciousness, by Joyce Goldstein, with Dore Brown 45. Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey, by Gary Paul Nabhan 46. Balancing on a Planet: Critical Thinking and Effective Action for the Future of Food and Agriculture, by David A. Cleveland 47. The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair Trade Tea Plantations in India, by Sarah Besky 48. How the Other Half Ate: A History of Working-Class Meals at the Turn of the Century, by Katherine Leonard Turner 49. The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze, by George Solt 50. Word of Mouth: What We Talk About When We Talk About Food, by Priscilla Ferguson

The Untold History of Ramen how political crisis in japan spawned a global food craze

George Solt

university of california press Berkeley

Los Angeles

London

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2014 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Solt, George. The untold history of ramen : how political crisis in Japan spawned a global food craze / George Solt. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-27756-4 (cloth, alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-52028235-3 (pbk., alk. paper) 1. Ramen (Cooking—Japan—History. 2. Japan—Social life and customs—History. I. Title. TX809.N65S65 2014 641.82′20952—dc23 2013034120 Manufactured in the United States of America 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

15

14

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jelly beans. Ronald Reagan

For Beverly

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction. National Food

xiii xv 1

1.

Street Life: Chinese Noodles for Japanese Workers

15

2.

Not an Easy Road: Black Market Ramen and the U.S. Occupation

43

3.

Move On Up: Fuel for Rapid Growth

72

4.

Like It Is, Like It Was: Rebranding Ramen

122

5.

Flavor of the Month: American Ramen and “Cool Japan”

163

Conclusion. Time Will Tell: A Food of Opposition

179

Notes

189

Works Cited

207

Index

215

Illustrations

tables 1.

Wheat in Japan

2.

Average Annual Household Restaurant Expenditures, by Year in Yen

81 126

figures 1.

Statue of Ando- Momofuku, founder of the Nissin Foods Corporation

92

2.

Re-creation of the hut where Ando- Momofuku developed instant ramen

94

3.

Inside the hut where Ando- Momofuku developed instant ramen

104

4.

Pamphlet for Tokushima ramen and tulip tour

129

5.

Ramen-related books on display at the Nissin Foods Corporation’s Food Library

133

6.

The Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum

143

7.

Entry ticket to the Raumen Museum

145 xiii

xiv

illustrations

8.

Raumen Museum gift shop

146

9.

Oversize ramen pushcart vendor on display at the Raumen Museum

151

Map showing where the ingredients in Sano Minoru’s ramen are produced

158

11.

A common diner in a Tokyo residential neighborhood

182

12.

A traditional ramen shop

182

13.

A newer ramen shop

183

10.

Acknowledgments

The book began as a doctoral dissertation at the University of California San Diego, where the late Masao Miyoshi was kind enough to allow me to pursue this topic while working toward a degree in history. My advisors at UCSD, Stefan Tanaka and Takashi Fujitani, were supportive and generous with their time as well. Christena Turner and Daniel Widener helped me distill the project when it was still in a much earlier stage, and Robert Edelmann was a source of friendly advice at UCSD. Hifumi Ito, Masato Nishimura, Mayumi Mochizuki, Yutaka Kunitake, and Sanae Isozumi at UCSD were also very kind in helping me gather research materials and think through the topic at an early stage, and I thank Tomoyuki Sasaki, Ryan Moran, and Denis Gainty for their camaraderie. At Amherst College, Ray A. Moore and Kim Brandt introduced me to Japanese history, and I thank them for cultivating my interest in the subject. Wako Tawa helped me learn the language and culture of Japan, and I am grateful for her efforts in making it possible for me to study in Japan during my junior year. Gordon Levin, Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Umphrey were all inspirational teachers I was fortunate to have met at Amherst.

xv

xvi

acknowledgments

In Japan, the late Murai Yoshinori generously sponsored my studies at the Institute of Asian Cultures at Sophia University. I also thank Taguchi Tetsuya at Do-shisha University and Yoshimoto Mitsuhiro at Waseda University for their support and advice. The Japan Foundation was extremely generous in providing support for the research that preceded the writing of the book, and I thank the people there for allowing me to live in Tokyo and study for a year. At New York University, I thank my colleagues in the History Department, particularly Yanni Kotsonis, Joanna Waley-Cohen, and Mark Swislocki, who read earlier drafts of the manuscript and offered me valuable feedback on how to revise it. Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Guy Ortolano, David Ludden, Michael Gomez, Rebecca Karl, Andrew Sartori, Stefanos Geroulanos, Jane Burbank, Karl Appuhn, Maria Montoya, Anindya Ghose, and Masato Hasegawa have each contributed to this book in a variety of ways, and I thank them for their time. Zawadi Barskile, Chung-Hao Kuo, Lin-Yi Tseng, Naoko Koda, and Joel Matthews have also aided the project at various points, and I thank them as well. Eric Rath at the University of Kansas and Samuel Yamashita at Pomona College patiently read earlier drafts of the manuscript and offered me their insights, and I am most grateful to them for their advice. Fragments of my “Ramen and U.S. Occupation Policy” appeared in Japanese Foodways, Past and Present, edited by Eric Rath and Stephanie Assmann (University of Illinois Press 2010), and have been considerably altered for use in chapter 2. A part of chapter 3 appeared in “Shifting Perceptions of Instant Ramen in Japan during the High-Growth Era,” International Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies 8, no. 22 (2012). Kate Marshall at University of California Press welcomed the book from the beginning, and I am deeply indebted to her for working closely with me in editing the manuscript. My friends Prentiss Austin, Aaron Bishop, Jesse Hofrichter, David Yoo, and Jesse Halpern provided suggestions and thoughts on the book at various points, and I thank them for keeping me grounded with their camaraderie. My family in California, Ying Liang, Hsiu-lien Chang, Andrew Solt, Joshua Solt, Dakota Solt, and Claudia Falkenburg, were supportive throughout the process, and I am grateful for their role in keeping me focused.

acknowledgments

xvii

I thank my parents, John and Sachiko Solt, and my brother, Ken Solt, for backing me up in my decisions at all times. Lastly, I would like to thank my wife, Beverly, and our three children, Marcus, Malcolm, and Maria, for their love and patience. All errors of fact and judgment are solely my responsibility.

Introduction national food

O saki Hiroshi, fifty-four, eats approximately eight hundred bowls of ramen per year and writes about ramen for a living. In his book The Secret History of Ramen in Japan (Nihon ra- men hishi), he claims to have ingested more than twenty thousand bowls over his lifetime at 9,500 shops spread across the archipelago of Japan.1 As the founder of the Ramen Bank, a website offering information on 35,330 ramen shops, he is part of a generation of ramen devotees who have worked to elevate the food from one associated with manual labor and night entertainment to an iconic component of Japanese national food culture. Osaki and others have transformed ramen in Japan into much more than simply a food. It has become an important source of tourist revenue, an idealized refuge for laid-off workers, and a focal point for the redefinition of the nation and its history. There is something excessive about ramen. The salt, the lard, the lines of people waiting, the guidebooks, the television shows, the museum, and the taste of an unforgettable bowl—there is nothing else quite like it in Japan. The meaning that young people attach to the consumption of this noodle soup has been a seemingly inexhaustible resource for reality television producers, graphic novelists, and food bloggers. Every type of food has its fans, 1

2

introduction

but the exaltation of ramen in Japanese popular culture in the past three decades is difficult to overstate. Ramen is now referred to as a national food (kokuminshoku) in Japan, and it is rapidly gaining popularity among foodies abroad. Sushi, tempura, and teriyaki may be the foods most closely associated with the nation outside Japan, but within the country, ramen and other so-called “B-class gourmet” foods such as Japanese-style curry rice, rice bowls (donburi), and premade lunchboxes (bento-) take center stage as the time-tested comfort foods that have contributed to the postwar healing of the nation. It was not until the 1990s, however, that ramen became recognized as a national food of Japan. How did this happen, and, more importantly, why? What is the relationship between the national media’s spotlighting of the iconic food of the postwar Japanese workingman as a component of national identity and the relative lack of stable employment opportunities, particularly for young people, in the last twenty years? Ramen means different things even to the same people. It can be a marker of cultural loss (wheat over rice) and preservation (noodles over bread), labor (lunch for construction workers) and leisure (late-night carbohydrates after drinking), derivativeness (Chinese influence) and inventiveness (Japanese curry ramen), speed (instant noodles) and slowness (artisanal soup). In this way, symbolic connections between food, national identity, and labor are sometimes contradictory and difficult to untangle. Yet any attempt to discuss culture in modern Japan, and the postwar period in particular, is incomplete without an understanding of food; any analysis of food in modern Japan is wanting without an understanding of the pivotal role ramen has played in defining the working class, and more recently the nation itself. This book therefore examines the history of ramen with a specific focus on the logic behind the dish’s availability, popularity, and function in reproducing labor power and, subsequently, national identity. Ramen has had many incarnations in Japan, and each wave of popularity is attributable to a contingent set of political and economic circumstances that underlie the dish’s symbolic and material resurgence. The shifting composition and function of ramen in terms of ingredients, pricing, and production processes are deeply connected to both shifts in food practices on a mass scale in Japan accompanying the transition to a mod-

introduction

3

ern industrial economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the changing symbolic associations of new foods with different nations, regions, classes, and gender roles. By highlighting the materiality of historical change, the book posits that the story of ramen is the clearest manifestation of the changing role of food in the reproduction of labor power and the redefinition of the nation in Japan.

wh at is ra men ? Although there are as many types of ramen as there are ramen chefs, the most basic components of a bowl are the noodles, the stock, and the flavoring sauce. The noodles (men) are made from wheat flour, salt, water, and usually baking soda–infused water (kansui), which endows the noodles with a yellowish color, slippery texture, and distinct odor and also enhances their chewiness. In general, the farther south and west one travels in Japan, the less kansui one finds in the ramen. Noodles with a high percentage of kansui (in which the baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, comprises 30 to 40 percent of the water in the recipe) tend to be served most frequently in the north and east of Japan. Hakata-style ramen (named after the city of - shu - ) and Okinawa soba (served primarily in the prefecture of Hakata in Kyu Okinawa) contain noodles using no kansui, whereas Tokyo- and Sapporostyle ramen use noodles with a significant amount of kansui. The soup broth (shiru) is made by simmering some combination of meat, seafood, and vegetables. The meat usually consists of chicken or pork (particularly the feet, back, ribs, knuckles, and occasionally the head of the pig). While traditional Tokyo ramen shops use only chicken and no - shu - ramen shops are known for their heavy pork in making the broth, Kyu use of pork and pork bones (tonkotsu).2 The seafood component consists of clams, dried fish (usually sardines or bonito), and dried kelp (konbu). The standard vegetables used in the broth are onions, scallions, ginger, and garlic, although more recently shops such as Ajito, near Oimachi station in Tokyo, have begun using kabocha squash, potatoes, and even apples in what is commonly referred to as vegetable potage (bejipota) ramen. Finally, the concentrated seasoning sauce (tare), usually available in three flavors—salt (shio), fermented soybean paste (miso), or soy sauce

4

introduction

(sho-yu)—provides the flavor for the soup base. Although there are exceptional cases of shops that abstain from any use of tare, such as Ramen Zero Plus in the fashionable Omotesando- district of Tokyo, nearly every ramen chef makes his own tare and keeps the recipe, as well the techniques for creating his soup broth, a closely guarded secret. The independent ramen shop has thrived in an era when most other small food businesses have struggled. There are more than eighty thousand restaurants serving ramen in Japan, about thirty-five thousand of which are ramen specialty shops. Each region of the country is home to a different style of soup, noodle, and toppings, and there is never a shortage of new combinations of ingredients being tested and touted at new shops. There are ramen shop associations that serve as lobbying groups for the industry, and millions of ramen shop employees whose livelihoods depend on the regular visits to the ramen shop by local residents. The average hourly wage for a new hire is usually 800 yen to 1,000 yen ($9.40 to $11.75), and the average cost of a bowl in Tokyo is now 590 yen ($6.50), up from 450 yen in 1990.3

the history of ramen In the present, where connections to history have been severed, ramen is a tool to rearticulate the charm of Japan’s traditions. Hayamizu Kenro-

Ramen, available throughout Japan in different regional varieties, is not cheap, but it is usually affordable. Its preeminent role in the postwar Japanese diet can perhaps be understood as similar to the role of pizza in American food practices.4 As are many of Japan’s most popular foods, ramen originated in a foreign country before evolving into a national favorite. (Kasutera, or castella pound cake, is from Portugal, kare’e raisu, or curry with rice, is from British India, and spaghetti with meat sauce is from Italy via the United States.) Although ramen’s origins can be traced to China, the noodle soup is unparalleled in its ubiquity, popularity, and national symbolism as a Japanese dish, both to Japanese and, increasingly, to non-Japanese.

introduction

5

Ramen began life in Japan as a cheap, scrumptious, and filling food from China. Although a precise point of origin is elusive, the introduction of ramen to Japan can be traced to the 1880s, when Chinese migrants from the Guangdong region began working as cooks at restaurants catering to foreigners in the bustling port city of Yokohama. In this early phase, Chinese cooks served their noodle soup and other dishes primarily to other workers and students from their own country. Beginning in the 1910s, however, Japanese restaurateurs employing Chinese chefs transformed the dish into a hearty lunch food containing ingredients previously unused in the Chinese version of the noodle soup, such as roasted pork, soy sauce, and pickled bamboo shoots. Japanese day laborers, students, night workers, and soldiers began consuming the dish with regularity in this period. Ramen is complicated, and its history is messy. Although the dish is most commonly referred to as ra-men in Japan, it is also called Chu- ka soba and Shina soba, which are older terms dating back to the 1940s and the 1910s, respectively. Shina, a term associated with the language of Japan’s age of imperialism, is difficult to untangle from the history of colonial subjugation and territorial acquisition by Japan in Asia during its five decades as a modern imperialist power (1895–1945). The term Shina fell into disuse by the Japanese government and mainstream press following protests by the Chinese government after Japan’s defeat by the United States and its allies in World War II, but it is still favored by Japanese national- goku ists as a less Sinocentric term for China than the standard Chu (Middle Country). Although Chu ka soba, which became the dominant term for the food after the war, continues to be used interchangeably with ra-men in Japan without provoking the slightest ire, the term Shina soba remains a loaded term that carries the weight of historical memory and attendant political controversy. Therefore, even in the name of the dish, one finds many of the elisions, revisions, and controversies that animate modern Japanese history. Ramen evolved differently in each area of Japan. In many of the cities that grew rapidly in the 1920s and 1930s, it became one of the principal foods marking the arrival of a modern urban lifestyle. In Tokyo as well as in regional hubs such as Sapporo in the far north and Hakata in the southwest, the spread of Chinese noodle soup, a cheap, fast, and filling meal

6

introduction

packed with salt, animal fat, and factory-processed wheat flour, fit neatly within the structure of modern industrial life, in which new forms of work, ingestion, and amusement were replacing the old. As Japan became industrialized and more urbanized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chinese restaurants and movie theaters gradually replaced the buckwheat noodle (soba) stands and comical storytelling (rakugo) performances that had previously dominated the cityscape. In this manner, ramen production and consumption became an integral component of modern, urban, working-class life in Japan at a time of rapid social, political, and economic change. The popularity of ramen grew as Japan’s urban working population expanded in the 1920s and 1930s. However, shortages caused by war, first with China in 1937 and then with the United States in 1941, made it increasingly difficult for people in Japan to enjoy ramen by the 1940s. When the war ended in August 1945, not only was ramen nearly impossible to find, but all food had become scarce as a result of bombings, blockades, and bad harvests. Although starvation and scarcity characterized the food situation in the first two years following defeat in World War II, after 1947, the U.S. military’s emergency wheat imports to Japan resuscitated ramen production and consumption on a large scale. The import of wheat from the United States (as well as Canada and Australia) continued well after the formal occupation ended in 1952, fundamentally altering the food habits of people in Japan and other U.S.-Allied countries in East Asia during the Cold War. In the 1960s, ramen culture spread as employment in construction and heavy industry expanded, and in the 1980s ramen gained national attention in the popular media as a favorite among trendsetting young people. Locally famous shops transformed themselves into domestic tourist attractions, and countless television specials, magazines, and guidebooks competed to bring the latest best kept secret to a public eager to read, think, and talk about the merits and demerits of the noodle soup. The opening of a theme park dedicated to ramen in 1994 and the additional publicity it generated for the dish cemented its place as an iconic component of Japan’s national cuisine. Its subsequent export across the globe beginning in the 1990s solidified its Japanese symbolism abroad, while within Japan the contemporary trend has been to spotlight the regional

introduction

7

variations in ingredients, techniques, and terminology, as well as the eccentricities of celebrity chefs with their own reality television shows. In the process, ramen has evolved into an emblem of Japanese daily life, and consequently of the nation itself. Ramen is one of the most minutely documented foods in Japan. Although the history of ramen can be approached from a myriad of perspectives using an array of sources, the sheer variety and volume of literature related to ramen is so vast as to make it difficult to know where to begin. In addition to countless television documentaries on ramen, there are roughly eight categories of ramen texts that can readily be identified. The first and most common is the ramen guidebook, which introduces famous local or regional ramen shops and describes their owners or operators, the specialty ramen they serve, and often the shops’ history. The second is the manual for would-be entrepreneurs, with instructions on how to establish a successful ramen shop. The third category is the graphic novel or fictional piece that uses the intricacies of ramen production and consumption as the background for a larger dramatic tale. The fourth is the autobiography of the celebrity ramen chef, which documents the life philosophy of the self-made man and his poetic musings on the importance of maintaining a devotion to craft above all else. The fifth category is the history of the dish, which involves an examination of the changes in ingredients and cooking methods, variations according to region or locale, consumer fads with respect to flavorings, similarities to or differences from other noodle soups from China and other Asian countries, and the idiosyncrasies of a few famous chefs and shops. Sixth is the history of ramen as an indicator of cultural change, which studies the dish’s representation in popular culture and traces its shifts over time as a way to mark ramen’s relationship to larger events and trends in national history (ramen as Forrest Gump). The seventh category consists of works that use ramen as a tool for commentary on social issues such as the gender divide, Americanization, capital concentration, food security, or the influence of mass media (they might, for example, compare Japan’s ramen to America’s McDonald’s). The eighth and final category is the “secret” history of ramen, which aims to explain the popularity of ramen by analyzing issues such as the global trade in wheat and the Cold War, central government subsidies for domestic tourism in the 1970s, media trends with respect to

8

introduction

food in the 1980s and their implications for politics, and the development of food nationalism based on cultural exportability in the 1990s and 2000s. (A closely related yet separate category consists of the countless books on instant ramen, which can be further subdivided into those listing creative recipes and those recounting the invention of the food by celebrated founder of Nissin Foods, Ando- Momofuku.) My attempt to write a history of ramen is also an attempt to understand the progression of the food’s cultural and political significance over time, and to account for the evolving meanings attributed to its production and consumption. The eight categories of texts, listed here in increasing order of importance to my study, form the core of the documentary evidence that makes the writing of the history of this dish not only possible but also vital for understanding how national identity itself has been reinterpreted and articulated in Japan increasingly through food. In this sense, my study of ramen is based more on a close reading of documents and images concerning the noodle soup’s relationship to changing notions of labor and nation in Japan than on a deep engagement with eating the food itself. I am not an aficionado of ramen, and, given the choice, I would usually prefer a good bowl of soba (buckwheat noodles). Yet the phenomenon that ramen has become in Japan and across the globe is a matter that requires serious analysis, and it deserves to be examined at a level beyond that of simple food appreciation or consumer fetishism, but through the lens of cultural history. Ramen production is now high art, and ramen consumption reaffirms one’s sense of community, defined regionally, nationally, culturally, or otherwise. Yet this was not the case thirty years ago, and the process by which this state of affairs came into being is the essential subject of the story. The Japanese workingman’s favorite food has become celebrated as a part of the national tradition, while the type of work that generated the original demand for the dish has been automated or shipped overseas. I argue that there is a connection between these two developments, and herein lies the importance of ramen beyond its sheer scrumptiousness. Recently ramen shops have been proliferating across the globe as symbols of Japanese “soft power” in a globalized era, a benign cultural ambassador of sorts. Residents of Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles can boast of the dozens of successful ramen shops in their own cities, and

introduction

9

there are now several ramen shops in Dubai, Mumbai, Shanghai, and even Ojai, California. As ramen has become more easily available throughout Asia, Europe, and North America, it has slowly been making inroads into South America (Brazil) and Africa (South Africa) as well. In the process, it has gained a reputation as a relatively affordable, youthful, and fashionable representation of Japanese food culture, unlike sushi, which has very different symbolic baggage. Ramen is now an important component of both official and unofficial attempts at remaking “Japan” as a consumer brand for foreigners. In this sense, the rebranding of ramen in Japan in the 1990s was an important prelude to its global proliferation in the 2000s. As a result, city dwellers from industrialized centers the world over are now rapidly becoming familiar with, if not fanatical about, this celebrated blue-collar food of modern Japan. And when ramen is sold abroad, it is invariably represented as a Japanese dish, despite its older associations with China. The book is divided into two parts. The first three chapters relate the history of ramen, from its introduction to Japan from China in the late nineteenth century until the 1960s, when it became the staple of the Japanese construction worker. The last two chapters trace the transformation of ramen in the 1980s and 1990s into a celebrated national food of Japan that evokes egalitarian nostalgia with an emphasis on craft over profit, as well as its internationalization as an iconic component of benign Japanese cultural influence abroad in the 2000s and beyond.

overview Chapter 1 considers the emergence of new foods against the backdrop of European imperialism, Chinese migration, and the industrialization of the Japanese economy. The birth of Japanese ramen was made possible by a combination of expansion in wheat and meat production following the influx of European cuisine in the 1870s and the introduction of food practices of migrant workers from China who settled in the Yokohama district for foreign residents in the 1880s. As industrial economic activity surged in the 1910s and 1920s, Japanese and Chinese cooks popularized the dish as Shina soba, an ostensibly Chinese dish that was served in Chinese

10

introduction

restaurants, Western-style eateries, and small pushcart stands, where it took its place as one of the first Chinese foods integrated into the menu of mass society in pre–World War II Japan along with pork dumplings (shu- mai), pork fried rice (cha-han), and pork buns (nikuman). The popularity of Chinese noodle soup in this period was part of a broader rise of new foods and forms of entertainment for the city dwellers of Tokyo, a change that was driven by the rise of a mass consumer culture. In the early 1940s, however, ramen disappeared from Japanese cities due to famine and war. Chapter 2 analyzes the food crisis of this period, when a lack of access to food from Japan’s colonies, the diversion of manpower and resources away from food production, American bombings, and bad harvests led to widespread scarcity, malnutrition, and death. After the war, when the U.S. military formally occupied Japan (1945–52), ramen and other foods made from American wheat served an important function in providing emergency sustenance. The consumption of noodle soup made from U.S. wheat was a response to the scarcity of rice and helped to alleviate the severe food shortages. The dependence on U.S.imported wheat flour as a substitute for rice during and after the American occupation produced a resurgence in the availability of Shina soba as well as bread and biscuits, which drastically altered the eating habits of those who came of age after the war from those who did before. Noodle makers also replaced the term Shina soba with the terms Chu- ka soba and ra-men, typifying the shift away from words tainted with the memory of imperialism and war. Wheat sent from the United States to Japan was an important tool for the containment of Communism as well. U.S. leaders shipped the wheat as part of an effort to minimize potentially violent uprisings caused by the widespread frustration of city residents about the poor management of food distribution by the authorities. In this way ramen became a tool to counter political criticism directed at the Japanese government and the occupation authorities (expressed most bluntly by local Communist leaders) and to promote a positive image of the United States as a generous benefactor in a time of starvation. Chapter 3 considers ramen in the era of high-speed reindustrialization (1955–73), placing it in the context of evolving notions of nutrition and U.S.-Japan relations. The recomposition of Chinese noodle soup in the

introduction

11

postwar period offers insight into the deep connections between the largescale importation of U.S. wheat, high-speed reindustrialization, continuities in bureaucratic, corporate, and political leadership, and trends in food consumption. Wheat flour in the form of ramen as well as bread became a substitute staple for rice in this period, as well as a central factor in the increasing homogenization of dietary practices. In the process, ramen began to appear with greater frequency in works of popular culture as an embodiment of the quintessential energy-rich lunch of the Japanese workingman, and going out for ramen became a fad among young people. The successful launching and marketing of instant ramen by Nissin Foods in 1958 was another defining moment in the food’s development. The increasing use of instant foods and its impact on changing dietary lifestyles is therefore also explored in this chapter. I focus specifically on the case of the Nissin Foods, the world’s largest manufacturer of instant ramen, examining its labor practices, hiring policies, patent disputes, and advertising campaigns. The rise of instant foods in the 1960s brings together the issues of changes in family structure, the idealization of household electronics in the mass media, and the heightened value placed upon speed in the preparation and consumption of food. Instant ramen producers were particularly well positioned to take advantage of these changes, as they processed cheap and abundant wheat from the United States into instant foods with high markups that were sold through newly established supermarkets to households using novel kitchen technologies such as water boilers. Chapter 4 examines the food’s transformation into a fashionable object of youth consumerism in the mass media during the 1980s and its subsequent canonization as a national food in the 1990s. Its appeal among young people, its regional variation, and its roots in China and Japan as opposed to Europe or the United States allowed ramen to gain traction as an archetype of native inventiveness, entrepreneurship, and cultural resilience in the age of McDonald’s and Denny’s. At the same time, however, two of the main establishments at which ramen had traditionally been served—the local Chinese food restaurant and the pushcart vendor—were disappearing or being transformed into new business models to fit changing patterns of work and consumption.

12

introduction

Beginning in the 1980s, ramen and its small-scale producers became associated in the mass media with a stubborn dedication to craft above profit as well as a fading work ethic characteristic of the older generation in Japan. By the mid-1990s, the dish was widely celebrated. Nothing points to this more than the completion of the $34 million Raumen Museum in Shin-Yokohama in 1994.5 The shift in ramen’s symbolism from a food associated with manual workers to a beloved national dish occurred as the type of labor-intensive work associated with its consumption generally declined. In the 1980s and 90s, ramen became rich with historical meaning in Japan, considered representative of the bygone era of low unemployment, rising standards of living for all, and a widely shared sense of cultural uniformity. The reinterpretation and rebranding of ramen in this era provides another entry point to examine not only shifts in food habits, but also their connection to changing formulations of national identity in the era of globalization, the growing scarcity of opportunities for stable employment for young people, and the marketing of nostalgia for the late 1950s in the recessionary 1990s. In the fifth and final chapter, I explore the internationalization of ramen, with particular emphasis on the dish’s popularity in the last decade among the youth of New York and California. The meaning of these developments for Japan’s image abroad and the country’s foreign relations are the central issues studied in this section. I conclude the book by arguing that one can observe the redefinition of labor and nation in Japan by paying close attention to the evolving culture of ramen. The shifting connections between food, labor, and nation as seen through the history of ramen can inform us of the parallels or divergences in the politics of food practices across advanced industrialized capitalist countries. For example, to what extent does the celebration of ramen as Japan’s national food point to a growing global trend toward conceiving of working-class food in national terms? Moreover, is the celebration of working-class food as national food in Japan and elsewhere a telling example of how socioeconomic class conflict has been ameliorated at the national level in the global era? When history is considered through the lens of food and centered on the lives of ordinary people rather than the treaties of state actors and the pronouncements of intellectuals, the relative significance of certain events

introduction

13

and overall periodization can be recalibrated toward one focused as much on common practices as on government policies. To this end, the study of food as a central node of historical inquiry is perhaps a more direct approach toward rendering change and continuity as experienced at the level of the everyday. The history of ramen in Japan is therefore the lens through which this study engages the subjects of food and labor and their connection to changing formations of national identity.

1

Street Life chinese noodles for japanese workers

Was ramen first introduced to Japan in 1665, 1884, or 1910? Is its precursor a dish known as u- shin udon, Nankin soba, or Shina soba? Depending on the answer, one arrives at a different dish with its own origin story and a distinct historical trajectory producing a particular view of Japan. None of the dish’s origin stories are mutually exclusive, but each is a different way of linking the past to the present. It is clear, then, that each story represents a contrast in emphasis rather than a set of fundamentally irreconcilable facts. This is worth noting because, like all questions about origins, the debate surrounding the roots of ramen reveals the difficulties arising from the open-ended search for the true beginning of any food practice. The three distinct origin stories concerning the birth of ramen in Japan that have been established by various authors and institutions are as follows. The first and most imaginative originally appeared in food historian Kosuge Keiko’s pioneering study of the history of ramen published in 1987. This version dates the introduction of the dish to the 1660s and designates Tokugawa Mitsukuni (a.k.a. Mito Ko-mon, 1628–1701), a legendary feudal lord (daimyo-) and second in line to the ruling sho-gun, as the first person to eat ramen in Japan. 15

16

street life

Tokugawa Mitsukuni is a popular historical figure in Japan due to a long-running period drama on television based on his exploits as a disguised defender of the weak who reveals his identity to wrongdoers near the end of each episode with a flash of his inro- (small decorative lacquer case) imprinted with his clan’s crest, which serves to identify him as the daimyo- of the province. The line “Do you not behold this clan crest?” (Kono mondokoro ga me ni hairanuka?) is repeated by Mitsukuni’s guard, Kaku-san, at the culmination of each episode to restore order and hierarchy, leading to instant begging for forgiveness on the part of the unruly malefactors. A record of Mitsukuni’s activities surviving from July 1665 indicates that a Chinese refugee of the Ming government living in Mito at the time,1 Zhu Shun Shui, provided advice to Mitsukuni on how to prepare a Chinese-style noodle soup that may have been similar to today’s ramen.2 Although Mitsukuni is best known in Japanese history for launching the monumental project of recording Dai Nihon Shi, or the Great History of Japan, which took nearly 250 years and ten generations to complete, he was also an admirer of neo-Confucian philosophy and looked to China for guidance on how to manage state affairs. He therefore sought out the advice and company of Zhu, who had arrived in Japan in 1665 as a refugee from Manchu rule after having served as a high-ranking official in China under Ming rule. Zhu became one of Mitsukuni’s most important advisors and worked in his administration for the next seventeen years, until his death in 1682. Zhu’s prominence within the daimyo-’s coterie of consultants afforded him a comfortable lifestyle and a distinguished gravestone in the cemetery of the Tokugawa clan’s Mito branch, which remains to this day.3 During his service to the daimyo-, Zhu learned that Mitsukuni was an avid consumer of udon, a noodle soup made of wheat-flour noodles and dashi broth (made from dried bonito and kelp) that is still popular in Japan. In the seventeenth century Japanese usually ate udon with pickled apricot (umeboshi) and sesame as toppings. Seeing this, Zhu recommended five ingredients commonly used in Chinese noodle soup that the daimyo- of Mito could add to improve the taste of the dish. The five ingredients (u-shin) he purportedly suggested were Allium chinense roots (rakkyo-), garlic, garlic chives (nira), green onions, and ginger.4 From these facts, food historian

street life

17

Kosuge surmised that Tokugawa Mitsukuni was the founding father of the consumption of Chinese-style noodle soup in Japan. The Raumen Museum of Shin-Yokohama later popularized this story, and, as a result, in 2003 Japan’s Nissin Foods Corporation, the world’s largest manufacturer of instant noodles, for a limited time released the U-shin brand of instant ramen packaged with the Tokugawa clan crest and adorned with the story of Mitsukuni and Zhu. Although it is difficult to determine the extent to which the dish consumed by the famous lord of Mito corresponds to what is known as ramen today, it is significant that this widely circulated narrative of the arrival of Chinese-style noodle soup in Japan sets the origin story in the early modern period, an era marked by Japanese learning from China. Although the story serves as a fantastic theme park version of the dish’s origin, replete with larger-than-life characters and imagined interactions based on liberal readings of historical records, it is significant in its accentuation of Japanese admiration of pre-Qing China. The second origin story centers on ramen’s arrival in the nineteenth century as a result of changes in Japanese food practices inspired by American imperialism. In 1853 the United States sent a squadron of gunboats led by Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan in order to obtain a treaty that would 1) open Japan’s ports to trade with the United States,5 2) guarantee assistance for shipwrecked American sailors, and 3) establish consular offices for mutual diplomatic representation. After obtaining these terms in 1854 (officially achieved through the Convention of Peace and Amity), the United States demanded another treaty that forced Japan to cede territorial concessions, jurisdiction over the adjudication of foreigners accused of committing crimes, and control over its tariffs on imports. The United States obtained the second treaty in 1858 in the form of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Amity and Commerce. The sho-gun’s inability to resist the foreign encroachment eroded his authority, spawning a political crisis that eventually culminated in the toppling of the two-and-a-half-century-old Tokugawa dynasty in 1868. The adoption of European-style industrial, military, and political structures (including aggressive imperialism) soon became the goal of Japanese leaders, and an important part of this process entailed the incorporation of Western foodstuffs into Japanese diets. In this way the availability

18

street life

of the ingredients of ramen on a wide scale (particularly pork and wheat) was made possible only by the chain of events set off by the Perry Expedition of 1853. Along with the Europeans, there was an influx of Chinese traders (referred to as kakyo- in Japan) who settled into the treaty ports of Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, and Hakodate at this time. In the earliest stage of migration, many of the Chinese residents worked for the Europeans and Americans in occupations such as construction, tailoring, printing, and shipping. After the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Commerce of 1871 provided legal recognition and consular protection to the Chinese residents of the open port cities, however, the Chinese increasingly carried out their own trade with Japanese business owners. One of the skills that the Chinese tradesmen brought with them was cooking. A noodle soup known as la--mien (hand-stretched noodles served in a lightly salted chicken soup with scallions) soon became a staple of the Chinese restaurants in Japan. The Japanese referred to the la--mien made by the Chinese tradesmen as Nankin soba (Nanjing noodles) after the Chinese capital city of Nanjing,6 and they described it as a simple dish served at the end of a meal rather than a meal by itself. The dish, which did not contain toppings or sauces at this point, was akin to a plain shio (salt-flavored) ramen. Excluding the select group of Japanese familiar with life in the foreign residential districts of Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, and Hakodate, however, few in Japan had the opportunity to taste the food. In these early years the consumers of Nankin soba were almost exclusively Chinese workers, traders, and students living in the districts for foreign residents in Japan’s treaty ports.7 The first known mention of Nankin soba in Japanese print appeared in 1884 in an advertisement for a restaurant named Yo-waken in Hakodate’s foreign residential district.8 Hakodate, located on the southern tip of Hokkaido, was, along with Western powers, one of the first two cities to open to trade with the United States in 1854 after the Treaty of Kanagawa took effect. Hakodate played a particularly important role as a site of contact between Japanese and Europeans (mainly Russians). Yo-waken was a “Western-style” restaurant (yo-shokuya) that served domesticated European, American, and Chinese cuisine, including Nankin soba, to Japanese and foreign customers. The chicken noodle

street life

19

soup produced by Chinese chefs working at Western-style restaurants, therefore, could logically be considered a precursor to what would later become known as ramen. Unlike the narrative concerning the lord of Mito’s taking to u- shin udon in the 1660s, however, the story of Nankin soba’s introduction into the foreign residential districts of 1880s Japan contains no legendary characters and is based on the demand for new types of labor and food generated by expanding Euro-American influence in East Asia rather than an appreciation of China by Japanese elites. Ultimately, Nankin soba was a simple chicken noodle soup that did not contain many of the ingredients associated with ramen today, so it may be argued that there was still a significant gap between this food and what would later be known as ramen. Nankin soba’s move into parts of Japan other than the treaty ports can be dated to 1899, when the Japanese government eased the law requiring foreigners to reside in designated settlements. This change made it possible for resident aliens to live and do business throughout the country and brought about the first Chinese restaurants catering primarily to Japanese customers outside the Chinatown districts. The origins of the Yokohama version of the dish that later inspired a wave of pushcart vendors in Tokyo can be dated to this change as well. Renowned author Nagai - is known to have been one of the first Japanese to enjoy Nankin soba Kafu at the pushcarts operated by Chinese migrants at this early stage in the food’s history.9 The last of the three origin stories is centered on the establishment of RaiRai Ken, the first Chinese food restaurant owned and operated by a Japanese national. In 1910, Ozaki Kenichi opened Rai-Rai Ken in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, an area known for its teeming population of wage workers. Unlike the plain noodle soups with no toppings other than scallions that had been served in Nankinmachi during the 1880s and 1890s, Rai-Rai Ken incorporated a soy sauce–based seasoning sauce and served its noodle soup, referred to as Shina soba, with cha-shu- (roasted pork), naruto (fish-meal cake), boiled spinach, and nori (seaweed)—ingredients that together would form the model for authentic Tokyo-style ramen. Rai-Rai Ken quickly gained attention for its cheap, tasty, and quickly prepared Shina soba as well as other Chinese foods adapted to Japanese tastes, such as shu-mai (pork dumplings) and wantan (wonton soup).10

20

street life

The founder of Rai-Rai Ken, Ozaki Kenichi, was a customs agent working in Yokohama who resigned from his relatively prestigious government job to open a Chinese restaurant. A customs agent leaving an official occupation of repute (underscored by the saber that accompanied the uniform) to work as a restaurateur in the shitamachi (downtown, or working-class district) of Tokyo was indeed rare, but Ozaki pioneered a path that many other white-collar salaried workers would follow in the postwar period. These men, known as datsu-sara, or salaryman escapees, were those who turned away from stable office jobs to begin microscale businesses, essentially to flee the rigidity and competitiveness of white-collar work at large institutions. In his days as a customs official, Ozaki frequented the Chinese restaurants of Nankinmachi, which were only a stone’s throw from his workplace. In launching Rai-Rai Ken, Ozaki hired Chinese chefs from Nankinmachi who hailed from the Guangdong region and used alkalilaced noodles in their soups. Rai-Rai Ken later added sliced marinated bamboo shoots known as Shina chiku (Chinese bamboo shoots) to their Shina soba, which also became a fixture of the dish in Tokyo.11 At the time of the shop’s opening in 1910, a bowl of Shina soba at RaiRai Ken sold for six sen, or six one-hundredths of a yen.12 For the sake of comparison, the average price of a bowl of tempura with sauce over rice (tendon) was twelve sen, a bowl of soba noodle soup was three sen, and a bowl of Japanese-style curry rice was approximately seven sen in the same year.13 Due to inflation, by 1931 the cost of a bowl of Shina soba in Tokyo was approximately ten sen, which would be worth roughly three hundred yen today (or $3 at current exchange rates)—half the cost of an average bowl in present-day Japan.14 Finally, by 1941 (the last year during which Shina soba was available until after the war), the price averaged sixteen sen around Tokyo.15

shina soba: f u el f or mod er n w o r k e r s My focus so far has been on the way in which Chinese immigrants introduced their food to Japan. In order for Shina soba to thrive as it did during the 1920s and 1930s, however, the consumers of the noodle soup

street life

21

(mostly wage earners from rural areas working in modern industry) needed to be assembled and provided with an impetus to buy it. The introduction of Chinese food in Japan is thus only half of the story, and we now turn to the other half, which is the creation of the consumer base for Shina soba. The industrialization of the Japanese economy produced a demand for workers in cities and manufacturing centers, workers who would encounter new types of work, people, and food. Aiding Japan’s industrialization was its victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), which generated an indemnity worth four times Japan’s national budget of 1893. Like the Spanish-American War of 1898, the First Sino-Japanese War was a conflict between a waning imperial power (China) and a rising one (Japan) concerning the nominal independence of a territory considered strategically vital to each of the warring parties (in this case, Korea). Japan’s victory spurred a wave of industrial activity that expanded the urban workforce and magnified the demand for food in the cities. Job growth occurred primarily in mining, manufacturing, construction, transportation, and communications, while employment in the agricultural sector remained stagnant. These changes in the composition of the labor force had a profound impact on the production and consumption of food in Japan. Food processing became a major component of the industrial economy, and canning in particular was one of the earliest industries to develop during the Meiji period. The construction of a nationwide rail network around the turn of the century also facilitated the distribution of food products, thereby stimulating industrial food production and processing as a whole. Canned foods became especially important for the military and were distributed to soldiers for the first time in Japan during the Seinan Civil War of 1877. The war was the last major uprising in Japan that threatened the rule of the new Meiji regime, which had taken power in 1868. It was headed by a former military leader of the Meiji government, Saigo- Takamori, who reluctantly led roughly twenty thousand former samurai in battle against government troops numbering more than seventy thousand. Subsequently the Japanese military’s use of canned foods spiked during the SinoJapanese and Russo-Japanese wars, when the government spent a total of 2,515,738 yen and 23,099,209 yen respectively on canned food, primarily meat and fish.16

22

street life

The growth in wage laborers in the 1890s created a heightened demand for eateries and outdoor dining establishments in the cities. According to a survey conducted by the Tokyo municipal government, by 1897 there were 476 formal restaurants, 4,470 small eating or drinking establishments, 143 teahouses, and 476 sake houses operating within city limits.17 Particularly in the vicinity of Asakusa and Ueno, which housed much of the low-wage workforce, rows of pushcart vendors, small eateries, and teahouses lined the narrow city streets. The First World War stimulated the process of industrialization that had already been underway for three decades. The war in Europe allowed Japan to take the place of the Great Powers in many of the Asian colonial markets, creating a boom for exporters and boosting industrial production overall. Specifically, between 1914 and 1918 Japan’s industrial output rose from 1.4 billion to 6.8 billion yen.18 Although manufacturing had already been growing at a relatively high rate of an average of 5 percent annually in the decade following the Russo-Japanese War, during World War I it jumped to 9.3 percent annually.19 In 1919, industrial output (6.74 billion yen) overtook agricultural production (4.16 billion yen) for the first time.20 As men and women moved to the cities in search of work, they also found pushcarts and Chinese restaurants serving Shina soba. The ranks of industrial workers swelled by 1.4 million over the course of the war, while the farming population correspondingly declined by approximately 1.2 million.21 The growth in industrial output brought on by the Great War in Europe provided stimulus to the restaurant business in Tokyo as the shift in population resulted in an expansion of Japanese-operated Chinese restaurants (Chu- ka ryo-ri ya), Western-style eateries (yo-shokuya), and pushcart vendors (yatai), the three types of establishments serving Chinese noodle soup in this period. Alongside the yatai vendors who had been selling buckwheat (soba) noodle soup for nearly four centuries, a new breed of Japanese pushcart vendors hawking Shina soba began to make their way around the same high-population areas of Tokyo in Asakusa and Ueno in the early 1900s. The customers at these establishments were workers and students who migrated to urban destinations from the countryside seeking education, employment, and training that was not available in their local areas.

street life

23

As the cities grew richer the rural areas grew poorer. This was partly because the wartime boom in industry widened the wage gap between agricultural and industrial laborers, and also because food produced in the colonies of Taiwan (annexed in 1895) and Korea (annexed in 1910) provided competition that drove down the prices Japanese farmers could charge for their produce. The growth of the industrial population that accompanied World War I, and the social unrest related to the availability of food that soon followed (such as the Rice Riots of 1918), led the government to increase imports of food from Taiwan and Korea, which inadvertently reduced welfare for Japanese agricultural workers on the home islands.22 This chain of events in turn accelerated the shift away from the primary sector (agriculture) toward the secondary (manufacturing) and tertiary (service) sectors. In addition to stimulating rice production in the colonies, the government began studying ways to substitute rice with other staples such as wheat (used to make noodles and bread) and soybeans (for tofu, miso, natto-, edamame, kinako, yuba, and soy sauce, for example) in the case of future shortfalls in rice supplies for the growing metropolitan population.23 More urban workers in Japan acquired a taste for Shina soba in the 1910s, and by the 1920s this cheap, quick, and filling dish, widely available in the most populous districts of Japan’s modern cities, had become emblematic of the emergent mass (taishu-) food culture. As one of Japan’s first mechanically processed, mass-produced foods, Shina soba reflected directly upon the new work schedules, technologies, and commodity choices of Japan’s urban working masses and the movement of both workers and students, including those from China. The short amount of time necessary to prepare and consume the noodle soup, and its heartiness compared to Japanese soba (which did not include meat in the broth or as a topping), also fit the dietary needs and lifestyles of urban Japanese workers in the 1920s and 1930s. The low status of Shina soba—a dish introduced by people from Shina (a defeated nation no longer considered worthy of emulation after the Sino-Japanese War), unlike more highly regarded foods such as bread and cake, which had been introduced by Westerners—illustrated the class differences associated with the primary consumers of each type of wheat-flour-based food. Although it was Japan’s exposure to the gunboat

24

street life

diplomacy of the United States and imperialist nations of Western Europe that caused Chinese and Western foods to be introduced and consumed in Meiji Japan on a new scale, the two cuisines were absorbed at different rates and became categorized differently due to the disparity in international prestige enjoyed by each group. In this way, Shina soba and shu- mai pork dumplings became markers of working-class fare partly due to their associations with the defeated Shina and their popularity in areas such as Asakusa. The industrialization of food production was also a factor in the proliferation of cheap noodle shops. The first noodle-making machine in Japan appeared in 1883, and by the late 1910s mechanized noodle making had superseded the hand-stretched method.24 The growth in the delivery of foodstuffs such as rice, flour, soy, and sugar from the countryside and the colonies to the cities also facilitated the expansion of the urban population by 1.4 million, as noted above. By 1928, the consumption of Shina soba was significant enough for the first Shina Soba Producers’ Trade Union of Greater Tokyo to be established, signaling the rise of the working class as a political force as well.25 In this manner, one can see that the consumption of Shina soba was no longer an exotic culinary experience, as it had been for those Japanese customs agents, tradesmen, and writers who first ingested Nankin soba in Japan’s treaty ports, but rather it was a custom that was increasingly associated with the workers of urban Japan. The adoption of Shina soba as standard fare by the wage-earning laborers of modern cities such as Tokyo and Sapporo also reflected an increasing desire for speed in the preparation of food. When making Shina soba, cooks prepared a pot of soup base and a bowl of flavoring sauce to serve an entire day’s worth of customers, leaving only the boiling of the noodles and reconstituting of the soup to be left for when the orders were placed. With this method, Shina soba was usually served within a few minutes of a customer’s arrival, making it particularly appealing to the hungry, exhausted, and hurried worker of modern industry. It is no wonder that this affordable and hearty noodle soup that could be quickly cooked to order appealed to the wage-earning workers of Tokyo and other Japanese cities. The heightened demand for Shina soba in Tokyo and elsewhere highlighted the increasingly atomized and nocturnal eating practices that resulted from the mass migration of people from the country to the city for

street life

25

work and education. The escalation of the atomization that accompanied economic development in Japan is another qualitative change in dietary habits that accompanied the spread of Shina soba. The dislocation of so many from their hometowns, and the demand they created in the cities for inexpensive and rapidly prepared foods served around the clock, fundamentally transformed the relationship between people and their notion of nourishment. Food became more of an undifferentiated commodity disconnected from the source of production than a creation of communal labor. In this way foods such as Shina soba increasingly served to sustain the labor power of wage earners, replacing time-consuming meals cooked by kinfolk with local ingredients. In the 1910s and 1920s, Shina soba became a symbol of the rapid transformation of Tokyo into a modern industrial city offering new types of foods that were unavailable in the countryside. For both newcomers and longtime city residents, the availability of novel goods and services in the city was exhilarating. The flourishing of cafés, bars, restaurants, department stores, and movie theaters in Tokyo after the 1923 earthquake signaled the arrival of modern life in Japan. Among the many new types of food establishments that proliferated in this period were the Shina shoku ya (Chinese food restaurant), the yo-shokuya (Western-style eatery), the café, and the Shina soba pushcart, the four main venues at which Shina soba could be consumed. For many, part of the city-going experience included a visit to a Western-style eatery or pushcart for a taste of Shina soba. The main consumers of Shina soba were workers, students, and soldiers, who were among the most politically radical and fractious constituencies in Japan at the time. Although it may seem somewhat odd, the café (kissaten) and the Westernstyle eatery (yo-shokuya) were primary venues for the consumption of Shina soba in 1920s Japan as well. Cafés and Western-style eateries together played an important role in introducing new types of foods that often combined European ingredients and techniques with those native to Japan to create entirely novel creations (such as omuraisu, or Japanese omelet rice with ketchup, fried egg, fried onions, and chicken, which is still popular today). Particularly in Sapporo, already in the 1930s ramen had become a fixture of cafés and was sold as ra-men rather than Shina soba, a fact that is often mentioned in ramen histories.

26

street life

The café, as opposed to the traditional tearoom, was a central component of modern life in Tokyo, particularly after the Great Kanto- Earthquake of 1923 destroyed much of the old city. Elise Tipton, an expert on urban Japanese culture of the 1920s, argues, “It is no exaggeration to describe the decade after the [Great Kanto-] earthquake as ‘the café era.’ . . . The cafes and bars made Ginza a ‘theater’ or ‘stage’ upon which modern life was performed. . . . Cafes flourished in other districts, especially Asakusa and increasingly Shinjuku, but they did not possess the top-class image of Ginza cafes.”26 Writers such as Tanizaki Junichiro- also frequently employed the motif of the café to illustrate the social transformations associated with modern life in 1920s Japan. In this way, residents of Japan’s cities encountered new foods, ideas, and ways of identifying themselves and one another in the cafés of the 1910s and 1920s. Shina soba was therefore at the center of the dynamic climate of social and political change that marked the era. Although most Chinese restaurants in Tokyo were small businesses that tended to cater to working-class residents in neighborhoods such as Asakusa and Ueno, some upscale Chinese restaurants serving Shina soba were located in the city’s shiny new department stores. This was significant because department stores and their restaurants were at the cutting edge of urban middle-class consumer culture in the 1920s and 1930s.27 Food historian Katarzyna Cwiertka notes that department store dining halls “represented the mass catering of the future not only because of their multicultural menus,” but also because of their heavy reliance on technology, their rationalized corporate systems of advertising and supply-chain management, and their attention to hygiene and speed in their operations.28 In this way, the locations at which Shina soba was served and the activities with which it was associated endowed the dish with an aura of modern city living. The new routines of work and leisure that defined urban existence often involved the eating of Shina soba. Going to the movies, for example, was an emblematic component of modern city life that was deeply connected to the consumption of Chinese noodle soup, as the Shina soba pushcart stall became a routine destination for the after-movie crowd beginning in the 1920s. Particularly in Asakusa, a neighborhood that attracted thousands of daily visitors to its movie theaters, eating a bowl of Shina soba became a routine part of a visit.

street life

27

A 1936 film directed by Ozu Yasujiro-, Hitori Musuko (The Only Son), captures the symbolic power of Shina soba as an emblem of modern city life for the rural visitor. The film centers on a widow who is trying to reconnect with her only son, who has left for the city to find work. After thirteen years without seeing him, she decides to pay a visit to the city to find out how he is living. While the son is showing his mother around Tokyo, he treats her to a bowl of Chinese noodle soup at a pushcart stall using the little money he has. She is completely unfamiliar with the dish and tries it only after her son cheerfully urges her to embrace the unknown. The scene is illustrative of both the novelty of the dish from the perspective of a senior from the countryside, and the son’s inability to afford a more proper meal.29 By the 1920s, people in urban Japan were enjoying domesticated Chinese cuisine on an unprecedented scale. As the most widely recognized dish of the assimilated and domesticated Chinese cuisine that flourished in Japan during the interwar period, Shina soba was an important food that marked the new customs associated with everyday life in urban Tokyo. According to a census taken in 1923, Tokyo was home to roughly a thousand Chinese food restaurants and five thousand restaurants serving Western food (many of which served Shina soba), numbers that do not include the numerous cafés, bars, and pushcarts.30 The adoption of Chinese and Western cuisines by Japanese urbanites in the 1920s was a result not only of their palatability, but also of their perceived nutritional superiority to traditional Japanese foods. Food historian Ishige Naomichi notes, “Western and Chinese cuisine were accepted largely because they provided foods that were lacking in the native cuisine—meat, oils and fats, and spices. As knowledge of modern nutritional science spread, meat dishes came to be seen as energy providers, and Western and Chinese foods were considered highly nutritious. The mass media also promoted new foods and nutritional awareness.”31 Ishige’s description of the driving forces behind the spread of Chinese and Western foods highlights the interconnectedness of modern nutritional science and the powerful projection of dietary norms by the mass media. His explanation of the domestication and adoption of Chinese and Western-style foods on a mass scale in the 1920s points to the shift toward a diet containing increasing amounts of animal proteins, processed grains, salt, and sugar in Japan.

28

street life

The application of scientific knowledge to food production increased significantly during the 1920s. The study of food and nutrition flourished with the government’s establishment in 1920 of the National Institute of Health and Nutrition, a part of the Ministry of Home Affairs, one of the most powerful ministries in prewar Japan. Among other things, the institute conducted studies to address the growing problems surrounding food production and distribution, particularly that of providing adequate nutrition for the industrial workforce to remain productive. The studies also aided the military in its food planning and provided many rural Japanese conscript soldiers with their first experience of eating Chinese food. In this way, the military was one of the primary sites where the findings of state-sponsored nutritional science were disseminated to the masses. Food historian Katarzyna Cwiertka notes, “The respectability that the military enjoyed in Japanese society facilitated the advance of Chinese cuisine. Moreover, military dieticians propagated Chinese recipes as cheap, nourishing, and close to Japanese cooking.”32 The ubiquity of Chinese food in Japanese cities in the 1920 and 1930s therefore resulted from a confluence of factors: the rise of the industrial working class, which created a demand for inexpensive high-calorie foods; the findings of modern nutritional science, which advocated the consumption of more wheat, meat, and dairy; the development of mechanized production techniques, such as for processing wheat and making noodles; and Japan’s expansion into China, which brought the latter’s food culture closer to home for the Japanese. Each of these closely related changes contributed substantially to the growth of Shina soba consumption among the residents of Japan’s cities, and particularly among members of the working class.

literary leftism and the noodle As employment in the manufacturing sector expanded rapidly in the 1920s, proletarian literature describing the agony of work in the food industry became exceedingly common. One of the best-known works on this topic is Kobayashi Takiji’s classic “The Cannery Boat” (“Kani ko-sen”), in which the filth and anger accompanying low-wage work on a dangerous

street life

29

crab-canning boat are described in horrifying detail. A lesser-known yet significant example from the interwar era is a short story by Satomura Kinzo- titled “Chronicle of Starting a Shina Soba Shop,” published in 1933 by the journal Kaizo-.33 The story describes a day in the life of a newcomer to the Shina soba pushcart business who struggles to make ends meet for his family and maintain a semblance of dignity. The tale is not only a glimpse into the life of the yatai operator’s routine, but also a critique of the economic and social desperation he finds himself facing. The story begins with the narrator preparing for work as the sun goes down, a scene that underlines how out of sync he is with the natural cycle of nocturnal sleep. The author, writing in the first person, describes how agonizing the routine remains no matter how many times he repeats it. Next he describes the pain he feels in his calves as a result of pulling the yatai cart every night, and he asks himself why he must begin working at a time of the day when even the birds are easing into rest. He wonders aloud, “Can such an existence be considered living?”34 Despite his clear disdain for the work, he continues out of a sense of responsibility for his wife and four-year-old son. Although he pities his wife for having to endure a poverty-stricken life, he also resents her for not understanding the toil involved in making a living out of a Shina soba yatai. He states, “She is unconcerned whether I put food on the table by writing, yatai vending, or going off to work in the countryside, so long as there is enough to get along.”35 In a similar fashion, the renowned writer Edogawa Ranpo- (whose pen name is an homage to author Edgar Allan Poe) worked as a yatai vendor himself before he was able to support himself through his writing alone.36 The desire to provide for his son, however, inspires the narrator to keep working every day. Still, he asks, “How many others have discarded their ideals and worked tirelessly just for the sake of providing a living for their children, only to become ugly carcasses or insect shells left by the wayside?”37 The narrator’s thoughts thus turn negative once again as he leaves his home, pulling his cart into the dark street. Next he complains about the difficulty of running the business, particularly the blowing of the charumera, a type of flute that was the signature call of all roaming Shina soba yatai operators around that time.38 He is distressed about café waitresses and passersby who mock and insult him,

30

street life

telling him that his lack of talent in playing the flute also deters them from trying his noodles. People trying to sleep often berate him for playing the flute in their neighborhood so late at night.39 Competition is fierce. By the time he arrives at the café district of Ko-enji, there are already five or six other Shina soba yatai set up. He continues walking because he is unlikely to win any new customers in such a saturated market. After serving a few unhappy customers who complain about his undercooking of the noodles, he encounters a group of seven café waitresses who order a bowl each. One of them is drunk and begins to demean him with all manner of insults. The author concludes the story by saying, “The waitresses are human too. When they get drunk, they too want to pick on someone weaker than themselves—that’s just part of being human. In this case, I was happy to soothe the rage of the drunken café waitress.”40 The Shina soba yatai operator is sufficiently powerless that the women of the night feel comfortable in belittling him, and he resigns himself to his circumstances. In this way the Shina soba maker sacrifices himself for the good of all, serving as the whipping boy in the nocturnal economy of decadence and desperation. The story is a testament to the physical and mental hardships as well as the technical difficulties involved in building a Shina soba yatai business. Kobayashi Kurasaburo-’s “Account of a Soba Shop,” published in Chu- oko-ro-n, another left-leaning journal, is less concerned with poverty than with industrial capitalism’s supplanting of inherited food practices. Kobayashi’s editorial decries the undercutting of long-existing food practices by foreign foods and industrial food production and describes at length the value of Tokyo’s old-time soba shops, which largely disappeared from the city after the 1923 earthquake. He begins the piece by grumbling about the lack of expertise in the contemporary soba business, where “one finds shops selling soba, Shina soba, curry rice, shiruko, and mitsumame all under one roof. In the old times a soba shop would be embarrassed to serve even rice-based dishes. These days it is sad to see so many soba shops that do not seem like proper soba shops [sobaya rashiku nai sobaya].”41 The author goes on to bemoan the industrialization of the soba production process, pointing out how it has resulted in lower-quality food and a corruption of the principles governing the food business in general. He states:

street life

31

In the old days, local farmers in Nakano, Ko-enji, and Musashino grew the buckwheat, and soba shops used to turn the buckwheat into soba flour themselves, which is why the soba was so fresh. These days, however, the buckwheat travels long distances and soba flour is mass-produced by big merchants. The priority for these merchants is not how to make the tastiest food, but how to produce the food at the lowest cost. In this way, the merchants’ first instinct is to use the abacus to calculate profits, which is simply unavoidable. . . . Furthermore, these days shops actually advertise it when they hand make their noodles, meaning machine-produced soba has become ubiquitous. It did not used to be like that.42

The editorial’s critical perspective on the transformation in food production speaks to many of the disruptions caused by the overall shift to an industrial economy. The decline in the number of farmers and the amount of farmland in Tokyo, the focus on cost over taste by large food corporations, and the newfound value of the handmade were central features of the shift to a factory system that would only become more entrenched over time. Kobayashi ends by decrying the loss of the old-time language that marked the everyday life of the preindustrial soba shop. The author’s attention to the correspondence between trends in food production, economic organization, and the use of language relates a sense of the connectedness with which many intellectuals understood the different areas of social life undergoing rapid transformation.

tur nin g ja pa n es e There are a number of illuminating local origin stories of famous shops that highlight the centrality of Chinese cooks in transforming the dish into a Japanese staple, beginning with the abovementioned story of Rai-Rai Ken’s founding in 1910. Yet, because of its ordinariness as a commodity, there are few reliable records concerning Shina soba, the people who produced it, or those who consumed it in its introductory phase during the 1900s. For information about Shina soba in this period, we must turn to anecdotal evidence and legends recorded during the 1980s and 1990s concerning a handful of renowned Japanese proprietors who paved the way for the dish’s further penetration into Japanese dietary practices.

32

street life

Restaurants serving Chinese food (Shina shoku) began appearing in small cities across Japan such as Sano, Kurume, Wakayama, Onomichi, Hakata, Kumamoto, and Kagoshima in the 1920s and 1930s. All of these cities had a relatively large number of industrial workers, food-processing plants, and train traffic, which made them logical spots for Shina soba shop operators to thrive. Sano, a city of roughly fifty thousand in 1926, already had 160 Shina soba shops, including yatai.43 Again, the presence of wheat farms and flour-processing plants in the vicinity, as well as a high concentration of industrial workers (involved in the textile industry in the case of Sano), provided a suitable backdrop for the early development of Chinese noodle soup in that city. Sano’s role as a transportation hub where the Jo-etsu and To-hoku railway lines joined also contributed to its development as an important regional center of early industry. Furthermore, Sano was one of the first places where large-scale mechanized noodle production replaced the hand stretching of noodles. It is therefore not surprising that Sano became a relatively early center for the production and consumption of Chinese noodle soup. According to Ogawa Hideo, the third-generation owner of the renowned ramen shop in Sano named Ho-raiken, the first place in the city to serve Shina soba was an establishment named Ebisu Shokudo-, a Western-style eatery that opened in 1916 with a Chinese chef. Due to his expertise in Chinese cooking, the chef decided to include some Chinese foods on the menu, including Shina soba. Ogawa Risaburo-, Hideo’s grandfather, who was an apprentice for the unnamed Chinese cook at Ebisu Shokudo-, steadfastly learned the skill of Shina soba creation. In 1930, Ogawa Risaburocreated his own yatai business and began selling Shina soba using the recipe he had learned while apprenticing at Ebisu Shokudo-. His success led him to establish Ho-raiken, which became one of the first restaurants in Sano to specialize in Shina soba, according to his grandson and the store’s current owner.44 Although nearly every city in Japan has its own origin stories of Japanese Shina soba pioneers, the well-known tale of Ohisa Masaji (and chef Wang Wen Zai) in Sapporo is of particular interest due to the importance of Sapporo ramen in spawning the ramen boom of the 1960s, as well as the glimpse it provides into anti-Chinese discrimination at the time. Like RaiRai Ken’s Ozaki, Ohisa had worked for the government before opening a

street life

33

Chinese food restaurant, first as a national railroad employee, then as an officer in the police force. In 1922, after meeting Wang Wen Zai, a native of Shandong province who had been working as a cook in Sakhalin (Karafuto-), Ohisa and his wife decided to convert their small lunchbox (bento-) shop into a restaurant named Shina Ryo-ri Takeya. Their store catered mainly to local students and railroad workers. Ohisa Tatsu, the wife of the proprietor, witnessed how Wang and the other Chinese workers often endured insults from customers, who would order the noodle dish using the terms Chankoro soba and Chan soba (Chankoro and Chan-chan being some of the most derogatory Japanese terms for a Chinese person at the time, akin to “chink” in English). In an effort to limit the use of such insults, Ohisa Tatsu claims that she suggested they replace the term Shina soba with the word ra-men (the term used by the cooks themselves) on the menu, which would gradually get customers out of the habit of using the offensive terms. The practice eventually caught on around Sapporo, which in turn became the first city (and the only one during the prewar period) where the term ra-men was more widely used than Shina soba.45 In 1928 Ohisa opened a second shop, named Ho-ran, in the city of Asahikawa, Hokkaido-. Asahikawa’s location as the last point north on the Hokkaido- train line made it a collection and processing point for agricultural goods. The high volume of wheat and livestock passing through Asahikawa and the large number of industrial workers in foodprocessing factories (as well as a garrison of soldiers stationed there) made it a logical place for shops selling Shina soba and other inexpensive foods to operate. The origin story of ramen in Wakayama centers on a man from Korea known as Takamoto Ko-ji,46 who in 1940 began a yatai operation that he named Marutaka. His idiosyncratic method of preparing the soup—boiling the pork bone in soy sauce once, then using those bones for soup broth and that soy sauce as a marinade for the cha-shu- —became the standard “Wakayama method” for preparing ramen, and his protégés, most of whom were Korean, dominated the ramen-making business in Wakayama for decades. The centrality of not only Chinese but also Korean migrant workers in pioneering the spread of Shina soba is underscored by Takamoto’s story.47

34

street life

Miyamoto Tokio, who had previously run an udon yatai business, - shu - in 1938. The name launched the first recorded Shina soba shop in Kyu of the store, Nankin Senryo, appears to have been a pun, as it was a homonym of “Nanjing occupation,” and thus suggested the infamous invasion of Nanjing by the Japanese army in late 1937.48 Miyamoto had himself apprenticed under a Chinese chef in Yokohama’s Nankinmachi just a few years earlier, but his choice for the name of the restaurant stands in stark contrast to the racial harmony that Ohisa Tatsu attempted to cultivate, as described above. - shu - -style tonkoMiyamoto was a talented chef who pioneered the Kyu tsu (pork bone) soup base, which consisted of bones boiled down in water over hours into a “muddy white” consistency with relatively little soy sauce added, and was usually served with extra-thin white noodles. Miyamoto is said to have developed his soup-making methods from watching Chinese chefs cook chanpon noodles (also known as Shina udon, a regional specialty of Nagasaki) during his apprenticeship in that city’s Nankinmachi. Miyamoto’s shop catered mainly to students and soldiers stationed in - shu -, Kurume, a small city in Fukuoka prefecture on the island of Kyu which may partially explain why he chose to name his restaurant with a homonym for “Nanjing occupation.”49 Onomichi was another city where ramen became popular in the 1920s due to its location as an early center of industrial production. Here it was the ship-building trade that created the hub of activity necessary for the Shina soba business to thrive. The sizable industrial workforce, which included a relatively large number of Taiwanese and Korean migrant workers, made Onomichi another fertile space for the emergence of various types of yatai. Zhu A Chun was another foreign pioneer of Shina soba in Japan who started as a migrant worker from Taichung, Taiwan. After losing his job at the local shipyard in Onomichi, he opened the first Shina soba business in that city. Zhu’s yatai, which he eventually expanded into a small restaurant, became a popular attraction for the after-movie crowd as well as his former co-workers at the shipyards.50 A history similar to that of Shina soba is that of Shina udon, now known as chanpon, which became popular in Nagasaki around the turn of the century. In 1899 a man named Chen Ping Jun from Fujian province opened a restaurant named Shikairo-, which became known as the first

street life

35

place to serve Shina udon in Nagasaki. Although Chinese students studying in Japan formed his primary customer base in the beginning, the local population also gradually came to know the inexpensive and hearty meals served by Chen, and by 1903 he had created a menu in Japanese listing items that were popular with the locals.51 As seen from the examples above, the spread of Shina soba (and Shina udon) was deeply intertwined with the new flow of goods and people brought about by Japan’s industrialization. The migration of people from country to city, the formation of an industrial workforce that included Chinese laborers as cooks,52 and the incorporation of Chinese food into Japanese urban diets after an incubation period in the treaty ports produced the backdrop for a surge in businesses offering cheap, hearty, and rapidly prepared Chinese noodle soup. The students, soldiers, shipyard workers, dock workers, railroad workers, and other industrial workers mentioned in the origin stories above formed the core of those demanding Shina soba. Furthermore, people on the margins of the homeland produced much of the foodstuffs for the industrial laborers in the cities, providing fuel for overall economic growth in a literal way. The role of locomotive transportation in creating the conditions that made the flourishing of Shina soba possible is apparent from the stories above. Cities that adopted Shina soba relatively early, in the 1910s and 1920s (such as Asahikawa and Sano), were also regional transport hubs where the processing of foods and other raw materials from rural areas and the colonies occurred. The mass production and processing of the ingredients that allowed for the popularization of Chinese noodle soup as a cheap food for workers was therefore not simply a matter of taste or consumer preference, but it was deeply rooted in new forms of economic production. The centrality of China in Japan’s foreign relations and military expansion during the modern period (especially in the 1930s) is apparent from any attempt to trace the beginnings of Shina soba. The widespread consumption of Chinese noodle soup in department stores, small eateries serving Chinese food, military facilities, workplace cafeterias, and pushcarts is tightly interwoven with the relocation of students and workers from China, Korea, and Taiwan to Japan, the migration of Japanese and Korean farmers to Manchuria, and the movement of mil-

36

street life

lions of farmers with a taste for new foods and modes of entertainment into the urban industrial workforce. Although the available sources on the history of ramen in Japan tend to underscore the centrality of Japanese chefs in creatively altering the dish to suit Japanese tastes, with particular emphasis on Ozaki Kenichi and Rai-Rai Ken, it is clear from the previous examples that the adoption of ramen in Japan was a collective, multiethnic effort, with many non-Japanese actors playing major roles.

g ive u p the good s : shina soba in wartime After Japan had spent six decades seeking a stronger foothold on the Asian continent in order to expand trade, security, and settlement, and doing so with the blessing of Great Britain and the United States, in the 1930s the country’s foreign policy shifted toward confrontation with these two countries over its growing dominance in northeast Asia. The main point of contention was Japan’s position in Manchuria beyond the railway lines it had gained control of in the Russo-Japanese War. Manchuria is a resource-rich region of northern China, which local military commanders in the Japanese army seized in 1931 without prior approval from Tokyo. The intention of the army unit that took control of Manchuria in 1931 was to unilaterally resolve Japan’s economic crisis, which had been worsened by the global breakdown in trade after the Great Depression. The army’s unilateral actions in seizing Manchuria for the purposes of agricultural settlement, industrialization, and preemptive defense against Soviet encroachment were celebrated by most of the Japanese press at the time. Japan’s movement into Manchuria, and the subsequent establishment of a nominally independent nation there allied with Japan through force rather than plebiscite, eventually led to Japan’s fateful split from the United States and Britain (and its alliance with Germany and Italy) that paved the way to World War II. Japanese leaders likened their situation in Manchuria to the United States’ position in Central America, explaining that this was their version of the Monroe Doctrine, but the Americans and British deemed it a form of aggression unlike their own.

street life

37

The two sides also split over their relationship with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime in China, which the Americans and British supported and recognized as the sovereign leader of a unified China but the Japanese acknowledged only as one of many regional warlords in China. In 1937, conflict erupted between Chiang’s Nationalist forces and Japan’s troops stationed in China as a result of a minor skirmish between troops near Beijing at the Luguoqiao (Roko- kyo- or Marco Polo Bridge). The fighting was not intended by either side to be a pretext for a full-scale war, but the conflict escalated and eventually expanded into the Second Sino Japanese War (1937–45). As the two sides became deadlocked, the Japanese government moved to restrict, and eventually outlaw, food vending in order to minimize waste and maximize its resources for the military. The availability of Shina soba and other cooked foods for purchase declined at once as the economy was mobilized for war. The state’s restructuring of the economy, which occurred in several stages, resulted in a centralized system where state agencies and state-sanctioned monopolies collected and redistributed nearly all basic necessities through local community organizations. In this way, the government began controlling the food supply through a system of rationing that the Konoe cabinet first implemented under the National General Mobilization Law (Kokka So-do-in ho-) of 1938. The large-scale rationing of staples such as rice, wheat flour, eggs, fish, vegetable oil, and sugar began in 1941 and became codified under the Food Management Law (Shokuryo- Kanri ho-) of February 1942. The strict system of government food rationing and the outlawing of commercial food vending led to the disappearance of Shina soba and other popular restaurant foods from Japanese cities in 1942. This happened at the very moment that demand for food by the very workers and soldiers who had taken to the dish in the previous decade surged. An increase in the ranks of military personnel and workers in heavy industries that resulted from the war presented a grave problem for others managing their food needs, as those involved in the war effort were allotted significantly higher rations than the average civilian. According to the Food Management Law of 1942, soldiers, heavy industrial workers, and average civilians were to be provided with 600, 420, and 330 grams of rice

38

street life

or rice equivalents per day, respectively.53 Increased soybean production in Manchuria and greater attempts at home production of food by civilians in the homeland somewhat offset the growth in demand for food created by the war, but staple foods remained scarce. Like most commodities and hobbies that had signaled the arrival of modern life in the 1920s and 30s, Shina soba was cast off as a relic of a bygone era marked by relative luxury and frivolity as Japan moved toward war mobilization. The state’s rationing of basic goods in the 1940s transformed dining out into something considered wasteful and self-indulgent by those who were in the midst of what they understood to be a fight for their nation’s very survival. Rationing had already emerged as the primary means of acquiring food other than home production in 1938, but by 1942, state actors further tightened economic controls to the extent that all available human and material resources were being directed toward the needs of the military. From 1944, mounting war losses meant that the production and importation of controlled foodstuffs could not keep pace with the government’s pledged distribution levels. Consequently, in many cases the urban population was forced to support itself through bartering with farmers, collective gardening, and eating unfamiliar foods such as insects, boiled leaves, and tree roots. The economic controls that led to the outlawing of Shina soba were intended to maximize production and check the inflationary pressures created by the acute demand for raw materials generated by war production. Although most government regulations were introduced as temporary measures, most were kept in place through the postwar U.S. occupation (1945–52) and beyond. Economic historian Nakamura Takafusa argues, “To a great extent, the system created during the war was inherited as the postwar economic system. The industries developed during the war became the major postwar industries; wartime technology was reborn in the postwar export industries; and the postwar national lifestyle, too, originated in changes that began during the period of conflict.”54 The shift from light to heavy industries, the emergence of a subcontracting system for tools and parts, the development of bank-centered industrial combines, the use of administrative guidance from bureaucrats in directing economic affairs, and the move from trade unions to company unions were all wartime transformations that formed the foundation

street life

39

of the postwar economic system.55 In this way, the increased control exercised over the economy by bureaucrats during the war survived into the postwar period and evolved into what became understood in the United States as the “Japanese style” of economic management by the 1970s.56 The banning of pleasures like eating Shina soba at Chinese restaurants and mingling at cafés received much support from middle-class community-based activists, who deemed such activities unpatriotic and wasteful exhibitions of decadence well before the wartime food shortages set in. Popular backing for the government’s drives to increase production and tighten consumption were vital to the success of the rationing system, and state bureaucrats therefore made great efforts to promote grass-roots campaigns urging people to work more and consume less. Two examples of the popular drive to limit food consumption were the promotion of bimonthly meatless days on the 8th and 28th and the Rising Sun lunch box (Hinomaru bento-). Inspired by the national flag, the Hinomaru bento-, consisting of white rice with a pickled apricot in the middle, became a popular symbol of restraint in food consumption and civilian support for soldiers in the late 1930s. Another example of a popular campaign to reduce food intake was the Japanese Housewives’ Association’s push to “eliminate white rice” (leaving rice unpolished, thereby adding volume), which began in 1937. The campaign, part of a general drive to eliminate food waste, became official policy in December 1939 in the form of the Rice Polishing Restriction Regulation (Beikoku To-sei Seigen Rei), which prohibited removing more than 30 percent of the grain’s outer shell.57 The abolition of restaurant dining, the Hinomaru bento-, meatless days, and the campaign to eliminate white rice were all made possible by the eager participation of housewives’ associations and other community groups, who advocated increased state control over civilian life in the name of moral uplift and wartime sacrifice. The strong bourgeois-bureaucratic alliance, which coalesced around a shared belief in scientific progress and rational solutions to social problems, formed the basis for the rise of “social management” in the 1930s, an ethos that continued well into the 1940s and 1950s. Sheldon Garon notes, “What appear to be instances of topdown control by the state turn out often to have resulted from demands by

40

street life

nongovernmental groups, which looked to the bureaucracy to advance their agenda. . . . These organizations were overwhelmingly middle class in character. They were dominated by neither the great landlords nor big businessmen but rather by the old middle class of small farmers and petty entrepreneurs, and by the new middle class of educators, social workers, physicians, and the wives of salaried employees.”58 In this sense, wartime food privations often began as voluntary movements initiated by community groups at home to express solidarity with the troops abroad. The Japanese wartime campaigns to promote austerity and maintain popular morale that led to the demise of Shina soba were remarkably similar to those advanced in the United States. In both countries state leaders implemented policies that impacted dietary practices across all income levels. Aside from the fact that the U.S. blockades and sinking of Japanese merchant ships resulted in a dwindling of food supplies for people in Japan without a corresponding shortage in American food, the two countries managed their food supplies and propagated their respective food ideologies in remarkably similar ways. The states’ unprecedented degree of involvement in food production, processing, storage, and distribution, as well as their campaigns urging housewives to consume less, produce more at home, and to think about food in nationalistic terms, changed the meanings and uses of food in ways that would last for generations in both countries. The United States and Japan, then, shared many practices rooted in the same logic of total war mobilization and employed similar techniques of social-economic planning and political persuasion that produced long-term transformations in both societies. Amy Bentley, a U.S. food historian, observes: Officials hoped to ensure public commitment by using the equal distribution of high-status and familiar foods through mandatory food rationing to increase Americans’ physical and psychic satisfaction. To maintain public approval or at least tolerance of rationing, government propaganda campaigns used images of food to depict American society as stable, abundant, and unified. These campaigns were aimed particularly at securing the support of American women, who were chiefly responsible for family food consumption. . . .59 Preventing waste, avoiding black markets, producing food, and abiding by food rationing, however trivial they may have seemed, allowed Americans to contribute to, and feel a part of, the war effort.60

street life

41

Bentley’s description of U.S. efforts to constrain food consumption through highly gendered appeals to the patriotism of women could easily apply to Japan in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The dependence on produce grown in private or collective gardens, known as “victory gardens,” was a common feature of wartime life in both the United States and Japan. A reliance on the labor of captive and colonized people was another similarity of the two countries in their efforts to stimulate production during the course of the war. In the case of Japan, rice imported from Korea and Taiwan accounted for roughly 20 percent of the total supply in Japan proper at the outbreak of the war, and soybean supplies from Manchuria rose steadily during the course of the war even as other sources of food dwindled due to the sinking of cargo ships. Taiwan was also an important source of sugar before and during the war until supplies were cut off from that colony. Imperial Japanese army forces occupying parts of China, Singapore, and the Philippines relied on rice produced in French Indochina and Siam. In the United States, the State Department facilitated the importation of nearly 150,000 farm laborers from Mexico, Barbados, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Canada, and Newfoundland on temporary permits. In addition, 65,000 prisoners of war were used for agricultural labor.61 The foods that the administrators of the rationing system in both countries deemed national staples also contributed to the long-term national cultural symbolism associated with them more than any other factor. In the case of Japan, the idea that rice was a staple that all Japanese would consume daily became a reality only with the wartime rationing system. Similarly, in the United States, the state’s ability to make meat, and steaks in particular, available to working-class households as part of the rationing system did more to democratize diets and improve poor people’s access to widely desired foods than ever before. Well after the system of rationing ended, these foods continued to symbolize the essential components of the national diet in both countries owing to the long-term transformations caused by total war mobilization. In both countries, middle-class community leaders and proactive state bureaucrats formed alliances based on the perceived need to manage the everyday lives of the working-class population to maximize productivity, maintain hygiene, and safeguard people from unfettered consumerism in

42

street life

a time of war mobilization. The use of propaganda to promote restraint in consumption and an increase in social management overall were thus features common to both the United States and Japan that highlighted the similarity of internal class relations in a time of total war mobilization.62

2

Not an Easy Road black market ramen and the u.s. occupation My wish is that we return to a situation consistent with the fundamental laws of economics, where people with lower levels of income eat more wheat, and people with higher levels of income eat rice. Ikeda Hayato, Minister of Finance, December 7, 1950

The Pacific War came to an end with Emperor Sho-wa’s announcement of Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945, but the food shortages set off by the war continued in Japan for years. The crisis in government authority that resulted from defeat produced a volatile situation with respect to foodrelated crime. As the U.S. military formally occupied Japan and took over official command of its government (1945–52), the food supplies and basic goods that had been stockpiled by the Japanese military first disappeared, then reappeared at exorbitant rates on the black markets (yami ichi). By October 1945, one month after the official surrender, there were seventeen thousand black markets of various sizes operating across Japan.1 The expansion of the black market in this period provided an opening for criminal gangs to profit handsomely from the inability of Japanese and U.S. authorities to fully regulate trade in basic goods. The appearance of the black market economy resulted from corruption in government and from continued attempts to control the production and distribution of all staple foods and other basic necessities by the Japanese authorities working under the direction of the Americans. During the first three years after the war, therefore, the black markets developed into the central node of urban commercial activity. The postwar era was also when ramen took on 43

44

not an easy road

folkloric status as the hot food that nourished the people in a time of collective despair and hunger. During the U.S. occupation noodle makers in Japan gradually began referring to Chinese noodle soup as Chu-ka soba, moving away from the term Shina soba, which was evocative of the war. The shift was symptomatic of U.S. and Japanese efforts to remake Japan into a nation of peace. According to Article Nine of the postwar Constitution, drafted by the Americans and promulgated by the Japanese under occupation, “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” The government and press in Japan also began referring to China as Chu-goku, meaning “Middle Country” or “Central Kingdom,” which was the post-defeat appellation for the country mandated by representatives of the Chinese government for use by the government of Japan. The discursive transition is reflective of a shift away from words tainted with the memory of imperialism and war as well as an attempt to remake Japan through a remaking of its Others. Along with Chu- ka soba, the word ra-men, which some shops in Sapporo had already begun using in the 1920s, became the prevailing term for the food after the war. Many in Japan, however, continued to use the term Shina soba and the even more degrading Chan soba to refer to the ostensibly Chinese noodle soup, as can be seen in early postwar films depicting the dish.2 Technically, however, it remained illegal to buy or sell Chu- ka soba and other restaurant foods until well after the war due to the decision by U.S. authorities to continue the wartime ban on outdoor food vending and maintain the rationing system for basic goods. The signature food of the urban working class therefore became confined to the black market street stalls that developed in the bombed-out cities. The popularity of Chu- ka soba at the illegal street stalls was attributable to the fact that foods based on wheat flour were more readily available than rice in this period. Defeat in war generated rice shortages, which created a demand for wheat from the United States as an alternative. The cessation of rice imports from the former colonies of Korea and Taiwan, rice crop failures in the Japanese countryside in 1944 and 1945, and the importation of wheat as an emergency measure by the U.S. military all contributed to a reliance on noodles as an alternative to rice after the war. Furthermore,

not an easy road

45

black-market ramen stalls were the final destination of a large quantity of the U.S. wheat imported into Japan during the U.S. occupation, although precisely how much is impossible to determine with any degree of certainty due to the criminal nature of the activities in question. The resurgence in ramen in Japan was the result of a strategic U.S. decision to prioritize food aid in the form of wheat to allies in Asia. After initially treating the acute food shortage in Japan as the responsibility of the Japanese themselves, the U.S. government changed course and began exporting large amounts of wheat as part of its program to rebuild the Japanese economy beginning in 1948. The U.S.-grown wheat took on an important political function in maintaining and strengthening the corporeal composition of the workers who would rebuild what remained the largest non-Communist economy in East Asia despite the destruction caused by war. In this way, U.S. food policy during its occupation of Japan shifted from providing only begrudging emergency assistance to offering both political and economic support with strategic geopolitical objectives and commercial export interests as the Cold War intensified in East Asia. Ramen and other foods made from U.S.-grown wheat took on an important political function in preventing the starvation of many Japanese. Further, the wheat arrived just as protests against the ineptitude and corruption of the Japanese authorities and their American overseers in managing the food rationing system reached a crescendo. Meanwhile, Japanese Communist leaders worked to channel public frustration with the government authorities about their handling of food into support for their party. In turn, the Americans attempted to cultivate an image of the United States as a generous benefactor in a time of starvation by publicizing the imported wheat at every turn. The emergency food from the United States that led to the timely reappearance of ramen pushcart stalls therefore inadvertently helped to quell potentially violent uprisings rooted in hunger and unequal access to basic goods, hardships that fueled support for the Communist Party. The U.S. occupation authorities implicitly condoned the black market that grew out of the price controls by allowing the police to punish consumers and petty vendors instead of the large-scale suppliers of goods. In his monumental study of the occupation, historian John Dower notes, “While industrialists, politicians, and former military officers made killings on the

46

not an easy road

black market, while government officials lavishly wined and dined their American overlords, some 1.22 million ordinary men and women were arrested for illegal black market transactions in 1946, a number that rose to 1.36 million and then 1.5 million in the next two years.”3 In these markets, vendors connected with underworld gangs sold basic foods and household goods at handsome profits to desperate buyers. The vendors sold diverted government supplies and surplus U.S. military goods supplied by corrupt officials as well as prostitutes receiving commodities as pay from GIs.4 The police occasionally arrested and jailed Chu- ka soba vendors for violating the restaurant ordinance, but few if any suppliers of wheat were ever incarcerated. The lack of resolve on the part of the Japanese government and U.S. occupation forces to stem the black market trade aroused the suspicions of many, especially in the press, that the police and politicians at the highest levels of government were also beneficiaries of the profits being generated through the illegal food trade. The police, it was noted, arrested millions of petty vendors engaged in small-scale enterprises while ignoring the few major suppliers of the goods to the markets. Some journalists subsequently led efforts to expose those who were involved in the black market and reveal their ties to political circles, yet despite risking their lives, the journalists had little success in achieving a public accounting of the all-too-apparent corruption. The diversion of American wheat and lard into black market channels provided the supplies necessary for Chu- ka soba vendors to return to business. In this way, Chu- ka soba pushcarts and other mobile food stalls offered the war-weary workers of Japan’s cities an opportunity to pursue small-scale entrepreneurship. Ramen returned as a site of economic refuge, just as it had been in the 1930s, and the residents of the cities rediscovered the pleasure of eating hot Chinese noodle soup (or a makeshift version of it). Most of the people serving Chu- ka soba at the yatai were Japanese returnees from the colonies, laborers (including many Koreans and Chinese) out of industrial work, and decommissioned soldiers, a diverse group that illustrates the ways in which the noodles reflected the massive population movements and geopolitical changes of the late 1940s and early 50s. The import of Chu- ka soba in people’s memories of the period as

not an easy road

47

one of the few foods available in a time of great scarcity provided it with a historic and symbolic resonance that would reassert itself half a century later. The authors of texts on ramen and the planners of the Raumen Museum, who together wrote the canonical history of the dish in the 1980s and 90s, pointed to ramen’s significance in urban Japan during the occupation in describing the food’s importance in the national narrative of tenacity and nostalgia in an era of postindustrial malaise and economic stagnation.

h unger a n d s ta mina The years between 1944 and 1947 were the worst period of hunger endured in Japan’s modern history. Although the American firebombs and nuclear attacks crystallized the suffering resulting from defeat, the two years of hunger and malnutrition that persisted following surrender were a long, dark era of difficulties that remain present in the popular consciousness as reminders of the struggles associated with that era. Despite the dramatic break in political authority represented by the surrender of the imperial government and the powerful rhetoric of democratization from the Americans, for most people, the insufficiency of food, warm clothing, and proper shelter were the most resonant issues associated with defeat in war. The fact that food supplies and the availability of basic goods did not improve for most Japanese for at least two years following surrender meant that the war and foreign occupation blurred into a contiguous period of suffering that spanned across the break in political authority represented by 1945. Conditions worsened during the initial two years of the occupation due to a shortfall in global food production and poor oversight of the rationing system by both the Japanese and American authorities. The pervasive hunger experienced by most Japanese between 1944 and 1947 provided the painful context against which the reappearance of ramen had a deep impact on city-dwelling survivors of the war. Ramen and other black market “stamina” foods were a welcome alternative to the repeated consumption of sweet potatoes and daikon, as well as the condition of hunger. Along with dumplings (gyo-za), stir-fried noodles

48

not an easy road

(yakisoba), savory pancakes with scallions (okonomiyaki), and other foods made from imported American wheat, Chu- ka soba was a black market specialty that provided people who could afford it with a boost of much-needed energy. The hot and oily black market foods were collectively referred to as “stamina” cooking due to their heavy use of garlic, oil, and wheat flour. The emergency imports of U.S. wheat used to cook the “stamina” foods alleviated the scarcity of rice in Japan, which had begun the year before the war ended. When the Americans arrived in Japan in 1945, the food situation had already been deteriorating for two years, and scarcity in the cities had reached crisis proportions. Domestic food production dropped by an estimated 26 percent between 1943 and 1945, in large part due to the government’s decision to divert resources away from agriculture toward war industries5 and the loss of access to food from the colonies.6 A reliance on substitute staples such as sweet potatoes, soybeans, winter squash (kabocha), daikon radishes, and later wheat became necessary for basic survival during the 1940s, particularly in the middle of the decade, as fertilizers, tools, and animals were diverted for military use or destroyed in war. Okumura Ayao, a Japanese food scholar born in 1937, describes his memories of the desperate food situation toward the end of the war as follows: From 1944 on, even in the countryside, the athletic grounds of local schools were converted into sweet potato fields. And we ate every part of the sweet potato plant, from the leaf to the tip of the root. We also ate every part of the kabocha we grew, including the seeds and skin. For protein, we ate beetles, beetle larvae, and other insects that we found at the roots of the plants we picked, which we roasted or mashed. Even in the countryside, food was scarce. That year, “certain victory provisions” [hissho- shokuryo-] became the most commonly used phrase throughout the country to refer to the changing and dwindling food supplies. The minister of agriculture at the time, Ishiguro, urged the populace to abandon the notion of rice as the primary staple of Japan and instead to eat any and all edibles available, including the leaves of plants and parts of vegetables previously considered inedible. . . . As Tokyo burned, it was time for “final battle food” [kessen shoku]. The authorities directed us to maximize underutilized resources even further, and thus acorns, tree buds, roots, weeds growing on the sides of the streets, snails, and newts were eaten for the sake of survival.7

not an easy road

49

Okumura’s memories are representative of the conditions recollected by most people in Japan with respect to the last year of the war. To make matters worse, the number of people needing to be fed expanded as a result of the decolonization of the Japanese empire, which produced a massive influx of roughly eight million returnees from various parts of the Asia-Pacific region.8 The added number of people drove feeding requirements from 6.552 million metric tons of rice equivalents in fiscal year 1946 to 7.946 million metric tons in 1947.9 The timing could not have been worse, for this was the same moment that food from the colonies was no longer made available to Japan. Poor rice harvests in 1944 and 1945 due to weather and war aggravated the direness of the situation, resulting in widespread malnutrition and hunger. Because the amount of rationed food was inadequate for basic survival, food purchased through the black market became a necessity for the nonfarming population. The choice between starvation and engagement with criminal activity was not an easy one. One judge, Yamaguchi Yoshitada, later dubbed the Socrates of Japan by newspaper writers, refused to eat black market foods and consequently died of malnutrition in November 1947.10 The impossibility of living strictly on rationed food was thus made clear to the authorities in a dramatic fashion. For those who did not receive supplementary rations from the government or were not connected to the criminal suppliers of basic goods, the extortionate black market became the only means of survival. For this reason, basic subsistence required participation in criminal behavior for the vast majority of people in Japan. A declassified report written by the occupation authorities, “Food Situation during the First Year of Occupation,” summarized the situation: “The Staple Food Ration of 1042 calories for the normal adult provided only about 65 percent of the minimum caloric feeding level which experts consider necessary even on a highly restricted basis. . . . Since there is no significant food product which is not rationed, the only means of supplementing the rationed diet is by home production, gifts, and black market purchases.”11 Further, the average civilian’s ration, which was already inadequate for survival, did not arrive with the regularity that the government promised. Beginning in March 1946, residents in Tokyo and Yokohama began experiencing long delays, reductions, and even cancellations of their rations. The same report states that the average

50

not an easy road

Tokyo resident received 70 percent of the official ration, or roughly 775 calories per day between March and June of 1946.12 Basic goods sold at the sprawling black markets, however, were anything but cheap to the average Japanese. The increasing ratio of currency to basic goods spawned an inflationary spiral, which was reflected in both official and black market prices, though much more so in the latter. Official wholesale prices increased by a full 539 percent by the end of the first year of occupation, 336 percent in the second year, 256 percent in the third year, and 127 percent in the fourth. In comparison, black market prices during the first year of occupation averaged roughly thirty-four times official prices and fell to fourteen times official prices by the end of 1946, nine times in 1947, five times in 1948, and double in 1949.13 The prevalence of the black market economy challenged the image of a democratizing Japan and lent credence to the notion that the same coterie of industrial and military leaders who led the country during the war indirectly controlled the economy after it ended. The first Diet committee to investigate the issue of hoarded and concealed goods, which did not convene until July 1947, estimated that roughly three hundred billion yen worth of goods had been siphoned from the state into private hands.14 A Nippon Times article from April 26, 1948, “Only Scratches Surface: Main Problem of Hoarded Goods Held Not Being Tackled in Official Probe,” illustrates how prominently the issue of stolen or hoarded public goods figured into political debates, and, at the same time, how few of the goods the government actually recovered. The hoarded goods investigation by the Diet committee is uncovering startling testimony about the use of huge sums by politicians but competent observers said that by emphasizing the political use of money from hoarded goods, the Diet committee is merely scratching the surface of the problem. The main problem, these people say, is to discover what happened to the hundreds of billions of yen worth of food, clothing, jewels, precious metals, cash, and industrial raw materials which the Japanese Army and Navy had at the time of surrender. This fabulous hoard was to have been turned over to the Japanese people through the government’s Home Ministry—but was not. Part of it went to political leaders, according to information being uncovered by the Diet investigating committee. But a far greater part went to others. . . .

not an easy road

51

Occupation officials have charged, however, that the hidden goods are the basis for the blackmarket operations of Japan, and that the blackmarket operations are the basis for financing the “kuromaku” or “hidden government” that is still exercising control in Japan despite the purges and the democratization program.15

As the article makes evident, members of the press, particularly the Nippon Times, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Asahi Shimbun, regularly exposed scandals concerning the activities of underworld bosses and police corruption, often at the risk of their own physical well-being. Despite the press’s spotlighting of the issue, the Diet committees were unable to recover more than a tiny fraction of the stolen goods and monies that political leaders and gangsters had pilfered from state coffers. The glaring inequalities in access to basic goods contributed to the appeal of the Communist Party, which sought to remind people that mismanagement and corruption were the true causes of the postwar shortages rather than scarcity. The Communist Party’s forthright accusations of high-level pilfering and mismanagement were convincing to many who observed the open operation of black markets in places such as Ueno’s Ame-Yoko market. In addition to selling chewing gum, chocolate, cigarettes, and alcohol, the black market became an unloading point for diverted rice and wheat flour, which, again, vendors most often served in the form of Chu- ka soba and other “stamina” foods rich with garlic and oil. As the centrality of food in managing the populations under its command became apparent to the Americans, the Truman administration assembled a cabinet-level committee to improve coordination among state agencies to manage the aid. In February 1946, the secretaries of the U.S. War Department, Commerce Department, Department of Agriculture, and Department of State formed the Combined Food Board to discuss how to distribute scarce food resources across the territories under Allied occupation. Japan, however, was only one of many occupied areas on the verge of famine, and the U.S. administration did not treat it as a higher priority than other zones under its jurisdiction. Cables exchanged between the secretary of war and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers between February and May 1946 indicate that the U.S. government considered Japan’s situation alongside those of other occupied and unoccupied areas in urgent need of food, and that the U.S. administration’s fundamental

52

not an easy road

position was that the onus of feeding the Japanese population rested upon the Japanese themselves. A February 28 cable states: In view of the U.S. obligation to assist in preventing extreme hunger, in some areas approaching a famine condition, the discussion resolved itself into these questions: (1) What are conditions in Japan as compared with those in other areas? (2) What are the capabilities of the Japanese to provide for themselves? (3) How can the available resources be increased? (4) How can transportation problems particularly in internal transport [given the labor strikes taking place] in the U.S. be resolved to increase shipments of foodstuffs? Regarding the need for supplies in Japan it was emphasized that your reported estimate of 1600–2100 calories intake per day per urban consumer is high as compared with some other areas and that rigid controls of rationing should be exerted at once to reduce the rate of consumption to the lowest possible level consistent with the present directives to prevent mass starvation and widespread disease and unrest.16

In short, the U.S. administration proposed that the primary solution to the food problem in Japan was to reduce the rate of consumption to the lowest level possible without sparking a humanitarian or political crisis and to increase domestic production. Japan’s shortage of food and its effect in driving the nation leftward politically were similar to the situation in Korea. Both countries competed for U.S. aid and received it only after protests demanding better access to food and basic necessities jolted the U.S. occupation forces into action out of a fear that they were fueling the attractiveness of the Communist Party as a radical alternative to the status quo. Although the severity of Japan’s food shortage was apparent by February 1946, MacArthur’s jurisdiction over all occupied territories in the Far East made it necessary for him to consider the situation in Japan alongside other areas such as Korea and the Ryukyus (Okinawa), and in some cases to divert food from one place to another. A series of top-secret cables from April 1946 reveals that MacArthur decided to divert wheat flour shipments en route to Japan to Korea instead in order to counter the influence of “leftist elements” there. One cable dated April 13, 1946, from MacArthur to General Dwight Eisenhower, the U.S. Army chief of staff, states:

not an easy road

53

I am considering authorizing an immediate diversion from allocation of wheat to Japan of a token shipment of twenty-five thousand tons to Korea to alleviate a serious psychological and political crisis wherein adverse leftist elements are capitalizing on present food shortage. I am convinced that failure to provide this token shipment at once will constitute a serious threat to United States Military Government in Korea. Food requirements program for Korea has been submitted to the War Department in my radio C-59678 supplemented by information transmitted during a telecon with Colonel Gilchrist and Craig of the Department of Agriculture. During the telecon referred to it was indicated shipments of foodstuffs to Korea would have to be met from commitments already made to Japan and further that April shipments to Japan would shortfall by fifty or sixty thousand tons. The aforementioned changes in programming are untenable and are positive threats to the objectives of the Occupation both in Korea and Japan. In spite of very active cooperation by the Japanese government in increasing collection, conserving existing food stocks and increasing indigenous production, including fish, the presently approved allocations will fall short of meeting quantities required to prevent widespread malnutrition, disease, and unrest. The report to Washington by the food mission headed by Colonel Roger L. Harrison confirms these facts and emphasizes the seriousness of the situation. I strongly urge your intervention in obtaining high level consideration of the Korean food requirements as submitted by me and in obtaining firm commitment to replace the twenty-five thousand tons diverted shipment and to readjust later cereals shipments to Japan to compensate for shortfall expected in April shipments.17

Despite MacArthur’s efforts to obtain replacements for the wheat diverted to Korea, Eisenhower was unable to fulfill the requests for additional food. In the end, MacArthur decided to divert more than sixteen thousand tons of wheat to Korea instead of the twenty-five thousand tons originally planned. In the final top-secret memo concerning the diversion of food to Korea, dated April 26, 1946, MacArthur notified General Hodge, the highest-ranking U.S. officer there, that he was sending two cargoes of wheat to quell the threat of leftist unrest: Latest advice is that despite making every effort to obtain additional foodstuffs for this theatre, War Department sees no possibility now for obtaining any commitment from Department of Agriculture or from combined food board to replace any wheat shipped for Japan if diverted to Korea.

54

not an easy road

However, in view of serious Korean political situation, and despite critical position of Japanese food supply of which you have already been informed, I will divert to Korea two cargoes of wheat due to arrive in Japan first week May. Approximate tonnage one cargo 8,300 tons. ETA will be radioed earliest.18

The series of cables reveals the extent to which food was at the center of U.S. attempts to drive political support away from “leftist elements” in Korea, as well as how closely connected the Japanese and Korean food situations were. The contest over food between occupied Japan and occupied Korea was but a smaller version of the competition over scarce American food resources that occurred between the areas of Asia and Europe under U.S. military control. While MacArthur wrestled with how to divide the emergency wheat shipments among various occupied areas in the Pacific, Eisenhower made the larger decisions concerning the division of shipments between the European and Asian areas under U.S. occupation. As a matter of policy, Asians received much less food per capita than Europeans. A top-secret memorandum from Eisenhower to MacArthur on the subject, “Food Crisis in Germany and Japan,” dated April 27, 1946, reveals the challenge Eisenhower faced in allocating scarce food resources between the two largest U.S.-occupied countries. The report states, “In both countries the original meager civilian food ration was reduced to a dangerous minimum when the critical world grain shortage became evident. In the hope of maintaining a 1275-calorie ration, a total of 150,000 tons of grains were allocated for Germany for the months of April, May and June. Allocations for Japan, in order to maintain an approximate 800-calorie ration during the same period, called for 450,000 tons of grain.”19 Although the quantity of food sent to Japan was triple the amount sent to Germany, the German ration of 1,275 calories a day was roughly 60 percent higher than the Japanese ration of 800 calories. The Truman administration’s insistence that the Japanese population feed itself although it knew that domestic production levels were dangerously low, and the administration’s diversion of much-needed food to other occupied areas such as Korea, created a highly volatile atmosphere for the Japanese police and U.S. troops in the spring of 1946.

not an easy road

55

The discrepancy between German and Japanese rations was just one manifestation of inequality in U.S. food policy toward subjects in occupied areas. Another such policy was a directive from the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers establishing different ration levels for “Occidental” and “Oriental” foreign nationals living in Japan. According to a January 15, 1946, memorandum titled “Rations for Foreign Nationals,” written by Courtney Whitney, MacArthur’s chief of staff: 1. It is understood that a directive, prepared in the Economic and Scientific Section, on the above subject is being processed for dispatch to the Japanese Government. The proposed directive establishes a ration of 2,400 calories for Occidental foreign nationals and 1,800 calories for Oriental foreign nationals. Such differentiation purports to be based on higher food needs of the Occidental races. 2. Regardless of the soundness of the scientific assumptions on which the distinction between Occidentals and Orientals is proposed to be made, such a distinction in a directive from this Headquarters would: (a) impair our relations with our Allies, such as the Chinese, (b) contravene the announced policy of eliminating racism and discrimination based on race, and (c) render the Supreme Commander vulnerable to the accusation that he is fostering a doctrine of white supremacy. 3. It is suggested that, if a distinction is required in order to assure that non-Japanese residents of Japan receive a minimum food ration, some classification other than race be devised. Under the basic occupation directive, (JCS 1380/15), practical measures must be taken “to insure the health and welfare of the United Nations nationals”; (Par. 8 c). No special treatment is required or authorized for nationals of enemy or neutral nations. 4. In short, for a Headquarters representing the Allied Powers to favor Germans and Italians simply because they are of the white race above Filipinos, Chinese, and Koreans would be an anomaly, and would put this Headquarters in an unfavorable light. At the risk of favoring (from a purely dietetic standpoint) our Oriental Allies, any directive should give them a food ration at least equal to Occidental enemies.20

Although MacArthur’s office preemptively aborted the directive due to fear of bad publicity, the document illustrates the extent to which scientific views concerning racial disparities in nutritional needs still prevailed among the top-ranking members of the occupying forces. It also shows that Whitney’s effort to disavow the overt racism of the policy was prima-

56

not an easy road

rily driven by a strategic interest in improving the image of the United States in the eyes of Asian Allies. The shortage of food in Tokyo became so severe that by early May, hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children began protesting the inadequacy of food rations and the scale of black market corruption. Although the protests did not turn into violent uprisings, as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers and the War Department had feared, they signaled to the Americans that hunger had brought urban Japanese to their breaking point. The possibility that food shortages in Japan and Germany would lead to violent rebellion against the Allied troops appeared high enough in late April 1946 to warrant a top-secret memorandum from Eisenhower to President Truman warning of the need to increase either the amount of food or the number of troops in these two areas. The last two paragraphs relate the urgency of the situation from the army’s point of view: Reduced German and Japanese food rations will be well below the bare subsistence level, in which case disease and widespread unrest will develop in both occupation areas. From the military point of view, without regard to the long-term political consequences of such a development, requirements for major increases in the size of our occupation forces, to control unrest and preserve order, must be anticipated as an inevitable consequence. It is understood that the Secretaries of State, War and the Navy are presenting urgent proposals designed to alleviate this extremely grave situation. From the military point of view, immediate and drastic action is clearly indicated.21

The document confirms that Eisenhower requested emergency food shipments in order to quell the possibility of violent rebellion, which would have required additional combat forces from the United States that were not readily available. The U.S. government provided the emergency food shipments as loans, not aid, and expected the Japanese government to pay the full price of the shipments as soon as it recovered its ability to do so. As the report “Food Situation during the First Year of Occupation” states, “It should be pointed out that the food imports to Japan during the past year have not been in the form of direct relief. They have been commercial exports for which Japan is being charged in full at current U.S. prices.”22

not an easy road

57

The Chu- ka soba made from U.S. wheat was therefore costly in ways unknown to those in Japan enjoying it. Not only did the United States charge the Japanese government full export prices for the emergency food aid, but it also stipulated that the Japanese compensate the occupying forces for most of the expenses incurred as a result of their occupation. John Dower notes, Only after the Americans arrived did the Japanese learn that they would be required to pay a major portion of the costs of housing and supporting the gigantic army of occupation. As it turned out, these latter expenditures amounted to a staggering one-third of the regular budget at the beginning of the occupation. . . . While some 3.7 million families still lacked housing of their own as of 1948, the government was required to direct a substantial portion of its annual budget to providing housing and facilities for their conquerors—and, indeed, ensuring that these met American living standards.23

Due to the Americans’ strict control over the Japanese press, however, the Japanese rarely, if ever, learned of the cost of the occupation to Japan, and instead they were educated about the generosity and mercy of the United States for providing food relief. Food is not immune to the rewriting of history.

calories and communism The onset of the Cold War in Asia led the United States to reverse its punitive approach with respect to food policy in Japan and initiate a massive effort to alleviate starvation. In this way, there was an important geopolitical purpose behind the wheat that became Chu- ka soba and other foods, which was to stave off the rise of Communism in Japan. To this end, in the spring of 1947 the U.S. government shifted from expecting the Japanese economy to recover on its own to actively devising a policy to aid in its reindustrialization. The shift was the result of the Truman administration’s policy of containment of the Soviet Union by means of German and Japanese economic revival. As the impending fall of the U.S.-allied Nationalist Government to Communist forces in China became apparent by early 1947, the United

58

not an easy road

States withdrew its troops from that conflict (while continuing to supply arms and provisions) and shifted toward a geopolitical strategy of Communist containment through the reconstitution of Japanese military and economic power. In March 1947 a cabinet-level group of U.S. leaders, including Navy Secretary James Forrestal, Commerce Secretary Averell Harriman, Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson, Secretary of War Robert Patterson, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, Undersecretary of the Army William Draper, and former president Herbert Hoover met to develop a long-term plan to reincorporate Japan into a U.S.-allied economic bloc of capitalist countries in the Pacific Rim. Understood geographically as a “Great Crescent” spanning from South to East Asia, the bloc was to include Pakistan, India, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Thailand, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Formosa, and Korea, the bloc closely resembling Japan’s wartime Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in both its demarcation and conceptualization.24 One of the main policy tools that the United States used to hold off Soviet influence in these countries was food aid. In April 1947 the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a report titled “Assistance to Other Countries from the Standpoint of National Security,” which stressed America’s strategic interest in rehabilitating the Japanese economy and military. The report noted, “Of all the countries in the Pacific area Japan deserves primary consideration for current United States assistance designed to restore her economic and military potential.”25 This was a notable departure from the Truman administration’s initial approach of taking no responsibility for Japan’s economic recovery, as asserted in the February 1946 cable mentioned above. As a result of the shift, administration officials in Washington sent 1.571 million metric tons of rice equivalents to Japan during fiscal year 1947 instead of the 1.018 metric tons that had been promised earlier the same year.26 The American food imports were the most basic component of the U.S. Cold War strategy of reindustrializing the Japanese and German economies. The restoration of productive capacity clearly could not occur without first addressing the shortage of food among workers in key industries such as coal mining. An occupation document titled “Supplementary Distribution of Commodities for Workers,” dated 1949, details the history, purpose, and specifics of a wartime supplementary ration program for

not an easy road

59

heavy industrial workers that the Americans enhanced to jumpstart reindustrialization. The report states: The system of special allocation of commodities for workers has been in effect since 1941 when the shortage of essential commodities was widespread. Its objective was to increase worker efficiency and reduce absenteeism. After the surrender the already war-disrupted living conditions deteriorated still further. Hence the importance of supplementary distribution of commodities to workers increased. In November 1946 the Japanese Government adopted a policy of strengthening the existing supplementary distribution program for workers in industry. Since June 1947 this policy has been recognized not only as a measure for the protection of the worker’s livelihood but also as an important means in accomplishing the national economic stabilization objectives. In May 1948 the present organization and procedure for the distribution of supplementary commodities for workers was introduced. . . . The supplementary allotment of staple food is essential to the supplementary distribution plan. The special food program covers almost all establishments engaged in mining, manufacturing, gas and electricity supply, land and maritime transportation, construction and public works activities. A few manufacturing activities of minor importance are excluded. Protective service workers, such as hospital nurses, are included in the program. The total number of workers receiving supplementary rations of staple food approximates 7.3 million.27

The document highlights the connection between workers’ nutrition and national economic recovery and marks June 1947 as the beginning of the U.S. government’s adoption of a policy recognizing this point. The timing is noteworthy, for it came shortly after the Truman administration’s decision to hasten the recovery of the Japanese economy in the cabinet-level meetings mentioned earlier. In addition, the report shows that the U.S. government began administering the new system for distributing food aid to high-priority population groups in May 1948, averting a third consecutive summer of severe food shortages and resultant protests. Nutritional surveys conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare during the occupation also show the U.S. authorities’ elevated interest in quantifying and fortifying Japanese labor power after the intensification of the Cold War in 1947. The Ministry of Health and Welfare had already

60

not an easy road

begun conducting detailed surveys on the nutritional health of the population under orders from the U.S. military in 1945 by calculating the caloric intake of six thousand families in Tokyo. The surveys, taken against a backdrop of malnutrition and scarcity, focused on nutritional adequacy by counting calories to determine the quantity of food imports required from the United States. In 1947, the government began collecting data on height and weight as well, coinciding with the U.S. reversal of course and its newfound emphasis on providing food for workers in strategic industries. In 1948, the government completed the first detailed survey of the entire population, including those living in the countryside. The new nationwide surveys were carried out around the same time that the United States decided to begin pursuing national economic recovery for Japan as its top priority there. In 1952, the last year of U.S. occupation, the government enacted the Nutritional Improvement Act (Eiyo- Kaizen Ho-), which mandated that the Ministry of Health and Welfare conduct periodic surveys on the nutritional and physical health of the population.28 The dependence on American wheat imports during the occupation set Japan on a long-term course of food importation that would set the stage for the flourishing of ramen and other wheat-based foods in later decades. The move toward rice substitutes, which was a trend that began after World War I, fundamentally transformed the dietary patterns of people in Japan. When cooking the American wheat flour (merikenko) at home, most housewives used it to cook hardtack and other crude forms of bread, dumplings (suiton), and homemade noodles (udon). Among these, the increase in bread consumption was the most drastic. According to Otsuka, a historian of wheat flour, the amount of bread consumed in Japan increased from 262,121 tons in 1948 to 611,784 tons in 1951 as a result of the boost in American wheat.29 On the black market, Chu- ka soba, yakisoba, okonomiyaki, and other delicacies using American wheat were available for a heavy markup. The occupation authorities conducted detailed surveys of housewives in Japan to find out how people were consuming the imported wheat. The Civil Information and Education Section’s report “Survey of Bread and Flour Utilization by the Japanese People,” published on March 3, 1950, contained the results of a study on the use of flour by Japanese households. According to the report,

not an easy road

61

The Japanese people are far from whole-hearted in their acceptance of bread and tend to regard it as a temporary expedient rather than as a permanently desirable part of the diet. Most housewives would prefer their ration in the form of flour [as opposed to bread]. In rural areas, home processing of flour products is most common; in urban areas, store processing is most common. However, most families do have flour processed commercially from time to time. When using commercial processing, about the same number of housewives have udon made up as have bread made up (urban housewives have more bread, and rural housewives have more udon made up). But in home processing, udon is prepared more commonly than bread, particularly in rural areas.30

The American effort to study Japanese eating habits was part of an overall attempt to strengthen the workforce and stimulate economic production. The attempt to reshape Japanese dietary patterns based on American food practices was also evident in the school lunch program. Bread, biscuits, and powdered milk were staples of the daily meal guaranteed initially only to children enrolled in elementary schools in large cities, but later they were offered to all Japanese schoolchildren, regardless of their age or location. Not only was the school lunch program vital in creating the sturdy workforce necessary for a strategic anti-Communist ally, but it also served as a powerful propaganda device to legitimize the occupation in the eyes of the occupied. In addition, the program was an important publicity tool for the Truman administration to secure funding from Congress for aid to a still unpopular Japan. A memorandum produced by the Public Health and Welfare Division concerning the allocation of imports for the school lunch program, dated May 25, 1948, illustrates both the program’s usefulness in helping the occupying forces obtain funding from Congress and the high-level U.S. involvement in seeing through its success, as represented by former president Herbert Hoover’s personal participation: “Mr. Hoover’s advice was to the effect that indigenous products and necessary imports be earmarked for a School Lunch Program, and the experience that was obtained in the German School Lunch Program was outlined wherein a definite allocation for the school feeding program was devised so that any cut-back in imports to sustain the indigenous food economy would not affect the school feeding plan.”31

62

not an easy road

As mentioned above, Hoover was one of the key planners at the cabinet-level meetings in which the Truman administration developed the postwar strategy of Soviet containment in Asia through the formulation of the anti-Communist Great Crescent. His direct personal involvement in the school lunch program in both Japan and Germany, and the National Security Council meetings at which the policies outlining the Great Crescent were decided, highlights the significance of U.S. food aid in foreign policy. The Americans diligently advertised their own purported generosity in providing their recently defeated foes with emergency food aid. Beginning in 1948, for example, the Office of the Supreme Commander initiated a publicity drive to inform households that the imported food was purely the result of American beneficence, and that the United States was under no legal or moral obligation to provide it. To this end, the Americans “advised” the Japanese government to announce each arrival of wheat cargo in newsreels and press releases to remind the Japanese of their generosity. An undated Civil Information and Education Section report details some of the occupation’s efforts to inform the Japanese public of three main points: 1) how to consume the imported foodstuffs, 2) the high nutritional value of the imported foods, and 3) the American people’s generosity in providing the food. According to the report, the Civil Information and Education Section’s officers “assisted” the Japanese government in producing four leaflets, two manuals, and two posters to be distributed nationwide as part of its campaign to inform the public. In addition, the report notes that forty-nine press releases, three press conferences, daily radio programs, an essay contest for Tokyo schoolchildren “on the theme of appreciation for imported foods,” and even a motion picture produced by Riken Motion Picture Company, Affection Across the Sea, aimed to drive home America’s munificence in providing food imports.32 The undated leaflet “How to Cook Your Food Ration,” produced by the Civil Information and Education Section, is another example of efforts to publicize the nutritional value of the imported food and the United States’ generosity in providing it. The leaflet contains a drawing of a muscular man holding up a tray with many loaves of bread, as if he were a weightlifter. The caption reads, “Protein is a body builder. Wheat flour contains

not an easy road

63

50% more protein than rice. America is spending $250 million for your food. Learn to use it properly to get the full benefit.”33 Despite the publicity concerning American generosity, the Japanese government eventually repaid the United States for the food and other aid it received during the occupation. In January 1962, the Japanese government agreed to reimburse the United States $495 million over a fifteen-year period for the food, raw materials, and fuel that it had imported during the occupation, in addition to the estimated $5 billion it had already spent as “war termination costs” to support the foreign troops.34 In short, the Japanese taxpayers footed the bill for the food they consumed, yet the American narrative about its generosity in Japan’s greatest time of need became a foundational part of Japan’s own official postwar history as well. In addition to an inability to resist self-congratulation, the United States’ efforts to advertise its generosity stemmed from a desire to counter Communist Party communications maintaining that economic mismanagement and corruption rather than material scarcity were to blame for the shortage of food. The availability of Shina soba at the black markets, for example, was evidence of the diversion of wheat from smallscale milling factories to noodle vendors through backdoor channels, where profits were generated at the expense of the general good. As a result of the glaring corruption, Communist Party leaders delivered speeches and composed communiqués urging farmers to withhold their rice from government collectors, urbanites to demand access to betterquality food from rationing boards, and politicians to end their complicity in the black market economy. Staff at the U.S. occupation’s Civil Intelligence Section routinely gathered, translated, and forwarded these communiqués and speeches by leftist leaders to the Office of the Supreme Commander to provide a detailed view of the overall threat to the U.S. objectives from the Japanese Communist Party. For example, the Civil Intelligence Section translated one Communist Party communiqué from April 8, 1948, “We must constantly propagandize that the production of rice and wheat in Japan is sufficient to meet her demands. We must expose the fact that the diverting into blackmarket channels of food is due to the negligence of the bureaucrats and the corruptness of the rationing mechanism. We must propagandize especially that to depend

64

not an easy road

on foreign countries for food will place us under the control of foreign countries and that this will lead to the destruction of the race.”35 A topsecret General Headquarters translation of a Communist leader’s speech in Shimane-ken from March 16, 1948, also shows how the Communist Party’s policies aimed to disrupt the U.S. government’s objectives with respect to food. Subject: Communist Speaks in Opposition to Rice Delivery 1. The following information received from a reliable source is submitted for your information. - ichi, Communist Party official, 2. On 23 February 1948, Miyawaki Ryu made the following statements at a meeting of Communists held at the Daiko-ji Temple, Ibano-mura, Hikawa-gun, Shimane-ken: The delivery of rice is annoying the farmers so much that some of the most needy have even hanged themselves. The newspapers avoid reporting such tragedies. It is not a bit necessary for farmers to deliver any part of their hoyu-mai (rice quota for living) in order to complete their rice delivery quota; as long as they do not sell all or part of their delivery quota to illegal channels. Some youth organizations posted bills, etc., warning farmers against the blackmarket, but I contend that before doing so, they should make the authorities decide on a more reasonable quota so that the farmers can complete their delivery one hundred per cent. The reason why the delivery was short in the West Iwami section of Shimane-ken was that the Communist Party’s drive against the unfair rice quota was effective. In comparison, in the Izumo area, the farmers delivered exorbitant quotas of rice because there our Party was not so powerful. 36

The preceding documents illustrate the importance of food to both the U.S. occupation and the Communist Party in their public relations efforts. For the occupation forces, the task was to educate the Japanese to appreciate the American military presence rather than to resent it, and food aid was an effective way to render the humiliation more palpable. For the Communist Party, the aim was to garner support for a radical revamping of the Japanese economy, to put farmers and workers rather than capital owners and their political allies in control of political decision making. The battle for Japanese hearts and minds would therefore occur in large part through food, making American wheat a highly effective public relations tool.

not an easy road

65

back to l if e Chu- ka soba resurfaced in Tokyo as a result of the increase in wheat imports from the United States despite a prohibition against most forms of food vending stipulated by the Emergency Measures Ordinance for Eating and Drinking Establishments that lasted until February 15, 1950. Some restaurants operated legally under the rationing system, obtaining licenses from local authorities to collect ration tickets in exchange for serving food. Most, however, operated without a license, leading to the arrest of thousands of Chu- ka soba cooks during the occupation. The spike in the consumption of noodle soup made from imported lard and flour was particularly important between June and October of 1946 and in the same months of 1947, when stored rice supplies reached their minimum and American wheat provided the missing calories needed for survival. Flour-milling companies often diverted some flour to black market vendors, who would use it to produce Chu- ka soba and other foods. Okumura Ayao notes that the Shina soba and gyo-za dumplings sold at the yatai became increasingly popular immediately after the war because of their perceived value in providing stamina: In the cities, many returnees began operating yatai serving gyo-za and Shina soba (which would eventually become Chu- ka soba), where long lines of customers would form. The idea that the people above all needed to absorb more nutrition led to the popularity of these foods, which were relatively cheap and considered nutritious. The reason that Japanese gyo-za dumplings are so garlicky is that garlic was thought to provide high levels of stamina, which fit the early postwar era of empty stomachs. The soup in the Chu- ka soba of that time was not simmered for a long time and was not as appealing as the soup found today, but it contained floating shiny fat and gave off a strong odor of chicken bones. The smell of the alkali water and the many people waiting would combine together to give anyone who ate a bowl an energized feeling.37

Okumura’s argument that Chinese food became popular in the immediate postwar period because of its perceived value in providing energy to those who ate it illustrates the extent to which the studies of nutrition conducted by the military and government-affiliated institutes had already succeeded in influencing the popular perception of Chinese food as nutritious and

66

not an easy road

filling. U.S.-generated publicity concerning the superiority of protein derived from wheat flour and animal sources also enhanced the perception of Chinese food. In short, the desperateness of the food situation contributed to the desirability of foods considered filling and nutritious, and noodles as well as bread and dumplings made from wheat were a central part of the diet during the occupation. Okumura also explains why so many operators of small businesses chose selling Chinese noodles over other ventures: In 1950, the government eliminated controls on the exchange of wheat flour, which led to a sharp increase in the number of Chu- ka soba shops. These shops were also relatively easy to start up. Large corporations began to rent out yatai start-up sets inclusive of noodles, soup base, hot water, toppings, bowls, and chopsticks, which operators would rent and then walk around town blowing their charumera flute, keeping a given percentage of the sales. Even then, the hikiko (one who pulls a yatai cart around) earned plenty of money. This Chu- ka soba was made from surplus American wheat flour.38

As Okumura notes, returnees from the colonies and war areas were responsible for the initial revival of Chu- ka soba during the occupation. Many of the returnees who were repatriated from China and Taiwan took up noodle making by opening small yatai operations of the kind described in the short story by Satomura Kinzo- in chapter 1. The relatively low cost of establishing a yatai, as well as the availability of American flour and lard compared with rice, made noodle making a viable option for many people returning to Japan with no capital. The difficulty Japanese returnees experienced in reestablishing themselves in their home country after the war, and the refuge many took in the operation of yatai and other food businesses, endowed ramen with an aura of struggle and perseverance that anchored the dish to the hunger that figured centrally in the history of the postwar period. In addition to the Japanese returnees, many of those serving Chu- ka soba in the black markets of Tokyo and other large cities were Koreans and Chinese who worked for underworld gangs as vendors. Arrest records for unlicensed vendors reveal a high frequency of non-Japanese names among those selling food, particularly Chu- ka soba. For example, an occupation record of arrested vendors dated September 18, 1948, reveals that

not an easy road

67

of the 191 names registered, twenty were arrested solely for serving food, while the 171 others were arrested for serving some form of alcohol, usually moonshine known as kasutori sho-chu- . Of these twenty, nine were detained for the sole offense of serving Chu- ka soba, two for serving wantan (wonton soup), two for serving udon, two for serving soba, two for serving sushi, and three for serving “rice with dishes.” All but one of the nine serving Chu- ka soba had non-Japanese names. Thirty of the 191 arrestees in this sample have non-Japanese names, and, assuming that some of those with Japanese names were Koreans and Chinese who had changed names under pressure during the colonial era, it is clear that nonJapanese comprised a considerable portion of small vendors in the black market.39 The established historical narrative concerning ramen as offered by the Raumen Museum, Nissin Foods Corporation, and food authors such as Okumura tends to emphasize the role of returnees in popularizing Chu- ka soba while rarely mentioning Korean and Chinese laborers, who also comprised a significant portion of the noodle vendors. In this manner, the story concerning returnees opening yatai serving Chu- ka soba after the war has the effect of supplanting the immense role of non-Japanese in popularizing the dish after the war as well. Instead, the established narrative confines the influence of foreigners to the earliest phase of the dish’s introduction, omitting the untidy issues of decolonization and the contributions of non-Japanese residents to Japan’s food industry. The focus on the hardships and resilience of Japanese returnees from “war areas” (a term that displaces “colonies”) actively overlooks the critical role played by non-Japanese, who were also central to the reemergence of Chu- ka soba in the late 1940s. The frequent appearance of Chu- ka soba in early postwar popular culture illustrates the dish’s ubiquity in relation to other foods as a result of U.S. occupation policy, as well as its heightened symbolism as a food of the working class, the young, the urban, and the masculine. At the same time, the dish’s Chinese symbolism became increasingly thin, reflecting the invisibility of China in Japan’s foreign imaginary after the war, a situation undoubtedly influenced by the lack of diplomatic ties between Japan and the mainland government. Most ramen shop owners were Japanese, and the dish lost its sense of ethnic difference, which contrasted with the situ-

68

not an easy road

ation of barbecue restaurants in Japan, which were owned nearly exclusively by Koreans. As the American wheat used to make Chu- ka soba alleviated hunger and generated labor power that stimulated the industrial recovery of Japan’s urban areas, the dish was frequently alluded to in popular cultural productions. Radio, film, and music were the three primary media that captured the pulse of urban society and depicted Chu- ka soba dining culture. Artists and directors used the dish to represent various aspects of everyday life in early postwar Japan, such as the desperate food situation and the growing gap between the dietary habits of the young and old, as well as to mark gender and class differences between certain characters. One example of the ubiquity of ramen in popular culture can be found in the NHK radio program known as Tonchi Kyo-shitsu (Riddle classroom), which provided comic relief to Japanese listeners for two decades, often by using clever wordplay to offer a subtle social critique. In the first episode of the program, broadcast on January 4, 1949, the food shortage was the main theme. A poem incorporating the syllables from the Japanese word for graffiti (rakugaki) related the impact of food scarcity on young couples: Ra-men bakkari kutteru de’eto. Gamaguchi sabishi’i kino- kyo-. Aibiki mo wabishi’i mono datta. Eating nothing but ramen on a date. With an empty wallet, yesterday and today. The tryst was most disappointing.40

The verse describes the unromantic nature of the noodle soup shop and reveals how commonplace ramen is compared to other foods as a result of the supply of American wheat. The poem also conveys a sense of poverty and inadequacy represented by the repeated consumption of ramen. The suggestion is that ramen is an inexpensive and unremarkable food that the poet would not be consuming so regularly if other foods were more readily available, and that his inability to take his date anywhere else is a reflection of his powerlessness.

not an easy road

69

Hunger was a perpetual theme in the show’s first season. In another episode of the popular radio program, Professor Aoki, the narrator, read poems from members of the audience that used syllables from a given word to begin each word of the poem. In an early episode from 1949, Professor Aoki provided the word taue-uta (rice-planting song) to the audience, to which one respondent spontaneously composed a poem beginning with each of the syllables, “I want to eat a bunch of omelet, fresh-water eel, pork cutlet, and deep-fried shrimp for free” (Tamago yaki, unagi, katsuteki, ebifurai, unto takusan tada de tabetai).41 As the show’s transcripts make clear, talking about gourmet foods that had become scarce as a result of defeat in war was a common pastime of the late 1940s and featured prominently in works of popular culture. Ramen reappeared early in the postwar period in Ozu Yasujiro-’s film Ochazuke no Aji (The taste of green tea over rice), released in the last year of the occupation (1952). The plot centers on a middle-aged woman who is bored with her husband and wants to go for a vacation, but in a subplot, the couple’s niece resists their attempts at matchmaking and goes on an adventure in the city, where she enters a pachinko parlor and a ramen shop. A young student and friend of the uncle, played by Tsuruta Ko-ji, helps the well-to-do niece, played by Tsushima Keiko, navigate the city. In an important scene the noodle soup is referred to as ra-men, making it the first known use of the term in Japanese film. Ozu uses ramen as a symbol of socioeconomic stratification and differences in the food habits of men and women in Ochazuke no Aji, his second studio film featuring the noodle soup. The ramen that the student buys for the young niece from the proper family during their outing in the city’s downtown district is unfamiliar to her, highlighting the gap in privilege between the two characters. In a short scene the two engage in the following dialogue: noboru: It’s tasty, isn’t it? setsuko: Yeah, it is. noboru: The soup is what’s tasty about ramen. Food like this cannot just be

tasty though. It has to be cheap too. setsuko: Is that so?

70

not an easy road

noboru: There are a lot of cheap and tasty places out there. On the opposite side

of that guardrail is a yakitori shop. That place is tasty too. Let’s go next time. Setsuko: Yeah, please take me.42

The male student’s familiarity with ramen and other working-class foods, as contrasted with the well-to-do woman’s lack of awareness, shows the gendered, class-specific image projected by consumption of the dish. Since those who most often ate the dish were manual workers and students, the young woman’s exploration of the poorer side of city life suggests her defiance of bourgeois conventions of female propriety, as well as her trust in the pachinko-playing student. Another example of the use of ramen in early postwar cinema is Naruse Mikio’s Bangiku (Late chrysanthemums), released in 1954. One of the four main characters is a single mother who must part with her only daughter, who is soon to be married and move away with her new husband. In one of the central scenes of the film, the daughter decides to treat her mother to a meal before she leaves, taking her to a Chinese eatery. The mother, though appreciative, reminds her daughter that this is the first time the daughter has treated her to a meal. As the two silently eat Chu- ka soba together, the daughter’s marked enthusiasm for the dish and the mother’s disdain symbolize the vastness of the generation gap.43 The scene makes it evident that to a middle-aged mother from a middle-class background in Japan at the time, ramen still could not be eaten without a sense of embarrassment. From the mother’s point of view, to enjoy ramen was to betray her sense of propriety informed by prevailing class and gender norms. The bowl of ramen was therefore not an appropriate expression of filial piety to her, though to the daughter, it was a perfectly reasonable way to express their closeness. Chu- ka soba is also the theme of Misora Hibari’s hit song from 1953, “Charumera soba ya.” Misora, the dominant postwar singer of the popular enka genre, was the first artist to record a hit song with Chinese noodles as the theme. The song identifies the food as charumera soba, referring to the flute played by the roaming vendors of the noodle soup (discussed in chapter 1), and its lyrics indicate the ubiquity of the ramen in this era:

not an easy road

71

Hello everyone, how about some noodles? It’s your charumera girl again I might be small but I go from town to town I am the fun charumera noodle vendor The old man had some drinks and is feeling nice Watch out with that tipsy walk Okay, one order coming right up, slurp, slurp, slurp Thanks for your business. Thanks for waiting Now, in Tokyo you will find your familiar charumera girl Shinjuku, Asakusa, Ueno, Shinbashi I rattle my flute I am the charumera yatai noodle vendor44

The motifs associated with noodle vending in this song are more or less consistent with those in the short story about the Shina soba yatai operator in the short story discussed in chapter 1. The drunken customers, the working-class neighborhood, and the charumera flute are all central to Satomura Kinzo-’s piece as well. Yet the fact that the song’s lyrics feature a young woman instead of a middle-aged man selling the noodles makes the song’s lyrics unconventional, imaginative, and, for some, humorous. Chu-ka soba, as can be seen in the Naruse and Ozu films, was clearly considered masculine, consumed most often by working-class men or students because of its cheapness and heartiness. The female noodle vendor’s coarse language and demeanor combined with her diminutiveness and outward femininity project a tone of fluidity in social relations and carefree merriment associated with Tokyo’s working-class culture, where pushcarts selling Chinese noodle soup reemerged more numerous than they had been before the war. In essence, the reemergence of ramen during the U.S. occupation was a manifestation of Japanese labor power being reconstituted through American wheat. The imports containing supplemental calories for heavy laborers were somehow diverted by profiteering police and thieves into underground trade networks supplying vendors of noodle soup, creating the opportunity for ramen to flourish once again. The availability of ramen on the black market in a time of widespread scarcity endowed the food with a folkloric valence that would resurface in the 1980s and 1990s, as the focus turned toward a documenting of its national historical significance.

3

Move On Up fuel for rapid growth

Ramen became the staple lunch of construction workers and students during Japan’s era of rapid economic growth, 1955–73, when immense building projects and a teeming population of young people from the countryside reshaped life in Tokyo and other major cities. Not only did the availability of ramen rise dramatically, but it developed an image as an affordable meal for people struggling on the margins of the rapidly growing economy. Films, short stories, and magazine articles from this era attest to the increasing availability of ramen and its frequent consumption by those with limited means. Ramen’s move from open-air black markets to modest restaurants in the suburbs and city centers was the result of a rise in purchasing power among all households, as well as a taste for oily and starchy foods among younger Japanese. Between 1955 and 1973, household expenditures on ramen increased by 250 percent,1 despite a 50 percent decline in the proportion of income spent on food.2 Meanwhile, the price of a bowl of ramen increased from 35 yen in 1954 to 250 yen in 1976 due to increased demand for the food as well as inflation.3 In comparison, the cost of one standard serving of curry with rice rose from 100 yen to 300 yen, and the price of a pork cutlet (tonkatsu) rose from 280 to 650 yen during the same period. 72

move on up

73

In the process, ramen rose from a cheap snack served mainly by struggling pushcart vendors to a moderately priced restaurant food worthy of inclusion among statistical surveys by the government in studying the health and well-being of the citizenry. The increase in the sales of ramen resulted from a rise in wheat and meat consumption in general that was mirrored by a decline in the demand for rice, sweet potatoes, and beans. The U.S. government’s policy of encouraging allies to buy American wheat exports at steep discounts and the spread of modern nutritional science in Japan advocating the consumption of wheat, meat, and dairy accounted for much of this change in eating habits. In addition, the postwar baby boom altered demographics in Japan such that there was a new generation of young urban consumers with a taste (and a budget) for eating ramen. In gastronomic terms, the era of rapid growth may also be understood as the era of instant foods. The first instant ramen emerged in 1958, and the cupped version arrived on the market in 1971. As the first instant food popularized nationally in Japan, the Nissin Foods Corporation’s Chikin Ra-men brand of instant noodle soup was a central part of the sweeping changes in food technologies, marketing strategies, and consumption practices that marked the era. Nissin Foods depended heavily on the transformations that were taking place in housing (suburbanization and mass tenement housing) and vending (supermarkets) for its success in selling Chikin Ra-men.4 The company and the entire instant foods industry fundamentally altered the relationship between people and their sustenance in Japan, accelerating the move toward greater convenience and atomization in eating. The story of instant ramen during the high-growth era neatly brings together the aforementioned elements of U.S. wheat consumption (and decreased rice intake), the homogenization of regionally diverse food practices at the national level, and the strong influence of media advertising on food trends.

wheat up, rice down: changing taste buds The rise in the availability of ramen was an emblematic part of a broad and drastic shift toward American foodstuffs (wheat, meat, and dairy)

74

move on up

among people in Japan. Between 1960 and 1975 the average daily protein intake in Japan increased from 69.5 grams to 78.8 grams per person, and the proportion of protein obtained from milk, eggs, and meats grew from 7 percent to 22 percent.5 During the same period the average meat intake increased from 16 to 64 grams per day and wheat consumption increased from 60 to 90 grams per day.6 Food scholars Kazuhiko Kobayashi and Vaclav Smil point to a rise in disposable per capita income resulting from economic growth and the emergence of highly productive agricultural and animal husbandry practices as the two factors most responsible for the shifts in food habits.7 There were also clear political pressures exerted upon Japanese government officials by American representatives of agribusiness to absorb immense amounts of U.S. wheat. The increased availability of wheat flour–based foods was largely the result of American efforts to export Oregonian wheat to Japan and Japanese bureaucrats’ efforts to absorb the wheat by spreading American nutritional science to Japanese housewives.8 Although scientific reinforcement of the notion that Western and Chinese foods were superior sources of nutrition and energy began in the 1920s with the establishment of the Institute for Nutritional Studies in Tokyo, the propagation of these foods truly took off in the late 1950s and 1960s under the guidance of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The Eisenhower administration supported efforts by U.S. agribusiness leaders to boost wheat exports to Japan, and Japanese leaders subsequently accommodated American export interests by promoting the consumption of wheat among Japanese bureaucrats and nutritionists.9 Suzuki Takeo, a food historian, argues authoritatively that the shift in Japanese food habits toward wheat, meat, and dairy in the two decades following the occupation was the result of thorough planning in Washington and Tokyo rather than a matter of taste and happenstance. Though U.S. forces in Japan imported large amounts of wheat as an emergency measure in order to quell the threat of rebellion during the occupation, in the post-occupation period it was the Eisenhower administration that decided to make the commercial export of U.S. agribusiness surpluses to Japan and other Asian allies one of its top economic priorities. The U.S. government’s decision to emphasize the promotion of commercial exports of wheat was largely due to the recovery of Canadian and

move on up

75

Australian production capacity in 1953, which caused world wheat prices to drop and U.S. surpluses to accumulate in government warehouses.10 Wheat became an important tool in America’s Cold War strategy, as noted in chapter 2. The United States used free food (and low-interestrate loans with deferred payment options in the form of food) as an incentive to convince a reluctant Japanese government led by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru to agree to substantially rebuild its armed forces. This policy was further solidified during the Ikeda-Robertson talks of early 1954, when Japan agreed under pressure from U.S. representatives to take on a greater military role in defending its political-economic interests in the region and significantly expand the number of soldiers in its reconstituted military. One of the incentives for Japan was U.S. food aid worth $50 million, which included 600,000 tons of wheat. Of the $50 million raised from the sale of the food in Japan, the United States spent $40 million on economic and military aid for Japan and handed over the remaining $10 million to the Japanese government, which it spent on domestic agricultural restoration and development. In addition to Japan, Italy and Yugoslavia received $6 million each, and Pakistan and Turkey received $3 million each from the United States in the form of food aid.11 The fact that these countries received the most food aid reveals how significant their continued alliance with the United States (or nonalliance with the Soviet Union, in the case of Yugoslavia) was from the point of view of makers of U.S. foreign policy. Shibata Shigeki, an economic historian of the postwar period, found that the Japanese government relied on U.S. food aid to rebuild its defense aircraft industry. Citing the revised Japan-U.S. Mutual Security Act (MSA) of 1954, which resulted from the Ikeda-Robertson talks, he notes, The MSA is noteworthy for establishing a link between Japanese rearmament and the U.S. agricultural disposal program. Section 550, which required MSA aid recipients to take U.S. agricultural surpluses, was added to the MSA in 1953. As a result, Japan was required to sell surplus U.S. agricultural products on the domestic market and use the proceeds to finance its defense industry. The funds were mainly invested in equipment and technology for the aircraft industry. This type of aid was called “defense support” economic assistance, being a form of assistance to countries that had military agreements with the U.S. but were unable to meet their military obliga-

76

move on up

tions. Since funds were created by selling U.S. agricultural surpluses in Japan, the MSA was beneficial to both U.S. agricultural exports and to the Japanese aircraft industry.12

The U.S. wheat had far-reaching effects in transforming Japanese dietary habits. The wheat that Japan imported from the United States during the late 1950s became known as “MSA wheat” in Japanese newspapers, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare expended significant manpower and capital to extol the merits of a bread-based diet. As Suzuki notes, the shift to a bread-based diet entailed much more than simply the consumption of bread, since it also led to changes in preferences for the foods accompanying the staple grain. (For example, he points out that bread does not fit with miso soup, grilled fish, and pickles.) In this way, the rise in dairy and meat consumption and the drop in rice intake that followed the large-scale importation of subsidized American wheat were not entirely separate developments. According to Suzuki, the Americans aimed to transform Japanese dietary habits through the promotion of wheat as the staple grain, since it created a market for other food exports such as meat and powdered milk as well. As evidence he cites the U.S. Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 (Public Law 480), which, in summary, stipulated four main points regarding the export of U.S. food aid to allies: 1) countries are allowed to make payments for U.S. food in local currency and may defer payments until later after consulting with the United States; 2) a portion of the capital raised from the sale of U.S. foodstuffs will be spent by the United States to develop that country’s economy; 3) the United States reserves the right to use a share of its proceeds from the sale of food to develop the market for American agricultural products in that country; and 4) the United States can direct the food for use in efforts to alleviate malnourishment or for school lunch programs.13 Suzuki highlights the fact that although the first two conditions benefited the food-importing country’s economic development, the third and fourth conditions actually hindered it by limiting the potential for endogenous agricultural development and by changing dietary preferences in favor of U.S. foodstuffs. Japanese officials negotiating with the Americans at the IkedaRobertson talks recognized the economic harm posed to small Japanese

move on up

77

farmers by the large-scale importation of American wheat. To address the concerns of domestic farmers, the government decided to allocate most of the $10 million it kept from the sale of U.S. food to boosting domestic agricultural production. Much of the money was spent on the Aichi waterworks project, which consisted of 1,242 kilometers worth of new construction and ultimately delivered water from the Kiso River to rice farmers in perennially water-scarce areas in the southwest No-bi flatlands and the Chita Peninsula. Ironically, by the time the construction of the waterworks was completed in 1961, the decline in rice consumption (stimulated by the availability of cheap wheat flour–based foods) made its production in the region no longer an attractive endeavor.14 U.S. wheat producers sent trade representatives to Japan to expand exports to the Japanese market and persuaded Japanese officials in the Ministry of Health and Welfare to promote U.S. foodstuffs among Japanese housewives with public cooking seminars on roving “kitchen cars.” Ministry of Health and Welfare officials obliged by hiring nutritionists such as Ogihara Yaeko and her students to drive around in these kitchen cars and demonstrate the preparation of mostly Western and Chinese dishes using ingredients made from “MSA wheat,” canned meat, and other imported foodstuffs. The U.S. government funded these activities with money it had raised from the sale of U.S. farm exports in Japan.15 According to Sekiya Mako, the vice-director of the Japan Dietary Life Association (Nihon Shokuseikatsu Kyo-kai) at the time, the Americans provided more than enough funds for the twelve cars, the gas, the food, and the labor for the kitchen car operation. With respect to the funding, she stated, “There was no deliberate attempt to conceal [the U.S. funding for the kitchen cars]. However—how do I put this?—there was an air of taboo surrounding the subject of U.S. funding.”16 In addition, according to Suzuki’s account of an interview he conducted with To-hata Asako, one of the most renowned nutritionists of Japan in the postwar period, the generous U.S. funding had been “something that everyone would like to hide.”17 The U.S. government subsidized Japan’s nutritionists to spread the scientific foundation for the widespread consumption of American agricultural exports, thereby contributing to the decline of Japan’s own agricultural sector. In the mid- to late 1950s, Japan’s top nutritionists promoted the benefits of bread as a nutritious and convenient supplement, if not a substitute,

78

move on up

for rice. Most used their scientific authority to argue for the benefits of food practices found in the “bread-eating cultures” of the West. Some of the most respected nutritional scholars and other scientists attributed deep cultural flaws to rice eating and argued that the dietary customs of Asian peoples were the underlying reason for their lack of competitiveness in industrial productivity compared with Westerners. One such nutritionist was Oiso Toshio, the first director of the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Nutrition Bureau, who held the post between 1953 and 1963. Oiso, who had worked for the U.S. occupation forces in the previous decade, in 1959 published “An Essay on Nutrition” (Eiyo- Zuiso-), in which he attributed the emergence of “reason” and “progress” in Europe to wheatbased food production. The character [seikaku] of rice-eating peoples and the character of wheateating peoples are naturally different, where the former believe that people eat because they exist, while the latter believe that people exist because they eat. Each of these are the result of the types of food that they eat, and while the former are resigned and passive, the latter are progressive and active. . . . [Because of the tasty and satisfying nature of rice,] peoples who eat rice easily become accustomed to that way of living, and they lose their will to be active. . . . [People who consume wheat] find that it alone does not taste good, which makes them desire more than what they already have, motivating them to become active and providing the initiative for them to achieve progress, and the result is that they move in the direction of wanting other types of foods. . . . The need to turn the wheat into wheat flour and then to combine it with other foods such as meat and dairy products has led to many innovations that together have produced the wheat-flour based food culture of today. . . . The relative ease of the rice-based dietary lifestyle naturally leads people to move away from things such as reason [wake], thought [shiko-], and contrivance [ko-an]. Scientific experimentation and development do not advance in such a context.18

In this manner, Oiso, who was responsible for guiding the dietary habits of the population of Japan at the time, made strong public statements concerning the historically rooted lack of productivity of rice-consuming peoples as opposed to wheat-eating peoples. Oiso and others under his direction lay down much of the intellectual groundwork for the massscale adoption of U.S.-derived foods that occurred between the late 1950s and early 1970s.

move on up

79

Similarly, Hayashi Takashi, who was a professor of medicine at Keio University, published an influential book in 1958, The Brain (Zuno-), in which he argued that excessive rice eating hindered brain development. He notes, “Parents who feed their children solely white rice are dooming them to a life of idiocy. . . . When one eats rice, one’s brain gets worse. When one compares Japanese to Westerners, one finds that the former has an approximately twenty percent weaker mind than the latter. This is evident from the fact that few Japanese have received the Nobel Prize. . . . Japan ought to completely abolish its rice paddies and aim for a full bread diet.”19 Hayashi’s study subsequently became the basis for a pamphlet printed by a national association of producers of wheat flour foods titled “Eating Rice Makes You Stupid,” which gained national media attention.20 The unsurprising result of the semiofficial effort put into publicizing the purported superiority of wheat in Japan was the success of U.S. exporters in penetrating the Japanese market. U.S. wheat exports to Japan increased from 1.28 million tons in 1956 to a high of 3.24 million metric tons in 1974.21 A U.S. Department of Agriculture report from 2009 notes, “The U.S. wheat industry’s market development in Japan from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s was nothing short of amazing. Through creative market development, they changed the taste buds of the Japanese consumer and helped to introduce a wide variety of wheat foods to Japan.”22 The growing perception in Japan that these foods were healthier and representative of socioeconomic progress provided the stimulus for the change. The marked contrast between the pro-wheat findings of the nutritionists and the epigraph from chapter 2 quoting Finance Minister Ikeda Hayato in 1950 stating the suitability of wheat for less affluent Japanese is clear. Wheat had received a boost in image after a concerted effort by Washington and Tokyo policy makers. The shift toward American foodstuffs mirrored a decline in demand for rice. While average daily rice intake reached a high point of 391 grams per person in 1925 and a low of 254 grams in 1946 due to scarcity, by 1962 it had come back up to a postwar high of 324 grams. Yet beginning in 1962, amid strong growth in disposable income and an abundant supply of domestically grown rice, average daily rice intake per person began to decline precipitously. By 1978 it had fallen to 224 grams, below the 1946 level.23

80

move on up

It is therefore evident that during the initial postwar period, a phase of industrial recovery, wheat supplemented the shortfall in rice production, but that dietary preferences reflected a desire for a return to prewar patterns. Consumption patterns after 1962 indicate, however, that dietary habits changed out of preference and not out of necessity in the period of high economic growth, as more people in Japan chose to consume more wheat flour–based foods despite the availability of rice. As Japanese households earned more disposable income, their food choices fell more in line with what nutritionists had been advocating and what Americans were exporting, demonstrating the far-reaching effect of bureaucratic guidance and U.S.-driven trade policy on food practices in postwar Japan. The governing Liberal Democratic Party, which depended heavily on support from rural voters, reacted to this decline in rice consumption by promoting rice aggressively from the late 1960s. Specifically, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries encouraged large food companies to develop more mass-consumer products using rice. In response, Nissin Foods launched the line of Nissin Lunch instant rice products in 1967, a line that ended quickly as one of the few failures in the company’s history. In 1976, the government began directing municipalities to use rice in school lunches.24 The government’s channeling of rice rather than wheat into schools and instant food factories from the late 1960s reveals how these two areas continued to function as important sites for absorbing surplus staple grains in Japan. Despite these policies, however, daily rice consumption continued to decline through the late 1960s and 1970s.

co ld s w eat: f u el in g l a bor p o w e r With large quantities of inexpensive wheat being imported into Japan, ramen and other foods made from enriched wheat flour such as bread and cakes appeared across small Japanese towns at family-owned specialty shops. In this context, the Chinese restaurant and the Japanese common diner (taishu- shokudo-) gained prominence as the least expensive places where one could anonymously acquire a hot meal while out and about in the city. The Chinese restaurant took its place among other neighborhood eateries and food shops serving wheat-flour-rich foods, such as the soba/

1,531 1,781 1,631 716 1,244 1,287 1,024 997 1,012 758 474 440 284 202 232 241 222 236 367 541 583 587 742 695 741 874 876

Year

1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986

Wheat in Japan

Production (thousands of tons)

Table 1

2,660 2,660 2,490 3,412 3,471 3,532 4,103 4,238 3,996 4,537 4,621 4,726 5,317 5,369 5,485 5,715 5,545 5,662 5,679 5,544 5,564 5,504 5,432 5,544 5,553 5,194 5,200

Import (thousands of tons)

47 71 93 73 68 88 79 87 114 81 47 55 56 38 26 34 44 4 2 4 5 11 10 0 0 0 0

Export (thousands of tons)

3,965 4,190 4,272 4,290 4,505 4,631 4,983 5,106 5,092 5,245 5,207 5,206 5,372 5,498 5,517 5,578 5,660 5,761 5,861 6,020 6,054 6,034 6,035 6,059 6,164 6,101 6,054

Consumption (thousands of tons)

25.8 25.8 26.0 26.9 28.1 29.0 31.3 31.6 31.3 31.3 30.8 30.9 30.8 30.9 31.1 31.5 31.7 31.8 31.7 31.9 32.2 31.8 31.8 31.7 31.8 31.7 31.6

Average annual consumption (kilograms)

70.6 70.8 71.2 73.5 77.0 79.4 85.7 86.2 85.8 85.7 84.3 84.5 84.4 84.5 85.2 86.1 87.0 87.1 86.8 87.1 88.3 87.1 87.2 86.7 87.0 86.9 86.5

Average daily consumption (grams)

250.5 250.7 252.0 261.0 273.3 292.3 315.5 317.3 315.6 315.5 310.3 311.0 310.6 311.0 313.6 316.8 320.0 320.7 319.6 320.6 325.0 320.7 320.9 319.2 320.3 319.7 318.1

Average daily consumption (calories)

864 1,021 985 952 759 759 638 565 444 478 573 570 583 688 700 829 856 860 875 837 910 881 674 571 746

Production (thousands of tons)

(continued)

5,133 5,290 5,182 5,307 5,413 5,650 5,607 6,044 5,750 5,907 5,993 5,674 5,613 5,688 5,624 4,973 5,539 5,484 5,292 5,464 5,386 5,186 5,354 5,473 6,480

Import (thousands of tons)

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Export (thousands of tons)

source: Japan Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries.

1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Year

Table 1

6,069 6,140 6,204 6,270 6,340 6,274 6,344 6,415 6,355 6,401 6,290 6,224 6,282 6,311 6,227 6,203 6,316 6,266 6,213 6,228 6,348 6,086 6,258 6,384 6,701

Consumption (thousands of tons)

31.5 31.6 31.7 31.7 31.7 31.6 32.1 33.0 32.8 33.0 32.4 32.2 32.4 32.6 32.1 31.9 32.6 32.3 31.7 31.8 32.3 31.1 31.8 32.7 32.8

Average annual consumption (kilograms)

86.1 86.4 86.7 86.9 86.7 86.6 88.1 90.5 89.6 90.5 88.9 88.1 88.4 89.2 87.9 87.3 89.1 88.5 86.9 87.1 88.2 85.2 87.2 89.5 89.6

Average daily consumption (grams)

316.8 318.1 319.2 319.9 318.9 318.6 324.1 333.1 329.7 332.9 327.1 324.3 325.4 328.3 323.4 321.3 328.1 325.6 319.9 320.4 324.5 313.7 321.0 329.5 329.6

Average daily consumption (calories)

move on up

83

udon restaurant, the Japanese bread bakery (where yakisoba rolls and spaghetti rolls, a double dose of wheat flour, could be purchased), and the cake shop. At Chinese restaurants, the carbohydrate-heavy “ramen rice” (ramen served with a side of white rice) and the “A-set and “B-set” (ramen served with gyo-za [pork dumplings] or cha-han [pork fried rice], respectively) became the most popular lunch combinations of workers engaged in manual labor. Also popular at the Chinese restaurants were yakisoba (fried noodles), hiyashi Chu- ka (cold Chinese noodles), and Chu- kadon (Chinese bowl, or stir-fried meat and vegetables over white rice). At lunchtime the dishes would often be served with a complimentary extra serving of rice (raisu o-mori) and contained enough carbohydrates to sustain energy-intensive labor such as construction. The popularity of high-energy foods such as ramen rice and the B-set coincided with a surge in demand for construction labor in the cities. The early 1960s was a period of massive building in Japan’s metropolitan areas as the hosting of the 1964 Olympics, announced in 1959, provided the impetus to complete a series of public works projects in Tokyo and surrounding areas. In addition to the Olympics facilities themselves (including the Nippon Budo-kan), the Shinkansen (bullet train) network connecting Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, the Tokyo subway system’s Hibiya line, the Tokyo monorail (the longest in the world at the time) connecting Haneda airport to the central Yamanote line, and five inner-city elevated expressways in Tokyo 31.7 kilometers long were all unveiled in 1964 in time for the Olympics.25 These construction projects and others to improve sewage and water facilities generated a large demand for labor in the construction industry. Many of the workers who filled this demand were seasonal laborers, known as dekasegi,26 who entered the nonfarming workforce during the agricultural off-season from October through April. Most of these workers were young males in their twenties and thirties who worked for six-month terms on construction projects that were constantly taking place throughout Japan’s metropolitan areas.27 A popular comic strip that ran from 1971 to 1973, Otoko Oidon illustrates the connection between ramen and young workers from the countryside. In this series by graphic artist Matsumoto Reiji,28 the main character, nicknamed Oidon, works at a factory during the day and attends adult school at night. Shortly after moving to Tokyo, however, Oidon loses

84

move on up

his job and, with it, his ability to pay tuition for night school, but he gets by on odd jobs and the kindness of the local ramen shop owners. Oidon’s favorite food is ramen rice, and whenever he has some money, he can be seen at the local Chinese restaurant enjoying it. The couple who own and operate the Chinese restaurant allow him to eat in exchange for doing the dishes when he is out of funds, making it one of the few hot foods available to Oidon even when he is broke.29 Matsumoto’s ramen shop is a place of nourishment and compassion for the down-and-out young man from the countryside, whose being stranded in the city with no work and little opportunity for betterment is reminiscent of the situation of the main character in Ozu’s 1933 film Only Son. The influx of young bachelors from the countryside seeking employment allowed many of the successful pushcart vendors of the occupation era to take advantage of the demand for inexpensive foods to upgrade their businesses into small Chinese restaurants specializing in ramen. In - ho-, the pioneer of Sapporo the city of Sapporo, for example, the shop Ryu ramen, began as a black market yatai (unfortunately, the shop closed in 2011 after nearly sixty years in operation). Other places that began as yatai include Harugiya in Tokyo’s Ogikubo station area (one of the original shops specializing in Tokyo-style, or Ogikubo ramen) and Ide Sho- ten in Wakayama, the shop credited with spawning the Wakayama ramen boom in 1998.30 Similarly, Hope-ken, famous for popularizing the tonkotsu broth in the Tokyo area in the early 1980s, began as a yatai named Binbo- ken (House of Poverty) in the Kinshi-cho- district of Tokyo in 1934. In this way, ramen’s move from the black market to the city shopping districts helped fuel the development of public infrastructure and showcase projects by providing workers with the calories they needed for heavy labor and channeling inexpensive U.S. wheat to those workers. As young workers from rural areas migrated by the millions to Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, they lived in lodges (geshuku) with few if any cooking facilities, and as a result they ate ramen on a regular basis, usually by necessity rather than by choice. As ramen and meals taken at the local Chinese restaurant or Japanese dining hall became exceedingly familiar to young males in the city, it became a recognizable symbol of blue-collar food culture in television programs and movies.

move on up

85

When it appeared in popular culture, ramen represented the earthy side of urban life and the poverty of the characters who ate it, associations that were more or less a continuation of its prewar image. In this era ramen still had a largely negative reputation, as it continued to be used as a symbol of poverty, struggle, and disappointment felt by the young workingman. Although economic growth led to dietary improvements and greater uniformity in food choices for all income levels, ramen was one food that continued to convey the stark differences in the practices of blue-collar and white-collar workers in Japanese popular culture. Director Ozu Yasujiro-, for example, as noted in chapters 1 (Hitori Musuko, 1936) and 2 (Ochazuke no Aji, 1952), had a penchant for using food, and specifically ramen, as a tool to mark class and generational differences in his films. In his third film featuring the dish, Ozu uses the ramen shop as a powerful symbol of meekness and economic hardship. Released in 1962, Sanma no Aji (literally, “The Taste of Saury,” but renamed “An Autumn Afternoon” in the United States) incorporates the ramen shop and the struggles of its owner/operator as central pieces of the narrative. Early in the film a mid- Chishu - attends a secondary school dle-class company man played by Ryu reunion, where he encounters a former teacher. The teacher drinks too much sake and begins feeling ill, making it necessary for his former students to take him home. When they get to the teacher’s house, they learn that since his retirement the teacher and his daughter have been operating a decrepit ramen shop in a working-class neighborhood. The students take pity on the teacher at their next gathering and pool some money to give to him, which he appreciatively returns in order to maintain some dignity.31 Ozu portrays the ramen shop as a zone of socioeconomic stagnation, highlighting the financial uncertainty experienced by the owners of small ramen shops in working-class neighborhoods as well as the privation of their clients. Running a ramen shop is portrayed as a last resort for people trapped on the margins of the economy, and in this way the film resembles the short story from 1933 discussed in chapter 1. The scenes involving ramen focus on the difficulty of running a small shop, and Ozu uses ramen as a powerful tool to convey differences in lifestyle and economic resources in Japan even as national growth and middle-class consumerism took center stage. The sense of hardship associated with the ramen shop was a

86

move on up

continuation of the prewar and occupation-era image of the dish, which endowed it with a nostalgic valence after the dish’s popularity grew in the 1980s. Ramen also remained a fixture of nightlife, as male office workers drinking alcohol after work would often finish their evening of revelry with a bowl. Some artists used ramen to express dissatisfaction with the routines of male company work that invariably involved stints of nighttime entertainment. The eating and drinking bouts served the purpose of both rewarding the career success of loyal workers and providing them with the opportunity to engage in office politics. An early example of an artist using ramen to express dissatisfaction with after-work routines is the popular 1962 tune “This Is the Road a Man Walks” (“Kore ga Otoko no Ikiru Michi”), sung by the comedy and variety sketch group Crazy Cats. The lyrics of the song portray the discontentment and alienation of office workers: With the bonus-pay envelope that I finally got, I go drinking, reveling, and eating ramen. When every day is like this It’s sad enough to start weeping. Neither complaining nor whining This is the road a man walks. Aah, how pathetic.32

The lyrics are an eloquent description of the repetition and boredom associated with the lifestyle of the male office worker, for whom nighttime revelry was an extension of workplace competition. It is one of many examples from this period that point to the growing sense of alienation and overall dissatisfaction with the routines of the middle-class salaryman lifestyle in Japan. The social critique launched against the salaryman lifestyle only grew louder as rapid economic growth continued.33 By the early 1970s, the popular press was shining light on a phenomenon known as datsu-sara (literally, “salaryman escapee”), or the growing number of white-collar workers who were leaving their successful careers to become farmers or self-employed peddlers such as ramen yatai operators. The salarymantargeted newsmagazine Shu- kan Sankei, for example, began running the

move on up

87

weekly column “Datsu-sara Report,” which featured successful escapees from the salaryman lifestyle. One column from 1976 features a section on a salaryman-turned-chef who was grossing 1.5 million yen ($5,000) monthly in sales running a small ramen shop in Kagoshima. In explaining his decision to leave his successful banking career, the chef, Motoyama Kenichi, states, I was in a strong position to do most of what I wanted to do [at the company], but there was something about being a middle manager at a small to midsize firm that was just too soft [amai], and it just did not fit my personality. I could not help it if people thought that I was unstable—I just felt that I somehow needed to make a life for myself, and it was always paining me to feel this way. . . . For the last three years, I have been running a ramen shop, which is work of the lowest social status, but for my spirit it is just the opposite, as I have gained a sense of the worth of human life.34

Tenka Ippin, which is now a global ramen franchise, also began as a datsusara venture founded in 1971 by Kimura Tsutomu. Kimura began the shop as a yatai and worked his way up to owning a small shop in Kyoto before expanding beyond Japan into Hawaii and elsewhere.35 Other datsu-sara who entered the ramen business in the 1970s tended to open franchise shops under well-known brands such as Sapporo Ra-men Dosanko, which grew from one shop in 1967 to more than a thousand in 1977.36 In this way, toward the end of the era of rapid economic growth, ramen production came to be seen as a potential site of refuge for workers at large corporations operating in Japan’s repressive labor environment. The fact that modern yatai vendors and owners of small ramen shops remained some of the few workers who operated with a high degree of freedom and control over their own labor endowed their work with a sense of dogged independence, which was increasingly interpreted as resistance against the hyperrationalized, heavily corporatized environment of Tokyo and other cities in Japan. The romanticization of the small-scale producer’s creativeness only grew as trends toward rationalization and atomization increased in the 1980s. A major shift in attitudes toward ramen and its production can therefore be seen following the era of rapid economic growth.

88

move on up

Briefly put, between the late 1950s and mid-1970s, the practice of eating ramen, particularly for lunch, became a popular custom among construction workers and other young bachelors living in the city, and the government began collecting information on the consumption of ramen in its research on household food expenditures, which was meant to measure standards of living among workers. Ramen’s ubiquity highlighted the growing availability of inexpensive restaurant food for bachelors who were migrating to the city in great numbers and whose labor fueled the nation’s rapid growth. Ramen also remained essential to the nightlife industry, as company workers were expected to decompress from work by drinking alcohol with their colleagues from work. Ramen therefore functioned as an exceedingly important symbol of frustration and stagnation in the highly rationalized and commoditydefined economy of high-growth Japan. At the same time, the small-scale production of ramen became tinged with an aura of economic liberation toward the end of the period, as seen in the increasing number of whitecollar workers embracing the idea, if not the actual lifestyle, of the salaryman escapee. In this sense, the production of ramen provided a new way to escape and thereby critique the regimented labor practices that prevailed at Japan’s large companies.

eati n g w ithou t cook in g Like ramen, instant ramen was a food that defined mass consumerism and the drastic changes in food habits that marked the era of rapid economic growth in Japan. Just as the Chinese restaurant had grown into an integral part of dining for urban Japanese workers, instant ramen became an iconic emblem of technological advancement in postwar Japan. Unlike ramen, however, instant ramen was a high-tech product that was preservable, full of additives, and deep-fried. Instant ramen was sold in supermarkets, marketed in department stores, and advertised on television, endowing it with a sheen of novelty and progress. During the 1960s, the idea of a normative, middle-class lifestyle defined largely by the mass consumption of specific household goods (including instant and frozen foods) took hold in Japan, the United States, Australia,

move on up

89

and much of Western Europe.37 Greater uniformity in consumption resulted largely from the gains in purchasing power of working households. Consumerism centered on nuclear families in newly constructed housing, and shopping at supermarkets produced an increasingly homogenized set of food options in the cities and the growing suburbs. Nakamura Takafusa argues, “The equalization of income distribution produced among 95 percent of the people a sense that they were members of the middle class. As consumption patterns abruptly changed in favor of Westernization, they produced the lifestyle of contemporary Japan: people eat bread and meat, acquire household electrical appliances, own automobiles, enjoy their leisure, have a taste for travel, and are very fashion-conscious.”38 The oft-cited point concerning the postwar “Westernization” of the Japanese diet often overlooks the fact that the Japanese consumed a great deal of their wheat flour and meat in the form of “Chinese food” such as ramen and gyo-za, or as nontraditional Japanese food such as yakisoba and okonomiyaki. Bread and steaks were available, but noodles and dumplings were more common. Japan’s postwar “Westernization,” therefore, is better understood as a standardization of practices identified as modern and amenable to rationalized middle-class living, such as eating instant ramen on Saturdays for lunch after a half day of elementary school, rather than as a whole-hearted cultural embrace of an idealized America. While ramen shops fueled the labor that built the housing projects and roads, instant ramen was a convenience food for new middle-class families living in the suburbs. Even as artists captured ramen’s centrality to working-class bachelor dining, the instant version of ramen, released in 1958, became associated with middle-class children. Frequent advertisements on television, the general popularity of convenience foods, and the proliferation of suburban supermarkets accounted for much of the success of instant ramen. The mass consumerism of the 1960s was a highly effective means of masking class divisions resulting from the strikes and work stoppages that were threatening economic growth in the 1950s. The demand for labor from large companies and the accumulated protests by workers that culminated in the deadly Miike coal mine strike of 1960 led to an effort on the part of business owners to accommodate less radical union groups and to improve relations between workers and managers. Prime Minister

90

move on up

Ikeda Hayato, who took office in 1960, shifted away from the divisive issues of constitutional revision and enhanced defense that had been championed by his predecessor to chart a more moderate course of national economic growth and income doubling at both the national and household level, which was achieved by 1967. The reduction in strikes and work stoppages that followed produced a more stable environment for profit making on the part of owners as well as substantial gains for workers. These included improvements in safety, less hierarchy, and more input into managerial decision making.39 The affordability of foods previously considered luxury items such as bananas40 and shrimp,41 the availability of new electronic kitchen technologies such as rice cookers, and the increased opportunities for dining out were all signs of major improvement that touched upon most households. In this way, families were encouraged to think in terms of immediate improvements in lifestyle embodied by changing practices of consumption rather than in terms of redistribution or direct control over the production process. Food was a concrete means of reminding all workers of the direct and beneficial impact the rapid growth of the national economy was having on them. As the preparation of food and other fundamental duties of household maintenance became simplified through the massive proliferation of electric consumer goods such as rice cookers, refrigerators, gas ovens, stoves, washing machines, and vacuum cleaners, the time available for leisure activities previously reserved for the elite, such as flower arrangement, tea ceremony, calligraphy, dining in restaurants, and cooking lessons, expanded for the less affluent in Japan as well. According to Marilyn Ivy, “Electric appliances standardized the image of the average household and what the average housewife should possess. Not only did they become the standard for middle-class status, but their presence and placement within Japanese dwellings (standardized in the form of housing projects, or danchi) also homogenized Japanese domestic space.”42 Electric kitchen appliances therefore allowed for instant and frozen foods to be preserved and prepared on a previously unimaginable scale. Particularly in Japan, instant ramen, curry cubes, instant coffee, and frozen foods fundamentally altered eating habits during the period of high growth and beyond. Between 1965 and 1976, for example, instant ramen consumption increased from 2.5 billion servings to 4.55 billion servings

move on up

91

per year, while instant curry consumption jumped from 32,800 to 70,000 tons, and instant coffee consumption grew from 5,000 tons to 21,000 tons.43 Each of these foods accompanied the diffusion of household kitchen machinery, such as electric refrigerators and freezers (owned by 97.9 percent of the population by 1976), gas water heaters (81.3 percent), electric rice cookers (68.7 percent), and ovens (47.7 percent).44 In this way, the rapid incorporation of instant and frozen foods into their diets and the subsequent obsolescence of inherited cooking knowledge marked a significant generational change in food habits for people in Japan. As a novelty food introduced in 1958 showcasing Japan’s scientific progress, instant ramen was a “child of the times” according to AndoMomofuku (1910–2007), the founder of Nissin Foods Corporation and renowned inventor of the first instant and cupped ramen.45 Ando- wrote that his experience of seeing long lines of customers of all ages forming in front of Shina soba yatai during the occupation sparked his interest in developing an instant form of the dish.46 His success in marketing instant ramen points to the opportunities created by the joint U.S. and Japanese effort to change Japanese dietary habits. While Ando-’s achievement in popularizing instant noodles in Japan and much of the rest of the world is undeniable, his status as the inventor of instant ramen is subject to some doubt. A much smaller company named Matsuda Sangyo- had already released an identical product in 1955 - ka Men (Flavored Chinese Noodles) three years called Aji Tsuke Chu before the release of Chikin Ra-men, but the company had not secured a patent and was forced to halt production after a few months due to weak sales. Although the firm (renamed Oyatsu Company, or Snack Company) rereleased its instant noodles in 1959 as Baby Ra-men (later renamed Baby Star Ra-men), a crunchy snack eaten without adding water that is still available in Japan, Ando-’s Nissin Foods became recognized as the first maker of instant noodles. The infrequently cited alternate history of Matsuda Sangyo-’s invention of instant ramen illustrates the ways in which the process of writing history itself is a political contest in which the writer establishes, filters, and assembles the facts in a way that often displaces conflicting versions of the past.47 Ando- was born Wu Bai-Fu (Momofuku being the Japanese reading of his Chinese given name, Bai-Fu) in Taiwan in 1910. He began his career

92

move on up

Figure 1. Statue of Ando- Momofuku, founder of the Nissin Foods Corporation, outside the Instant Ramen Museum in the city of Ikeda. Courtesy of the Instant Ramen Museum.

apprenticing for a well-established uncle in the textile business in Osaka. Through his family’s business ties he befriended top government and financial leaders, the most notable being prewar prime minister Tanaka Giichi.48 Ando- then started his own multifactory textile business in Taiwan with an inheritance of 190,000 yen from his father at the age of twenty-two. He notes: I wonder whether I would have developed instant noodles had the times continued peacefully. However, conditions took a turn for the worse. In 1938, the National Mobilization Law was proclaimed, followed in 1939 by the National Service Draft Ordinance, and in 1941 by the National Commodity Control Ordinance. One could no longer operate freely in the textile industry. . . . I started manufacturing stereoscopic projectors, and later, when air raids grew fierce, I bought 25 hectares of land on a mountain in Hyo-go Prefecture, and began producing charcoal. I converted the entire mountain into charcoal, which I brought back to Osaka after the war, where it stood me in good stead. I was also involved in the joint manufacture and sale of barracks in Hyo-go Prefecture. This venture may have been a forerunner of the now booming prefabricated house industry. Other experiences included preci-

move on up

93

sion machinery and aircraft-related parts, as well as many others too numerous to recount here.49

Ando- then received a large payout from insurance claims in the aftermath of the war but lost his fortune once before making it back through instant ramen in the period of high growth.50 Before succeeding with instant ramen, Ando- engaged in many other aspects of food-related commerce: The first seed that led to the birth of Nissin was sown in September 1948. I - ko-so-sha, in Izumio-tsu with ¥5 million in capital. I founded a company, Chu was told that this was the largest amount of capital in any joint-stock company founded after the war. In 1949, I changed the company’s name to Sanshi’i Industries and relocated it to Osaka. The company conducted a broad range of activities, from food trading to wholesaling. During a lull in 1958 I developed Chicken Ra-men, and when sales of the product began I changed the company name to Nissin Food Products.51

The progression of Ando-’s methods of capital accumulation, from textile ventures in Taiwan before the war to munitions and energy during the war and eventually to large-scale food processing after the war, reflects the shifting business opportunities created for owners of large capital as a result of Japan’s dramatic series of historical ruptures. In this way, the U.S. occupation preserved and reinforced the privileges of large capital owners such as Ando- as part of its efforts to boost economic production to fight Soviet influence, despite some initial gestures toward deconcentration. Diplomatic historian Michael Schaller recounts an episode at the time of surrender driving home the extent to which Japanese leaders portended this long-term outcome: “Fujiyama Aiichiro, a business leader who later served as foreign minister, recalled that ‘when it was learned that the occupying power would be the U.S. [instead of the Soviet Union,] many industrialists uncorked their champagne bottles and toasted the coming of a new industrialists’ era.’ ”52 The food aid that arrived from the United States created an opportunity for business leaders such as Ando- to tap into their strong government ties and market their mass-produced goods through well-established distribution channels, which would assure high rates of return. Ando- says that his mission to create an instant form of ramen resulted in part from his meetings with bureaucrats from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry,

94

move on up

Figure 2. Re-creation of the hut where Ando- Momofuku developed instant ramen. Courtesy of the Instant Ramen Museum.

and Fisheries and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, who were looking for ways to make use of the U.S.-imported wheat for foods other than the bread already being served in school lunches. He writes: Before I discuss the development of Chicken Ramen, the world’s first instant noodles, I would like to relate an episode to provide some background. Back in the days when I manufactured and marketed the nutritional supplement Becycle, I had several work-related opportunities to visit the Ministry of Health and Welfare. During the American Occupation, Japan relied on aid from the U.S. Food was barely sufficient. The Japanese had to eat wheat, corn—anything just to stay alive. One of the Ministry’s jobs was to encourage the consumption of American wheat among the Japanese who were unfamiliar with grain flour. The Ministry sent several PR trucks out to roam the streets, urging passersby to eat bread. Every time I saw one of the PR trucks, a thought ran through my mind. I was dissatisfied with the idea that grain flour should be used solely for bread. At the time, bread was also a staple in school lunches. I have already stated my belief that food forms the basis for culture, art and civilization. This means that if you change your diet, you are in effect throwing away your traditions and cultural heritage. I believed that to adapt

move on up

95

to a bread diet was tantamount to adapting Western culture. I confronted a Ministry representative with this argument. “Why aren’t you also encouraging the consumption of traditional Asian noodles?” I asked. The Ministry representative nodded as he heard this. At the time, however, ramen and Japanese udon were solely the domain of small-scale businesses. There was no pipeline connecting U.S. flour surpluses with the structures necessary to produce and distribute noodles. The lack of adequate manufacturing facilities amounted to a bottleneck. The Ministry representative recommended that if I was so keen on the idea, I should do the research myself. This suggestion was to later become one of my incentives.53

Ando-’s interest in creating an instant form of ramen, then, was driven by the abundance of American wheat, and he was also interested in channeling the inexpensive food supplies from the United States into supermarkets after its conversion into instant noodles. Another potential unloading point for instant noodles was the school lunch system, which had been designed by the occupation forces to resemble the American school lunch program, particularly in terms of its nutritional guidelines. Many large-scale food suppliers such as Ando- targeted the school lunch program as a way to distribute instant food en masse, but the plan never materialized.54 Ando-’s story illustrates the deep connections between U.S. wheat imports and the invention of instant ramen. His attempt to distribute ramen through the school lunch program is also indicative of how profitable that outlet became for large-scale food processors, and how indispensable intimate government connections were to establishing such distribution channels. In sum, the spread of instant ramen during the high–growth period was rooted in the large-scale import of cheap American wheat into Japan and in the success of companies such as Nissin Foods in marketing a lifestyle of convenience to the young and the new middle class. In his autobiography, Ando- asserts that the invention of instant ramen contributed to the preservation of Japanese food culture by allowing wheat flour imports to be used for noodles rather than bread. He repeats this argument throughout his autobiography, and the point is also emphasized in a permanent exhibit at the Nissin Foods Corporation’s library, located at its Tokyo headquarters in Shinjuku. The framing of the inven-

96

move on up

tion of instant ramen as a form of resistance to Western hegemony for the purpose of safeguarding Asian cultural autonomy is striking considering that the main ingredient for the food was American wheat, and its largescale import was detrimental to Japanese rice farmers. Ando- entered the food-processing industry in September 1948 with the aim of providing sustenance for the desperately malnourished masses. The company began with a desalinization plant and expanded to include a factory manufacturing furikake (a condiment make from dried fish flakes) and an animal protein extraction operation. The protein extract, named Becycle, was derived from the bone marrow of cows and pigs and sold to hospitals for use by patients needing nutritional supplements. Similarly, the fish flake condiment, which was manufactured from leftover fish parts, was marketed as a good source of protein and calcium. At one point, Ando-’s experimentation with nutritional supplements also led him to attempt to create food from an extract of boiled frogs.55 Ando-’s food-processing ventures brought him in close contact with officials from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, who were enthusiastic supporters of his attempts to create alimentary matter from waste. The business model for all of Ando-’s ventures in the food industry were therefore based on the idea of processing extremely low-cost or free ingredients from items previously considered inedible to churn out food products sold through government channels that would be packaged as good sources of nutrition and energy. The development of instant ramen essentially followed the same trajectory. Ando- discovered that the easy availability of inexpensive U.S. wheat and the parts of a chicken that typically went uneaten combined with Nissin’s ability to use its connections with big business and government to market the product as health food was a lucrative formula. Although the novelty of the “Magic Ramen,” as Ando- referred to it, lay in its instantaneity, Nissin’s initial marketing strategy emphasized instant ramen’s nutritious qualities more than its convenience. The product’s original packaging boldly asserted “Builds strength” and “A full meal boasting the highest nutrition and great taste.”56 The appeal of Nissin’s claims should be seen within the historical context of high-growth Japan, when nutritionists were touting the fortifying qualities of wheat flour

move on up

97

(noodles) and meat (chicken essence) as the reason for the supposed physical strength and mental capabilities of Americans relative to the Japanese. In April 1960, Nissin received permission to market instant ramen as a government-certified “special health food” after agreeing to enrich the noodles with vitamin B1 and B2 additives. Furthermore, in August 1967 the company began adding a protein supplement, lysine, to its products in order to improve its nutritional profile. As the corporate history explains, the protein supplement was added because “it was said at the time that the Japanese diet was too heavily weighted toward plant matter.” Again, such perceptions were heavily shaped by the efforts of Japanese nutritionists and U.S. agricultural export representatives to spread the gospel about the superiority of wheat, meat, and dairy. In June 1975, however, the company ceased adding the nutrients “due to marked improvements in the population’s nutritional state.”57 This suggests that the appeal of nutritional additives in processed foods had declined to such a degree that it no longer merited the additional cost. The story of Nissin Foods is remarkable in terms of the scale of its growth and the uniqueness of its product, but the reasons for its success were in many ways similar to those of other large food companies in Japan, which also took advantage of shifts in demographics and living arrangements during this period. In this sense, Nissin was representative of how the Japanese economy changed in terms of corporate structure, production scale, intercompany cooperation, advertising, and expansion into foreign markets between the late 1950s and early 1970s. In 1958 Ando-’s company Sanshi’i Shokusan, the predecessor to Nissin Foods Corporation, conducted a test launch of Chikin Ra-men at Osaka’s - Department Store with great fanfare. Chikin Ra-men was upscale Hankyu advertised as a healthy, nutritious, and complete meal that took only two minutes to prepare. One package of ramen sold for thirty-five yen, approximately the same cost as a bowl of ramen at a Chinese restaurant, which was thirty-five to fifty yen at the time. On August 25, 1958, Ando- personally began pitching boxes of Chikin Ra-men to distributors at the Osaka wholesale market. The day subsequently became celebrated as Ramen Day in the 1980s, by which time the company had become a global player in the food production business.58

98

move on up

According to the Nissin Foods Corporation’s history, Ando- changed the firm’s name from Sanshi’i Shokusan to Nissin Foods in 1958 to symbolize his desire to “create a rich flavor purely each day” (hibi kiyoraka ni yutaka na aji o tsukuru). To come up with the name, according to the corporate history, he combined the characters nichi (day) and shin (pure) to create the word Nisshin.59 However, the motto that supposedly inspired the company’s new name has a forced quality, and it is easy to believe that it was fabricated later to mask the initial reasoning behind the name change. One possible reason for the name change was that the largest wheat processor in Japan was already named Nisshin, using the same characters, and that Ando- simply wanted to draw consumers’ attention to his small company and establish instant trust by associating it with the larger one. The wealthy Sho-da family, owners of the giant Nisshin milling company, also married into the imperial family the same year that Nissin Foods released Chikin Ra-men. Another possible explanation is that the term Nissin connotes “JapanChina,” as in Nisshin Senso- (Sino-Japanese War), with the first character representing Japan and the second representing China under the Qing dynasty. Ando-’s decision to create a story about the naming of the company that omitted the possible connection to China fits with his decision to exclude references to his own Chinese ancestry in his autobiography. These omissions appear related to the larger issue of how postwar Japan became conceived (both within and outside Japan) as an ethnically homogeneous nation, ignoring the heterogeneity of Japan as a legacy of decolonization in the postwar period.60 Ando-, therefore, was not unique in his desire to cloak his non-Japanese ethnicity, as many Japanese businessmen with Taiwanese and Korean backgrounds did the same in postwar Japan to avoid potential discrimination. In 1959, Nissin Foods began a partnership with Mitsubishi Trading, Japan’s largest trading house, to distribute Chikin Ra-men more widely. Although Mitsubishi executives were reluctant to become involved in what they considered a low-end product with limited profit potential, Ando- was able to convince a senior executive, Sanan Sho-ji, to persuade his colleagues of its value as a way to absorb surplus U.S. wheat flour. According to Ando-, Sanan convinced Mitsubishi Trading executives to distribute Chikin Ra-men because it would “create a distribution channel

move on up

99

for wheat-flour to increase trade with these countries.”61 This statement highlights the strong connection between Mitsubishi’s desire to increase trade with U.S. companies and its decision to become involved in the instant ramen business. Soon after Mitsubishi began working with Nissin Foods, it coined the motto “From ramen to missiles” to suggest the breadth of the company’s products and services. The slogan points to the larger connection between food processing and the missile-producing sector of the economy, as the same companies dominated both. Japan’s ten large trading houses (so-gosho-sha), such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Sumitomo, controlled nearly all large-scale economic activity until the mid-1970s, and they became notable worldwide for the scale and range of their activities, including importexport, financing, transportation, insurance, distribution, and marketing. The slogan “From ramen to missiles” was a way to convey the uniquely dominant position of Japanese trading companies within the national economy and the continuation of weapons production by Japanese companies despite the prohibition on such activities by the so-called Peace Constitution. It also highlighted the continuity of the concentration of capital in the same companies from the prewar to the postwar eras. Relations between labor and management at Nissin Foods, by all indications, were cooperative and tended to follow general trends in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s. In discussing the triumph of management over militant labor unions at large Japanese companies, Andrew Gordon notes, “The men who led almost all Japanese unions defended these workers with little vigor for two reasons: they recognized that their own relative security would be threatened by a more inclusive movement, and they viewed the women as essentially supplementary wage earners for whom second-class status was reasonable.62 Nissin Foods closely followed the pattern described above, as a majority of workers at the factory level were “supplementary wage earners,” or young female employees from the countryside who did not enjoy the benefits and protections of full (companybased) union membership. Nissin Foods’ production of Chikin Ra-men began as a labor-intensive operation consisting of only twenty employees in addition to Ando-, his wife, and his son, Ko-ki, who would later inherit the company. The workers plucked the chickens before boiling them to create the chicken essence,

100

move on up

then deep-fried the noodles and finally packaged the final product by hand. Improvements in meat processing and greater access to deep-frying technology in the first year, however, greatly reduced the human involvement needed in the manufacturing process, and Nissin was producing roughly six thousand units per day after only eight months of operation. By 1960, two years after starting operations, Nissin Foods was producing 1.2 million units per day.63 The demand for labor at Nissin Foods and other large companies from the late 1950s to the early 1970s led to fierce competition over workers. The corporate history of Nissin Foods describes instances in the 1960s when other instant ramen producers sent representatives to Nissin factories to clandestinely hire away much-needed laborers, ranging from plant managers to conveyor-line employees.64 The change at Nissin was part of larger labor trends in Japan. The proportion of workers employed by their families dropped from two-thirds of the entire labor force in the late 1950s to less than half by the end of the 1960s.65 Companies such as Nissin thus made every effort to attract and keep workers of all skill levels as a result of the high demand for labor created by the rapid growth of the period. As the scale of production grew, the company adopted a rationalized structure with an increasing number of salaried workers involved in marketing, research, planning, accounting, and other non-production-related aspects of revenue creation. At the same time, the factory workers formed a company-based union in 1960, following the trend of most other workers at large companies in Japan. Nissin’s corporate history asserts, “Even after the establishment of the workers’ union, not once did the laborers and managers engage in conflict.”66 Despite the fact that the corporation’s own history was written from the perspective of the managers, the absence of conflict between labor and management was the norm at most large corporations during this period of high growth, owing to steady increases in wages based on the previous year’s profits and the marginalization of workers who were less than enthusiastic about management goals. This was done by rewarding workers who recorded the most overtime, recognizing worker-derived improvements in production, and organizing frequent company-wide festivals, trips, and events. Nissin’s history mentions the annual Christmas party in particular, where factory workers—a majority of whom were young women from the countryside—were given a sam-

move on up

101

pling of luxury items such as champagne and hors d’oeuvres, often for the first time in their lives, suggesting that theirs was a generous, fun, and prestigious firm.67 Even more important in aligning workers’ aims with those of management, however, were the physical limitations placed upon the workers’ activities. Workers were housed together in company dorms and conducted their everyday activities at shops owned and operated by the company. Nissin, for example, owned and operated general stores, beauty parlors, cafeterias, and dorms around its factories, which provided subsidized goods and services to its workers.68 In turn, these institutions put the company at the center of all social and economic activity for its workers and reinforced the notion that the interests of the company’s owners and those of its lowest-paid workers were ultimately one and the same. From the perspective of workers, however, a company that provided these benefits was clearly a better place to be employed than one that did not, and the strong demand for labor at all levels during the high-growth era made it sensible for Nissin to provide such amenities. The rise of Nissin Foods as the dominant maker of instant noodles in Japan was tightly linked with the failure of hundreds of small-scale producers, many of them driven out of business by Nissin’s lawsuits. One of the main sources of Nissin Foods’ success, therefore, was its ability to eliminate competitors through patent litigation and other legal maneuvering. According to its own company history, Nissin used patent violation lawsuits against a number of rival companies in order to “defend the company’s interests.”69 Nissin Foods filed its first patent infringement lawsuit in February 1960, suing a major rival in the instant noodle business, Star Macaroni, over its use of the name “Chikin Ra-men.” The Osaka District Court sided with Nissin in its verdict on March 5, 1960, and soon afterward Nissin obtained sole rights to the name “Chikin Ra-men,” which thirteen other companies had been using.70 Much more important, however, was Nissin Foods’ securing of patent rights over the manufacturing process of instant noodles as a way to put rivals out of business. The patent rights that Nissin Foods used against its rivals were actually acquired from another company, To-mei Sho-ko-, which had filed the paperwork first. Nissin Foods persuaded the executives of

102

move on up

To-mei Sho-ko-, as well as nine other smaller instant noodle manufacturers, to form a producers’ conglomeration and share the patent and, in some cases, equipment as well. The collection of companies headed by Nissin Foods, named the Kanto- Instant Ramen Manufacturing Cooperative, was launched on August 26, 1961. At the same time, two other instant noodle producers’ unions were formed around two rival companies, Ace Cook and Shimadaya Foods.71 On May 8 and June 12, 1962, Nissin acquired full patent rights over “flavored dry noodle production” and “instant ramen production,” respectively. Asked about the company’s intentions in securing these patents by newspaper reporters, Ando- explained, “I am not thinking about monopolizing the instant ramen business. I want to authorize the use of the patent by companies with excellent facilities and technology. If it can be used to prevent surplus production and sharp price drops, I believe that the industry can be stabilized.”72 The notion that the industry would regulate itself through managed competition in order to prevent the extremes of both monopoly and price warfare was representative of how competition between large companies was managed in Japan (and continental Europe) during the high-growth era. Despite Ando- ’s statement, on June 1, 1962, Nissin began notifying all other instant noodle makers in Japan of their need to receive explicit written authorization from Nissin Foods to continue operating or else face patent violation lawsuits. Over the course of the next year, Nissin Foods reached agreements with twenty large instant ramen manufacturers over the sharing of patent rights, according to which each company agreed to hand over a portion of its revenues in return for the right to operate. In response, rival company Ace Cook and six of its smaller allies challenged Nissin Foods’ patent in court. Although the Osaka District Court sided with Nissin Foods in a decision reached on June 25, 1962, the Patent Office in Tokyo released its own opinion on the matter soon after, stating that Ace Cook was not in violation of patent law. A drawn-out public relations battle between the two firms and their respective allies in the industry ensued for two years, ending only after bureaucrats representing the Food Agency (a division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries) prompted conciliation between them.73

move on up

103

The government’s involvement in preventing Nissin from dictating the terms of entry into the instant ramen market by itself (that is, the Patent Office decision), as well as its intervention in creating harmony between Nissin Foods and Ace Cook (the Food Agency action), were again representative of its approach in guiding inter-firm competition in Japan to prevent both extremes of monopolistic control and price wars. The result was a type of state-supported cartelism for which Japan became famous, where a handful of large companies restricted market entry and exit by smaller firms and competed with each other for market share through quality, innovation, and marketing rather than through price.74 After five years of bitter intraindustry conflict over product naming and patent rights, state bureaucrats compelled the remaining fifty-six instant ramen makers to unify under one national umbrella group in 1965, creating the Instant Ramen Manufacturers’ Association. In its charter proclamation, the association announced, “Although the patent issue has bred some suspicion among the companies to this point, this association has nothing to do with patents and instead has been established with the aims of working cooperatively to achieve the purpose of improving the benefits [of instant ramen] to the general public, enhancing product quality, providing a space for intraindustry conversation, and starting with the right attitude overall.” The reason for the government’s administrative guidance, according to Nissin Foods, was its influence on Japan’s nutrition, international trade, and food prices.75 Much of Nissin’s success was attributable to its attention-grabbing advertising campaigns and product releases. In this way, Ando- was able to capitalize on the historical changes that accompanied the growth of Japanese media in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tokyo Tower, an Eiffel Tower–like structure transmitting FM radio and television waves, went into operation in 1958; the Crown Prince married a so-called commoner, Sho-da Michiko, in an ostentatious and well-received ceremony showcased on television the following April; and Nissin Foods began advertising on television in 1960. Nissin Foods took full advantage of the new advertising opportunities opened up by the increase of radio and television sets in Japanese homes that resulted from Japan’s royal wedding of 1959. Nissin’s effective use of newspaper, magazine, radio, and, most importantly, television advertising

104

move on up

Figure 3. An inside view of the hut where Ando- Momofuku developed instant ramen. Courtesy of the Instant Ramen Museum.

through the use of popular young celebrities, original theme songs, quiz shows, cash giveaways, travel prizes to Europe, and a host of other promotional campaigns made it a nationally recognized innovator in the sphere of youth-targeted marketing. The segmentation of the mass media market into various consumer groups greatly aided Nissin’s ability to focus on its core target audience of young housewives, unmarried men, and, most of all, children. After focusing its advertising energies on national newspapers for the first two years, Nissin Foods moved into the television market in 1960 with its sponsorship of two youth-oriented programs, Igaguri-kun and Bi’iba--chan. According to the company history, the first set of advertisements aimed to drive home to consumers “how convenient life could be with Chikin Ra-men,” as well as its “healthfulness, hygienic quality, novelty, and vitality.”76 In 1962, Nissin Foods sponsored its own television program, the World’s Greatest Quiz, in which one hundred contestants competed for one million yen.77 The quiz show quickly became one of the

move on up

105

highest-rated programs nationwide, and it continued to receive high ratings until its termination in May 1965. Before its cancellation, the Osaka Housewives’ Association recognized the show as the “Best Youth-Oriented Program” on television, highlighting Nissin Foods’ ability to gain approval as a good corporate citizen from its most important consumer base, young urban mothers.78 Another pioneering step in marketing by Nissin Foods was the composition of an original musical tune for the purpose of radio advertising. “The Chikin Ra-men Song,” sung by the minor celebrity Shibakura Mariko, began running on the popular radio program Let’s Sing Tonight in 1962 and continued unabated for five years. During that time the song gained wide currency among students and young people, elevating Shibakura’s career along the way.79 A 1967 article from the tabloid magazine Sunday Mainichi (Sunday everyday) concerning the ten-year anniversary of the release of instant ramen notes the fluency with which young people recited lines and songs from such commercials: This year marks the tenth year since the birth of instant ramen. Sales have grown by an average of twenty percent annually since its introduction in Osaka in 1958. Even the Japanese economy has not matched such a high rate of economic growth. “My Name is Ra-men Taro-.” “This is what I like.” “I have eaten a whole range of them, but after all . . . ” When hearing these lines pop out so effortlessly from the mouths of children . . . Yes, the annualized twenty percent growth figures apply not only to instant ramen but also to the dissemination of television waves as well.80

Advertisers successfully produced catchy advertising jingles promoting instant foods to children. In turn, the advertisements became a definitive part of popular culture for the children of the baby-boom generation. In this manner, Nissin Foods effectively made use of radio and television to identify its product with, and at times even define, the burgeoning youth consumer culture of the 1960s. Nissin also directly marketed to children through an original trademark character associated with Chikin Ra-men. The story behind Nissin Foods’ development of this character, Chibikko (“small child” in Japanese), is illustrative of the growing importance of young consumers and the vast resources spent researching their likes and dislikes for marketing pur-

106

move on up

poses. The company history notes the heavy investment in market research made before the character’s official introduction in 1965.81 Nissin Foods had already created two original trademark characters, Chi’i-chan and Kin-bo-, soon after its founding (the first syllables of the two names combined to form the word “Chikin”), but it decided to scrap them in 1964 as the need for heightened attention to youth-oriented marketing became clear. Although the company’s initial plans were to use “a chicken motif,” one of its rivals developed a chicken character first, forcing it back to the drawing board. Planners then began discussing the possibility of an elephant or a giraffe, but upon conducting more diligent market research, they settled upon “a healthy, happy, and mischievous child” as the symbol of the company.82 The intensified attention paid to children among middle-class families in the 1960s, as seen in the construction of the first national children’s hospital in Tokyo and the opening of Children’s Country, a theme park in Yokohama, both in 1965, had a strong influence on the company’s decision to use an animated child to represent it.83 The company history explains that the character of Chibikko was drawn with “wheat-flour-colored complexion, a round nose, large eyes, and freckles, representing the image of health itself.”84 Interestingly, this “image of health itself ” appears with light blond hair, freckles, and a baseball cap turned sideways. Freckles and blond hair are, needless to say, rare among Japanese. Chibikko’s physical characteristics all suggest that the character was drawn as an idealized image of the white American child, who epitomized health, wealth, and mischievous happiness. The shifts in the names and marketing themes of Nissin Foods’ products over the course of the high-growth period reveal the concerns of consumers in the context of rapid socioeconomic change. For example, Nissin Foods stopped using roman letters on the packaging and describing the nutritious benefits of most of its products after 1966. These modifications suggest a slight decline in the appeal of American-themed marketing imagery, as well as a general recognition by consumers that instant ramen was not a healthy food, notwithstanding all of the adamant advertisements to the contrary. In addition, the company released “Japanese-style Chikin Ra-men” in 1966 and “Demae Itcho” (literally, “delivery, one order”) in 1968. Nissin Foods emphasized the Japanese character of the soy sauce–based soups of both products, and for the latter the company used

move on up

107

the Chibikko character dressed in worker’s clothing from the Edo period (1603–1868) in its advertising. These names and marketing themes are indicative of a growing trend toward the marketing of goods and services as distinctly Japanese in the late 1960s. In 1970, Nissin Foods released “Inaka soba” (countryside-style buckwheat noodle soup) and “Ra-men Kazoku” (ra-men family), both of which can be understood as testaments to the depopulation of the countryside and the decline of extended kinship ties in Japan during the same period. The release of the new lines coincided with a new interest in domestic tourism to rural destinations, advertised as furusato (hometown / native place) tours, where vaguely construed national tradition could be nostalgically consumed in packaged units at various tiers of luxury.85 Nissin Foods’ ability to associate entirely different images with each of its product lines based on the continual regeneration of marketing themes (despite the fact that the products were all composed of the same basic ingredients—wheat flour, oil, and salt—with slight variations in the flavoring) illustrates the company’s sensitivity to the issues of concern to the public at each time, whether it was poor nutrition, a loss of tradition, the decline of country life, or weakening family ties. Like other successful marketing campaigns, the company’s advertising succeeded because it promoted the idea that instant noodles somehow solved rather than exacerbated each of these problems. The advertising campaigns continued to operate as definitive elements of Nissin’s ongoing growth and success. Nissin Foods began a promotional campaign in 1965 during which they handed out thousand-yen notes to five hundred people daily for three months between February and May. The promotion was wildly successful, drawing over 1.6 million entries and acquainting households across Japan with the Nissin Foods brand name. Nissin Foods provided a straightforward explanation of its purpose on the campaign posters, which read, “In the highly competitive instant foods market of today, we at Nissin Foods are engaged in every effort to win greater market share. In keeping with that effort, we would like to offer our valued consumers a gift of 1,000 yen as a way of expressing our appreciation, and also of increasing our share of the instant foods market.”86 Following the success of the cash giveaway promotion, Nissin Foods began organizing sweepstakes in which it gave away trips to Europe and color televisions.87

108

move on up

Nissin Foods’ television advertisements are another useful source for examining the rapidly changing social trends in Japan during its era of high growth. Television broadcasts in Japan began in 1953, but the mass acquisition of television sets did not occur until 1959, when the Crown Prince’s wedding to Sho-da Michiko of the Nisshin flour milling company set off a buying frenzy. Between 1956 and 1960, the percentage of Japanese households possessing a television set increased from 1 percent to almost 50 percent.88 Nissin Foods’ advertisements were particularly skillful in normalizing the use of instant ramen by groups that might otherwise have felt uncomfortable using the product. One of the company’s first television advertisements, aired in 1963, features a young boy and his mother, who is dressed in a high-quality kimono and appears refined. They giggle together while holding a package of instant ramen. The ad also prominently displays the word “lysine” across the screen along with the name of the product. The implication is that even well-to-do mothers have no qualms feeding their children protein-enriched instant noodles to keep them happy and healthy.89 The commercial’s core message is that the consumption of instant ramen is healthful. In response to this ad and others like it, some reactionary social critics began writing magazine editorials disparaging the widespread reliance on instant foods by young mothers as a sign of their laziness or excessive Americanization. The company’s next major commercial featured a young man wearing a white tank top sitting alone in a small apartment getting ready to enjoy his instant noodles. The ad, titled “Dokushinsha” (The bachelor), straightforwardly reveals the company’s main target group for its products after children—unmarried men.90 This commercial and others like it (such as a 1973 ad for Nissin’s yakisoba titled “Otoko no heya” [Man’s room]) reinforced the normative gendering of labor, in which men were expected to engage solely in remunerated labor or training for it and to rely upon female household labor (or instant food in the absence of females) for nourishment. Advertisements that targeted young males thus tended to emphasize the convenience of the food rather than its nutrition. The 1966 commercial “My Grandchild Loves It” reveals another important target group for instant ramen manufacturers—the elderly. The commercial shows a grandmother with her son, daughter-in-law, and two

move on up

109

grandchildren, all of whom are enjoying instant ramen together. The spot may be understood as an attempt to provide elderly urban consumers (who were becoming increasingly detached from the nuclear families of their children) with an excuse for buying instant foods without having to admit to eating them. “My Grandchild Loves It,” then, may have been just the line that elderly consumers, who were growing more dependent upon instant foods for everyday nourishment, needed to maintain a sense of dignity when buying Chikin Ra-men for themselves. Nissin Foods’ advertisements for its Demae Itcho line, which began in 1968, usually portrayed young kimono-clad men discussing the dish in relation to the uniqueness of Japanese culture, representing a shift in the emphasis of the company’s marketing materials. Commercials such as “Nihon no jo-shiki” (Japanese common sense) from 1972 and “Sho-yu Nihonjin, Sho-yu Se’eru” (Soy sauce–Japanese people, Soy sauce–sale) from 1975 demonstrate the newfound marketability of “Japanese culture” as a commodity marker. The introduction of Japanese-style (wafu- ) Chikin Ra-men and the Demae Itcho line in 1966 and 1968, respectively, represented a new emphasis on Japanese-themed marketing, which drew heavily upon Edo imagery of merchant culture, as well as ancient myths and legends. The emergent association between the consumption of instant ramen and the condition of being Japanese was emphasized not only by advertisers, but also by writers of popular tabloid magazines. The salaryman-targeted weekly Shu-kan Gendai, for example, interviewed twenty of the most prominent lovers of instant ramen about their favorite recipes and the significance of instant ramen to them. The piece begins with a quote from the foreign minister, Fukuda Takeo, who would later become prime minister: “It is one of my favorite foods. I eat it all the time. The best part is that it is simple, but if you add vegetables or meat, it tastes even better.”91 The foreign minister’s claim that he regularly ate instant ramen was a clear signal that he wanted to be viewed as a man of the masses, but it also served as a strong endorsement for instant ramen by one of the most powerful politicians in the country. Next in the article, the well-known essayist Kita Morio admits, “I am addicted to instant ramen. . . . These days I eat it only twice per day at 1 and 3 a.m., but for a while I was eating it as if I was mad.”92 The most

110

move on up

noteworthy quote, however, is from celebrity medical doctor and mountain climber Imai Michiko, who expounds on the virtues of instant ramen and its role in reminding her of her own Japaneseness: “When I go to the mountains, instant ramen is indispensable. No other food impresses everyone as much as this. Ultimately, it makes me feel more strongly that instant ramen is a Japanese food, and that I am Japanese.”93 Imai’s assertion about the connection between her pride in being Japanese and her enjoyment of instant noodles would gain wide circulation in the coming decade and a half, just as instant ramen was beginning to be produced and circulated abroad. The turn toward Japanese-themed advertising and the assessment that eating instant ramen was a distinctly Japanese cultural habit coincided with a broad turn toward the study of Japan’s strengths in industry and entrepreneurship by journalists and academics in the 1970s. Much of the writing focused on the root causes for Japan’s successful development as a modern, non-European, non-Christian, democratic, capitalist nation. Debates about the essential elements of Japanese culture that made the nation capable of achieving modern, Western European standards of development tended to focus on Japan’s homogeneity and uniqueness in relation to a normative, progressive “West,” represented most often by an idealized Britain. More generally, the debates confined the basic unit of analysis to national culture and buttressed the idea that timelessly construed national cultural inclinations could explain disparities in national wealth. Although writers debated which element of Japanese culture was responsible for the country’s recent economic success, the debate ignored issues such as Japan’s highly advantageous position as America’s most valuable strategic ally outside Europe due to the Cold War, the bifurcated labor market structure underpinning the national economic growth, or regional variations within Japan itself. In order to cement its strategic alliance with Japan, the United States provided concrete economic advantages to the country, such as a fixed exchange rate undervaluing the yen in order to spur Japan’s export sector, open technology transfers, and other favorable terms of trade. In turn, Japan’s rapid national economic growth allowed U.S. academics to tout it as a model of non-Western capitalist development for nonaligned countries.94 In this way, during the 1960s and 1970s, American historians of

move on up

111

Japan tended to limit the terms of analysis to the identification of preexisting national cultural traits that set the groundwork for successful development. Scholarship in the United States often described Japan as a unique example of successful non-Western development, attributing Japan’s political processes, economic practices, and social organization to cultural values undergirding the nation rather than seriously examining the interconnectedness of Japan’s alliance with the United States in the Cold War and its economic growth. In this way, Japanese culture was depicted as a timeless, unified essence responsible for the successes and failures of the national economy. The national history of ramen that was recorded in the early 1980s built on this postwar narrative of economic growth through cultural unity and singularity established in the high-growth period with support from American academics.95

h ate it or l ov e it During the high-growth era there was an explosion of weekly newsmagazines targeting different segments of the population, such as young women, young men, housewives, and adult men. Women’s magazines generally celebrated the convenience and supposed nutrition of instant foods as a manifestation of scientific progress and suggested recipes that would improve on instant ramen, usually through the addition of ingredients. An issue of Young Lady, a weekly magazine targeting working women, for example, notes twenty different ways to make use of instant ramen, such as by adding ketchup, canned tomato soup, garlic, hamburger meat, spaghetti sauce, bacon, or frozen fried rice. After listing the wide range of instant and frozen foods available on the market at the time, the article’s anonymous writer jovially observes, “The world sure has become a lot more convenient.”96 The article also provides a recipe for suiton stew, suggesting how one of the other most widely consumed postwar emergency foods besides Chu- ka soba was becoming popular among young people in its instant form, to the surprise of those with memories of surviving on it after the war.97 Editorials in magazines targeted at salarymen, on the other hand, often expressed concern about the social changes marked by the explosion of

112

move on up

such foods, and particularly about the perceived oversimplification of domestic labor. Although there was no disagreement that the proliferation of household kitchen technologies and scientifically preserved foods in working households was a sign of national economic achievement—an indication that the Japanese were catching up with the often-touted “American” standard of living—the reduction in time required to cook became a matter of controversy for male-targeted magazine writers, who stoked fears that an “American” approach to domestic labor had also been imported into Japan. An article from the literary journal Sho-setsu Ko-en nicely illustrates this tension by addressing the advent of frozen food, its impact on gender relations, and the differences between the use of household durables in Japan and the United States. The anonymous author begins by mentioning that the largest news story of the year was the record sales of washing machines, refrigerators, and televisions. Rather than being a cause of celebration, however, the writer views this situation only as evidence of how relatively poor and inconvenient everyday life in Japan had been until that point. He argues, “In America, ownership of dishwashers (let alone washing machines) is so common that it does not even generate any interest. Now on top of that we have ‘frozen food.’ After being liberated from the duties of cleaning and laundering, housewives are now being freed from even the duty of cooking.”98 After describing for unfamiliar readers what frozen food is and how it is prepared, he continues, “People’s first thought may be that such an item cannot possibly taste good, but that is because they are thinking of the frozen foods they already know, such as hokke or tara [two varieties of cod]. But the frozen foods being sold today [in the United States] have been developed and improved significantly over the last ten years. It is not an exaggeration to say that they are significantly better than the foods that Japanese people are accustomed to eating on a daily basis.”99 The author predicts robust growth in the sale of frozen food in Japan as long as prices continue to decrease. He concludes, “The result of these trends will be the complete liberation of women from the kitchen, leaving them with only the task of giving birth. One would expect that such a situation would lead men to complain about the unequal division of labor, but in America they do not complain. This is what makes Americans who they

move on up

113

are. If it was a Japanese man, he would probably have to make at least one complaint.”100 The article makes clear that changing practices of domestic labor were producing anxiety for social critics such as the author. Specifically, the decreased amount of time that female household managers required to prepare food was seen as a turn away from the very duties that defined motherhood and femininity. The type of apprehension voiced by such critics was a common theme in newspapers and magazine editorials in Japan as instant food became increasingly popular. The spread of instant ramen also raised the problem of atomization in eating, or the taking of meals alone. An article that captures the dilemma of improved convenience at the cost of greater atomization can be found in the November 13, 1960, issue of the popular newsmagazine Shu- kan Asahi. The article “It Is the Instant Era: Food, Clothing, and Shelter, Everything Instant” explores the novel dietary lifestyle associated with bachelors dependent on instant food. By 1960, it was possible to substitute a day’s worth of meals and drinks with instant foods, giving rise to the notion of “the instant man” who lived solely off of these products. The article depicts the instant man as an unmarried twenty-five-year-old sala- rakucho- district of Tokyo. It highlights the plethora ryman living in the Yu of new technologies, particularly with respect to food, that urban workers were enjoying, but it also points out some older practices that were being lost. The instant man’s day begins with a bowl of instant soup, some instant ramen, and a cup of instant coffee. After eating lunch at a self-service cafeteria at work, he buys his ingredients for dinner. These include instant “alpha rice” and some powdered “flavoring for fried rice mix.” He comes across a new line of canned goods at the store as well, which includes eel, lamb, and even chawanmushi [a savory steamed custard], and decides to buy them all, as he will surely consume them at some unknown time in the future. As he eats his dinner of instant fried rice mix and canned meat and prepares a dessert of instant red bean soup, he thinks to himself, What has become of this world? Back when I was a student, on winter nights, I would hold my hungry stomach patiently waiting for the sound of the charumera flute played by the ramen yatai. Otherwise, I would spend an hour boiling rice in an enormous pot, which I would eat with miso soup and salted cucumbers that I made myself every week. Remembering those days, I take a look at the cupboard, but there are no knives, pots, or cutting boards. All I

114

move on up have are a can opener and a frying pan. When people ask, “What about the taste of the food?” I must admit, it is not that good. But it is something that I should be able to put up with until I get married at least.101

In addition to describing the atomization generated by a dependency on instant food, the article also reinforces the notion that the socially appropriate consumer for instant foods was a young unmarried man. The expectation that the instant man would no longer need to “put up with” such foods once he was married points to the taboo against overreliance on instant foods by housewives. In this way, critical editorial writers for salaryman-oriented newsmagazines discouraged the use of instant foods by those other than young bachelors, often inadvertently through news stories such as the one above. Ultimately, therefore, the advertisers and editorial writers frequently found themselves working toward opposing ends. While those producing instant foods and kitchen gadgets directly targeted young housewives in advertisements and encouraged the rationalization of everyday life through the use of their products, critical editorial writers often condemned the use of instant foods by young mothers as an inappropriate shirking of cooking chores. Some women writers—often with backgrounds in home economics— also bemoaned the decline of cooking and the advent of “too much time for leisure” resulting from the use of instant foods. For example, the same Shu- kan Asahi article quotes travel writer and food expert Totsuka Fumiko on the loss of culture entailed in the wholesale adoption of instant foods. “If the instant [lifestyle] goes to the extreme, humans become psychologically mechanized too, which brings about the destruction of the mental structure. . . . [To counterbalance this trend], many American men have even taken to Eastern philosophy and Zen Buddhism.”102 In Totsuka’s opinion, the American interest in so-called Eastern thought was a reaction to the excessive pursuit of practical and scientific advancement that defined Western thought.103 She then notes how “Europeans are more balanced” and discourages Japanese from excessively embracing the “instant lifestyle” (i.e., the American way of life) afforded by household technologies.104 Not everyone, however, was critical of instant foods. One editorial in a magazine targeting agricultural workers notes the nutritional benefits of

move on up

115

instant foods, bolstering the claims made in advertisements by Nissin Foods and other producers. The magazine Chijo- provides a glimpse into the popularity of instant ramen among farm workers in the early 1960s based upon its novelty and scientific claims about its superior nutrition. After describing instant ramen and how it is prepared, the author exclaims, “It is full of healthy nutrients such as protein, fat, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, and calcium, and contains 512 calories per 100 grams. The price is 85 yen for a pack of two servings, which is actually cheaper than the 50 yen per bowl charged at Chu- ka soba shops or at yatai stands.”105 The same article also touts the merits of instant shiruko (sweet azuki bean soup), noting that it contains vitamin B1 additives and can be purchased for about one-third the cost of a restaurant-made serving. In addition, the anonymous author suggests instant coffee to farmers as a way for them to quickly regain the energy necessary to work in the fields without wasting time actually brewing the drink. In this manner, some editorial writers embraced instant foods as superior to handmade because of their low price and their nourishing ingredients. The writer’s faith in the benefits of scientific improvements to food is a testament to the overarching belief in progress that pervaded Japan in this era. Two other themes common to many editorials critiquing the surge of instant foods were the poor flavor and safety records of some of the products. One article from Shu- kan Shincho-, Japan’s leading newsmagazine, raises both of these concerns. The subhead of “An Evaluation of Instant Foods” notes, “Too many products taste ‘just good enough.’ ” According to one Japanese food scientist quoted in the article, “The main concern for the industry at this point is to improve taste. . . . Once the most essential aspects of the product—taste and aroma—are improved, and once lifestyles are rationalized more in Japan, we will see the industry truly take off.” The rationalization of lifestyles to which he refers meant a greater reliance on convenience foods purchased from supermarkets and prepared using electric cooking appliances.106 Another concern the article’s author raises is the safety of instant ramen. Reports of people falling seriously ill after consuming Chikin Ra- men and other brands of instant ramen began appearing in the news in March 1961. Investigations revealed that production on poorly maintained equipment and a lack of clear information provided to consum-

116

move on up

ers about expiration dates were to blame for the outbreak of food-borne illnesses. Nissin Foods and all other instant food makers introduced expiration dates on its products later that year as a result of stricter standards put in place by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries.107 By the second half of the 1960s, more editorialists were writing pieces critical of the explosion of instant foods, pointing out the social changes brought about by their widespread and frequent use. In one piece from Ushio, a magazine published by the lay Buddhist organization So-kagakkai, the social critic and sake historian Murashima Kenichi delves into the sweeping social changes related to instant foods. Murashima begins by discussing the fad of adding the word “instant” to other words in Japanese to create new terms and how unappealing the practice is from a literary perspective. He lists terms he has recently encountered in conversations, such as “insutanto miai” (instant matchmaking) and “insutanto mane’e biru” (instant money bill, or money from pawned goods), and bemoans that even the dictionaries produced by major publishers such as Iwanami Shoten, Shincho-sha, and Obunsha had succumbed to treating the word “instant” as standard Japanese.108 The rapid transformation of linguistic norms to incorporate foreign and other new terms was taken as a strong indication of the decline of Japan’s indigenous culture and its loss of self-confidence. Murashima attributes the changes primarily to shifting dietary habits and specifically to the mass consumption of instant ramen. He notes, “During the cold months, between October and March, Japanese households consume two servings of instant ramen every five days on average, which amounts to ten million servings per day.”109 Notwithstanding Murashima’s alarm at the already high rate of consumption in 1966, instant ramen consumption grew even further, reaching a rate of fortyfive servings annually per person over the next decade, where it has remained since. Murashima then examines the reasoning behind the popularization of what he calls “emergency foods” (instant foods) despite the lack of an emergency. He states that the two key reasons for the success of instant foods are their ability to be preserved for an extended period of time after production and the short period of time needed to reconstitute them when

move on up

117

eating. He then raises the poignant question of what makes these two conditions, which are usually associated with military readiness, so desirable to Japanese society at a time of peace. He writes, On the war front, it is always difficult to know when one will be resupplied with basic goods. Raw foodstuffs are hard to obtain. Especially when conflict does break out, there is no time to cook. In this situation, it becomes necessary to have foods that can be preserved and prepared quickly. Yet current conditions in society are completely different. There are no inconveniences in everyday life. There is more than enough time, and there are more than enough goods. What, then, is the reason behind the high value attached to foods that can be lengthily preserved and shortly reconstituted?110

For Murashima, the psychology of the consumer who eats emergency foods despite an absence of scarcity is puzzling and illustrates the pathology associated with the way in which Japanese society developed in order to achieve national economic prosperity. For others, however, instant foods were simply an inexpensive meal of convenience. Next Murashima differentiates between appropriate and inappropriate uses (or users) of instant foods, for which he provides explicit examples based on a gendered division of labor. Describing the appropriate uses and users of instant ramen, he notes: I know three people who are close to me and are avid consumers of instant ramen. One is a college student. He lives in a dorm without board. When he is up late at night studying, he fills his empty stomach with it. Another one is a lawyer. Again, late at night, he is often facing his desk. Since his family is already sleeping, he eats it for a late-night snack. The last is an entertainer. He is busy. Even in the morning, he has no time to sit down and eat. He makes [his food] quickly and finishes it in a jiff. . . . I believe that these are examples of the normal [matomo] use of instant ramen.111

Each of his examples of acceptable use involves a man working during unusual hours. The independent, self-sacrificing, ambitious young man requiring irregular infusions of calories is the correct ramen consumer for Murashima. In other words, instant ramen may be used as a practical and

118

move on up

effective way to boost men’s productivity. The trouble with instant ramen, however, is its use as a means to reduce labor for housewives. What could be the cause [for such high sales of instant ramen]? It can be no reason other than that it has become a staple meal for households. . . . The [instant ramen manufacturers’] industry has claimed it to be “a product of the rationalization of life” or “an accompaniment to the innovative lifestyle,” but that may be going a little too far. An important part of a housewife’s job is to provide nutritious foods to her husband and child. Am I so old-fashioned? I refuse to consider the shirking of duties by housewives to be a sign of rationalization or innovation.112

He next addresses what he considers to be the problematic outcome of the extra time afforded to housewives via the “rationalized lifestyle,” namely, their intent focus upon their children’s educational activities. What are housewives doing with all the extra time and labor? Are they cultivating [kyo-yo-] themselves? I hear nothing of the sort. Are they becoming engrossed in leisure pursuits? If so, I would be happy for them. But the reality is far from that. . . . Could television viewing really account for all the extra time housewives now have? My friend, who is a doctor, told me, “Not necessarily. Many of them are simply becoming obsessed over their children’s education [kyo-iku mama].”113

Murashima concludes by criticizing young fathers in Japan for allowing their wives to become education-obsessed mothers who cook instant food instead of more nutritious, slower-cooked foods. His ire is not directed at the manufacturers of instant ramen, nor its unmarried male consumers, but only at housewives who were focusing on the education of their children. His bewilderment at the changing practices of domestic labor resulting from advances in food-preservation technology illustrates how central the issue of gender was to debates about the social impact of instant foods in this era. The advent of the mother who was reliant on instant foods was troubling to those who preferred established household practices based on a clear gendering of labor. In this fashion, Murashima’s piece neatly ties together many of the social disruptions arising from the widespread use of instant ramen in Japan in the late 1960s.

move on up

119

terr or is m a n d cu pped ra m e n Ando- Momofuku’s inspiration behind the cupped version of instant ramen was his desire to export instant noodles to the United States and Europe, where it could be consumed with nothing more than a fork (or a spork) rather than chopsticks and a bowl. In 1970 Nissin formed a U.S. subsidiary to sell instant noodles to the Americans, which began importing bagged ramen from Japan and sold it in the United States under the brand name Top Ramen. In 1973, two years after its release in Japan, Nissin introduced cupped ramen in the United States under the name Cup O’ Noodle. The main innovations that - and his team to realize the cupped version of ramen were the allowed Ando use of Styrofoam and freeze-dried toppings as well as a production process that concentrated more noodles at the top of the package than the bottom so that the rising steam would cook them evenly. In Japan cupped noodles were sold for one hundred yen each, which was four times the cost of the bagged variety and half the cost of the average bowl at a shop.114 Nissin Foods sold the first cupped ramen, “Cup Noodle,” on September 18, 1971, holding a promotion in the fashionable Ginza district, where roadways were blocked to auto traffic on Sundays to create a weekly “pedestrian’s paradise” (hoko-sha tengoku). Promoters offered samples to young people strolling by as advertisers recorded their images on film, capturing their sense of wonder about the product and the ability to eat noodle soup while walking. Although the publicity surrounding the release of cupped noodles was substantial, the food gained national exposure of a different sort when it played a role in a hostage standoff known as the Asama Mountain Lodge Incident of February 1972. Just as Chikin Ra-men’s advertising had benefited from the Crown Prince’s marriage and the growth of television ownership, Cup Noodle profited from the attention it received during the crisis, which was covered on live television and at one point was witnessed by 89.7 percent of all television viewers.115 The ten-day incident began when members of a radical leftist student group, the United Red Army, killed fourteen of their own group’s members and a bystander in a deadly purge, then stormed a vacation lodge in the resort town of Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture, to evade police. Armed with rifles, five remaining members of the group took the lodge manager’s wife hostage and killed two more police before being captured in a morning

120

move on up

raid. Six television stations covered the incident live, which was the first time a hostage crisis unfolded on television in Japan. During the standoff, reporters showed police eating cupped ramen to fight the cold and hunger that were setting in as the students held their positions. The subzero temperatures made bento- (lunch boxes) and onigiri (rice balls) impractical, and so cupped ramen, sold to the police at fifty yen per unit (half the retail cost), provided sustenance to the officers.116 The footage of the standoff, which ended with the death of two police officers, the freeing of the hostage, and the arrest of all five students after a morning raid, provided Cup Noodle with nationwide product recognition only five months after its launch. Years later, the students revealed that they, too, survived on instant ramen for most of the standoff.117 In this way cupped ramen gained widespread acceptance as a food that could be consumed in extreme weather conditions, and as a commodity that would be exceedingly useful in a time of emergency. This function would become more important in the ensuing decades as Nissin gained global stature as a critical supplier of instant and cupped ramen in times of crisis following natural disasters.118 The Kobe earthquake of 1995 and the To-hoku earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, reinforced the usefulness of instant ramen following calamities as well as Nissin’s unrivaled role as a supplier of emergency food aid in Japan. In 2005, the Japanese instant noodle industry was worth five hundred billion yen, or six billion dollars, and was dominated by five companies in Japan, which together accounted for nearly 90 percent of instant noodle sales: Nissin, To-yo- Suisan, Sanyo- Foods, Myo-jo- Foods, and Ace Cook.119 China, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, and the United States, in that order, accounted for the bulk of the non-Japanese instant ramen market. In addition, Mexico became an important market for Japanese instant ramen in the last decade. One of the effects of the success of ramen has been its displacement of inherited cooking practices, which has created a pattern for future consumers to become reliant on the convenience of instant cooking, similar to the way that U.S. wheat shifted Japanese consumption toward bread and noodles and away from rice. Between 1999 and 2005, for example, the sale of instant ramen in Mexico tripled, reaching one billion servings annually, or ten servings per person.120 As instant noodles spread, the consumption of beans in Mexico declined by more than half over the same

move on up

121

period. Although consumption in Mexico is still a far cry from the fortyfive servings eaten annually by the average Japanese, the pace of growth has been alarming for dieticians and proponents of traditional Mexican cuisine. According to the Los Angeles Times, “The product is so pervasive that a national newspaper recently dubbed Mexico ‘Maruchan Nation.’ ”121 One reason for the spread of the Japanese import in Mexico is the government’s distribution of instant ramen to rural commissaries as food aid. Diconsa, the government agency responsible for distributing food to the rural poor, purchased 5.5 million pounds of instant noodles in 2004 alone, which was triple the amount of its order in 2000.122 In addition, the noodle companies developed new flavors, such as those based on tlalpeño soup and picante shrimp, that suited the tastes of Mexican consumers.123 The extensive consumption of instant ramen promises to spread to other parts of Latin America, as well as to Africa and Europe, far beyond its core market of Asian consumers. The consumption of instant ramen has also spread among those incarcerated in the United States in the last three decades. In 2003, the number of incarcerated Americans exceeded two million, and for a great number of these men and women, ramen has become a staple. Instant ramen was the best-selling item in the prison commissary of Rikers Island, for example, and, at thirty-five cents a package, it outsold coffee, candy, and Coca-Cola.124 Recipes describing how prisoners ate their instant ramen also appeared online in the late 2000s. In one web cookbook, “Prison Cuizine,” the anonymous author notes, “Most prison or jail recipes are ramen noodle or rice based and made with food items purchased from the commissary or brought out of the kitchen or mess hall. . . . Many prison recipes start out with crushed Ramen noodles, mayonnaise, chili garlic sauce, crushed nacho cheese tortillas, squeeze cheese, diced peppers and onions, and the meat of your choice.”125 One recipe for “Sweet and Spicey [sic] Coke Ramen” consists of the following: one package Texas Beef Ramen, ½ to ¾ can of Coke (not Diet), one pack of salted peanuts, and an optional beef stick (aka Slim Jim). In this way and others, instant ramen has taken on new meanings and forms for different groups far from Japan. As the Mexican and U.S. inmate versions of ramen attest, the association between instant ramen and Japan has grown more tenuous over time, perhaps resembling the dissipating association between ramen and China within Japan itself.

4

Like It Is, Like It Was rebranding ramen

In the 1980s ramen entered a new phase as a trendy food among a new generation of fashion-inclined youths of Japan. As a result, ramen evolved into a mechanism to sell goods and services other than the food itself. Tour packages, television specials, guidebooks, history books, graphic novels, video games, and a full-length feature film devoted to ramen (Tampopo) materialized as the share of disposable income spent on entertainment and leisure expanded. Media productions devoted to the appreciation of ramen coincided with the gradual fading of pushcarts and small local eateries serving the noodle soup in Japanese cities. The overall transformation of eating into a form of entertainment with fetishistic undertones, known as the gourmet boom, was a visible result of the service sector’s rise and the manufacturing sector’s decline in the Japanese economy. The Chinese restaurant and Japanese common diner (taishu- shokudo-) catering to bachelors from the countryside declined along with demand for construction labor in the cities. In its place arose the ramen specialty shop with a limited menu selling the noodle soup at a slightly higher cost (750 yen, as opposed to 500 yen, for instance) than the Chinese restaurant. These restaurants catered to young city dwellers with disposable income who were identified as the “new breed” (Shinjinrui) in the popular 122

like it is, like it was

123

press because of their unfamiliarity with the country’s pre-1960s economic struggle. Portrayed as a generation born into convenience and relative affluence, the youths of the 1980s were fashion-conscious and heavily invested in conspicuous consumption. Many were born and raised in the city (unlike their parents, who had moved there from the countryside), and they tended to work part-time jobs in the service sector, in stark contrast to the traditional consumers of ramen, workers in construction and night entertainment. The chefs at successful shops catering to the “new breed” tended to regard their food (and themselves) more seriously than did the owners of Chinese restaurants during the high-growth period. In this manner, a new generation of ramen chefs and fans together raised the dish’s profile in the 1980s. By the 1990s, ramen chefs were appearing on television, writing philosophical treatises, and achieving celebrity status in Japanese popular culture, while their fans were building museums and Internet forums. The ramen craze of the 1980s and 1990s took the form of a focus on the dish’s regional variations by the national press. Ramen had evolved differently enough in each of Japan’s smaller cities that it could be presented as a regional specialty of areas such as Kitakata, Sapporo, and Fukuoka. The birth of ramen tourism in this period coincided with a general rise in domestic tourism and highlighted the new forms of leisure and increased levels of capital available, particularly to young people in urban Japan. Government policies designed to stimulate economic activity in less affluent, nonmetropolitan areas were another driving force behind ramen tourism. The small cities that became known for regionally distinct ramen in the 1990s were the same ones that had thrived during the first wave of industrialization in the 1920s but had had difficulty attracting investment more recently. The boom in publicity surrounding Chinese noodle soup epitomized the transformation of ramen eating from an instrumental practice rooted in the fueling of labor power into a fashionable activity representative of youthful consumerism and domestic tourism. The mass media’s celebration of individually made ramen in the 1980s was in many ways a turn away from the predictability of instant, canned, and frozen foods, as well as the standardized meals found in the impersonal family restaurants that had become popular in the previous decade.

124

like it is, like it was

The elevation of ramen consumption to a form of entertainment also revealed the power of the mass media to amplify youth consumer trends. In the early 1980s, it became common for young people to drive an entire day simply to taste a local ramen made famous by a television show or magazine. Food-related media, in turn, was rapidly increasing, making success in the food business dependent on coverage. The term ra-men gyo-retsu, referring to dedicated customers who often waited in line two or three hours before being served, came into popular use during this period. The act of eating ramen, emptied of its original function of fueling arduous toil, gained new meaning as an iconic component of young consumer culture, and a new purpose of selling advertising space in magazines and airtime on television.

travel in g to eat Tanaka Kakuei, Japan’s prime minister from 1972 to 1974, initiated a phase of economic investment in domestic infrastructure, particularly in the countryside, that laid the groundwork for the ramen tourism boom of the 1980s. Tanaka’s emphasis on the construction of new roads led to a redirecting of public and semipublic funds (such as household savings managed by the nation’s postal bank) from metropolitan to rural areas and increased his popularity with rural voters and the construction interests he represented. Grand projects promoting domestic tourism to Japan’s smaller cities were spurred by the shift toward stimulating domestic economic demand and the move away from the mass-production and export-driven growth of the 1960s. In this way, efforts to promote tourism to Japan’s smaller cities had the dual purpose of redistributing resources within Japan and reducing dependence on the export sector.1 One of the solutions that Tanaka’s governing Liberal Democratic Party promoted to stimulate domestic tourism was the “town-revitalization movement” (machiokoshi undo-). Revitalization campaigns were intended to showcase the distinctiveness of Japan’s local cultures, to infuse rural areas with capital, and to reduce Japan’s reliance on export-led growth. To that end, local business groups designed elaborate cultural exposition centers, festivals, and commercial districts across suburban and rural

like it is, like it was

125

Japan. In many cases, the uniqueness of a locale’s ramen became a focal point of tourism, thanks to the persistent promotional endeavors of local business groups and the national media. The press, in turn, inspired a fetishistic fervor for some of the most popular ramen restaurants. The rise of the food press, and the ramen-appreciation industry in particular, was emblematic of a larger shift in Japan’s political economy and social organization. Whether measured by the proliferation of magazines and television shows that guided consumers to the most popular ramen establishments or by the increase in television dramas, graphic novels, and movies using ramen shops as a backdrop, the clamor surrounding the noodle soup was increasingly perceptible to anyone in Japan by the mid-1980s. The explosion in ramen-related press from the mid-1980s onward was noteworthy. Based on an analysis of all magazine articles published in Japan between 1974 and 2000, the economic historian Kawata Tsuyoshi concluded that the number of articles discussing the food quadrupled in 1986 alone and remained at the same level until 1994, when the opening of the Raumen Museum spurred another wave of publicity.2 Despite all the attention to ramen, however, the actual number of ramen shops did not expand significantly during the 1980s, and the average household expenditure on ramen remained relatively flat as well.3 In fact, after consistently increasing from 1960 onward, ramen expenditures began to level off around 1982. Therefore, the actual peak in ramen consumption in Japan occurred around 1982, if Kawata’s numbers, taken from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Bureau of Statistics, are correct. The explosion in publicity, then, cannot be said to have caused a verifiable increase in consumption. Instead, it must be understood against the background of a macroeconomic shift away from construction and manufacturing and toward services that depended heavily on the consumption of leisure services and luxury goods, which required a stronger emphasis on marketing. Japan’s shift away from an economy concentrated on export-driven manufacturing, mass production, and middle-class consumerism toward one geared toward leisure services, mass media, and cultural rebranding was part of a larger process of post-Fordist accumulation and the diminution of productive investment outlets that affected all of the advanced capitalist countries beginning in the mid-1970s.4 In his short piece “The

5,391 5,659 16,133 3,128

5,341 5,414 16,170 3,208

5,359 5,381 14,956 3,163

150,005

2003

2005

5,327 5,445 14,826 3,308

5,413 5,768 14,517 3,586

151,184 149,920

2004

source: Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Statistics Bureau

155,329

152,939

Average annual 160,088 household restaurant expenditures Soba/udon 5,394 Ramen 5,349 Sushi 16,944 Hamburger 3,109

2002

2001

2000

5,282 5,237 13,822 3,504

148,112

2006

Table 2 Average Annual Household Restaurant Expenditures, by Year in Yen

5,333 5,396 14,667 3,785

152,817

2007

5,291 5,634 14,433 4,046

153,556

2008

5,276 5,673 14,040 4,351

149,097

2009

5,190 5,731 13,430 4,476

148,183

2010

5,122 5,472 12,962 4,501

142,976

2011

5,273 5,349 13,094 4,315

146,359

2012

like it is, like it was

127

Long Stagnation and the Class Struggle,” economist John Bellamy Foster examines the slower rate of growth found in industrialized capitalist countries after the early 1970s. Foster notes: For more than a quarter-century, the advanced capitalist economies have been mired in a condition of economic stagnation, characterized by slow growth, sluggish investment, and high levels of unemployment and excess capacity. . . . The giant corporations that dominate the modern economy have a vast capacity to generate economic surplus, arising out of monopolization of the main benefits of scientific-technological progress as manifested in increasing labor productivity. Under these circumstances, rapid growth will occur only to the extent that investment outlets of an equally massive kind are available. Yet there is nothing within the logic of the system that ensures that investment outlets on the scale necessary will materialize. The dominant reality of the last quarter century has been one in which the potential supply of investment has exceeded its demand.5

The macroeconomic situation described by Foster can also help explain the shifting function of ramen in Japan from a ubiquitously available caloric recharge for construction workers to an important tool for promoting domestic tourism and the sale of magazines targeting young people with disposable income. The ramen tourist boom and the lines forming at famous stores in the 1980s were thus important signs of changes in labor practices in Japan, particularly among young people. Catalogue magazines, which began appearing with greater frequency in the 1980s, targeted subsets of the new breed and others in Japan. One of the most common types of catalogue magazines was the guide to ramen shops. The growth of ramen catalogue magazines was, however, only one part of the explosion of food-related press as a whole. The success of catalogues comparing goods such as ramen represented a shift toward the selling of information and images rather than manufactured goods and services.6 The image and idea of the food became tools to sell a multitude of commodities and images peripherally related to the dish itself. A concrete example of how this process unfolded can be seen in Kitakata, Fukushima prefecture, where ramen tourism developed into a sizable part of the local economy in the 1980s. As domestic tourism increased along with disposable income, Kitakata business leaders decided

128

like it is, like it was

to market the distinctive style of ramen made in that area—flat, thick noodles with clear pork and niboshi (dried sardine) soup broth—as one of the attractions of visiting. The neighboring castle town of Aizu-Wakamatsu was drawing throngs of tourists, and Kitakata city leaders viewed their town’s ramen as a way to attract some of the crowds on their way home from the castle. To that end, they joined efforts with tour companies and advertising agencies and enlisted the national broadcasting network (Nippon Ho-so- Kyoku, or NHK) to encourage tourists to visit one of the eighty ramen shops in town, which had a population of roughly forty thousand (a high concentration relative to other areas of Japan).7 After an NHK special focusing solely on the distinctiveness of the town’s ramen, Kitakata no men, aired in November 1982, the Kitakata ramen boom took off. In 1985 another NHK television program, Tsuiseki: Ra-men no Kaori Tadayou Kura no Machi (Pursuing the [castle] storehouse town with the drifting ramen scent), highlighted the fact that tour companies had begun organizing large bus tours from Tokyo whose primary activity was sampling the vicinity’s ramen (“The Kitakata Ramen-Eating Tour”). That city managers felt the need to draw up contingency plans for a possible future slump in ramen tourism in 1988 indicates just how significant the consumption of ramen had become to the local economy in just a few years.8 Many cities followed Kitakata in promoting their distinct style of ramen with the hope of garnering national media attention and generating revenue through tourism. Although the formula worked for many locales in the 1980s and 1990s, by 2000 regional ramen newly highlighted by the media were not achieving the same degree of popularity. The best examples may be Wakayama and Tokushima ramen, which never achieved quite the national recognition that ramen from cities such as Hakata in - shu - or Ogikubo in Tokyo did in the early 1980s.9 As one ramen conKyu noisseur, Oshima Akihiko noted, “The image I have of Tokushima ramen is that the mass media tried to ginger up a fad but that it did not work.”10 Although Tokushima ramen never took hold in the way that Sapporo, Hakata, Ogikubo, and Kitakata ramen eventually did, it was still able to gain entry into the elite group of nineteen regional ramen styles recognized by the Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum in its permanent exhibit. According to the exhibit, the nineteen regional ramens of Japan are those of Asahikawa, Shirakawa, Kitakata, Hakata, Yonezawa, Yokohama

Figure 4. Pamphlet for Tokushima ramen and tulip tour. Courtesy of Tokushima Tourism Kyo-kai.

130

like it is, like it was

(Ie-kei), Takayama, Wakayama, Tokushima, Hiroshima, Kagoshima, Sano, Sapporo,11 Kumamoto, Tokyo (Ogikubo), Kyo-to, Hakodate, Kurume, and Onomimchi.12 Ramen tourism peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s, making Asahikawa, Wakayama, and Tokushima the last cities to become famous for distinctive ramen styles. Reflecting on the changing significance of regional ramen in Japan, Iwaoka Yo-ji, the founder of the Raumen Museum, noted in 2010, “It feels as though the cultural and economic development of ramen has stopped. I fear that the kind of passion people had for ramen during the early 2000s—the type of enthusiasm that had people traveling simply to taste different regional ramen styles—is now gone, and the regional ramen themselves are losing their regional distinctiveness, heralding the loss of individual creativeness in general.”13 These were uncharacteristically bleak words from one of the primary figures responsible for the canonization of ramen as a national food in the late 1990s. His book’s core argument that Japan’s regional ramen styles were in danger of disappearing was an alarming call to ramen fans to support local ramen shops and preserve the traditions embodied by regional ramen.

ver bs of pow er : ra men boo k s As ramen was transformed from a food eaten primarily by manual laborers and nocturnal workers into a source of tourist revenue featured in television documentaries, the demand for a stabilizing historical narrative concerning the origins of the dish arose. As a result, the ramen fans and chefs of the 1980s began to consider the food as an object worthy of historical inquiry. Beginning in 1981, therefore, articles in weekly newsmagazines nostalgically discussing the irrecoverable taste of early postwar Shina soba appeared with growing frequency.14 The first three books devoted solely to the study and celebration of ramen were published within a year of one another between 1981 and 1982 (at the same time that the ramen tours to Kitakata and television features on ramen began appearing).15 Among these, Sho-ji Sadao’s Ra-men Daisuki!! (I Love Ramen!!) was a groundbreaking text that carved the path for many others that would follow. Known as the “bible of ramen-

like it is, like it was

131

related books,”16 this text, edited by one of the country’s acclaimed graphic novelists, examined the variation in the dish across regions and over time and introduced some of the most popular shops around the country in a festive and laudatory tone. Chapters such as “Ramen Is a Sigh of Relief for the Ordinary Person” also elevated the small-scale production of the noodle soup to a new level of social historical significance that had not been articulated or associated with it in the past.17 The text is divided into four sections. The first introduces six stores in Tokyo that were renowned either for their tradition or for the taste of their ramen, ranging from one long-running shop in Mitaka boasting “ultraorthodox postwar yatai-style ramen” to one recent addition in Ebisu serving “new wave–style ramen.” The second part analyzes ramen in a faux - shu - Ramen academic style in chapters such as “Ramen Soup Studies,” “Kyu Studies,” “The Psychology of Ramen,” and “The Sociology of Ramen.” The third section consists of commentaries by various celebrities on their relationship with the noodle soup, and the final section is a comic trilogy written by Sho-ji.18 In describing the differences in ramen across time and space, the book also touches on the historical role of the dish as a marker of postwar socioeconomic change. One chapter, “Memories of Shina Soba,” for example, recalls the important role of Chinese noodle soup as an emergency food during the U.S. occupation. According to Sho-ji, “At any given Chinese food restaurant today, one can find ramen with fine taste and perfectly crafted noodles, but it is impossible to find what existed in the old days, which was an ambiguous dish where it was difficult to determine to what extent it was Japanese, and to what extent it was Chinese [Shina]. . . Above all else, the flute-playing pushcart vendor selling Shina soba has vanished from Tokyo.”19 In this fashion, the writers described the vast material and contextual distance between the Shina soba of the 1940s and the ramen of the 1980s. The quality of the food had improved, but the dish had lost its original exotic charm. The foreignness of ramen was now retroactively understood to contain a certain value, this after nearly all connections to the food’s Chinese origins had been erased in the previous two decades. Furthermore, the type of nostalgic yearning for Japan during the highgrowth era provided the rationale for the construction in 1994 of the

132

like it is, like it was

Raumen Museum as a theme park modeled on downtown Tokyo as it appeared in 1958. Another chapter in the same book, “Ramen and Postwar Japanese Society,” which describes modern Japanese social development in terms of its food and gambling fads, treats ramen as the most emblematic dish of Japan’s postwar consumer culture. According to the author, Tada Michitaro-, Japan’s popular culture of the early twentieth century is represented best by the popularity of yatai soba and the game of hanafuda, the 1920s and 1930s by curry with rice and mah-jongg, and the postwar period by ramen and pachinko. Tada argues that each food and game can be connected to the dominant social formation of the period in which it flourished, providing a blueprint for the study of everyday life in the history of modern Japan. Although the author does not describe the political and economic relationships that constituted the basis for the popularity of these foods and games in each of these eras, he finds in each traces of the early modern Edo (pre-Tokyo) merchant culture that preceded their spread.20 Tada next addresses the internationalization of ramen, as seen from the increasing popularity of the food in cities of the West such as Paris, New York, and Honolulu, noting that ramen has the potential to become the first modern international food produced in the East. The author then describes the process by which Japanese chefs assimilated ramen to Japanese tastes and improved the palatability of the food from a Japanese perspective.21 The attentiveness to eating and gambling as markers of social change was partly the result of new approaches to history developed in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s, collectively known as minshu- shi, or people’s history.22 The work of minshu- shi scholars such as Yasaumaru Yoshio placed the common people and their changing daily practices at the foreground of the history and helped establish topics such as food and entertainment as worthy of serious enquiry. In this way, Ramen Daisuki!! laid the groundwork for later works addressing the history, culture, and economics of ramen, including those authored by Okada Tetsu, Okuyama Tadamasa, and Kawata Tsuyoshi. Collectively, these texts established an orthodox national narrative concerning the dish in the late 1990s. The new level of attention to ramen in Japan coincided with a speculative economic bubble in stocks and real estate in the 1980s. Together they

Figure 5. Ramen-related books on display at the Nissin Foods Corporation’s Food Library in Shinjuku.

134

like it is, like it was

produced ramen tourism and, perhaps more importantly, ramen nationalism, or pride in the ingenuity of Japanese culture as epitomized by the invention and export of ramen, both instant and handmade. Some journalists, however, found ramen nationalism to be shallow. In “The History of Food in the Sho-wa Era,” a thirty-page feature story in the popular weekly Shu- kan Yomiuri, a two-page section on the ramen boom was titled “The Frightening Situation Where Plain Old Ramen Becomes the Basis for ‘Theories of Japanese Superiority.’ ”23 The author of the section on ramen, Tamamura Toyo’o, notes, “Essentially, ramen is currently the hot topic among journalists. That is why everyone is doing a ramen special. The more one hears that there is a boom, the more one gets the sense that there actually is a spectacular boom occurring, making one want to eat the dish in an unthinking moment.”24 Tamamura argues that journalists are simply creating trends in the name of reportage to relieve the boredom of unthinking consumers, and that the situation reveals Japan’s rapid shift toward individualism and alienation. According to Tamamura, [Ramen] has changed from a convenient food product simply meant to alleviate hunger to something about which books are written and people pontificate to parade their knowledge when they eat it, making it part of the overanalyzed [unchiku] foods group. I feel that if anything this is a sign of a rather bleak and close-minded “me-ism.” Unlike in the high-growth era, when eating ramen conjured up images of late-night overtime work and the food itself symbolized strength and energy, now it invokes images of a posthigh-growth middle-class malaise, where Japanese people are reduced to buying “high-quality” instant noodles to bring home to eat, desperately attempting to relieve the lack of anything festive in their lives with the overanalysis of food.25

Tamamura’s most insightful critique is alluded to in the title “The Frightening Situation Where Plain Old Ramen Becomes the Basis for ‘Theories of Japanese Superiority,’ as he was early to notice the easy slippage between food appreciation and neonationalism. In the penultimate subsection of the article, titled, “Confirming Pronouncements of Baseless Nationalism,” he notes: When the situation is such that people begin to think, “Ramen is a great invention of the Japanese people, there is no greater food in the world,

like it is, like it was

135

Japanese are superior,” then this [ramen boom] becomes a confirmation of baseless nationalism. And in reality, the mass media’s treatment of ramen, and the tone of the new theories on ramen, appear to come close to a theory of Japanese superiority. In one television program that I saw recently, the theme of which was a search for the roots of ramen in Hong Kong, a female reporter was shown going all over the city searching for something resembling ramen. She evaluated each bowl and found that it did not taste good or was not to her liking. In the end, she settled on a version that most resembled what she was already familiar with, only to dump soy sauce on it to change the color and flavor, finally transforming it into the closest thing to Japanese ramen that she could. What was completely lacking, however, was any sort of mindset of modesty toward the genuinely Chinese noodles of China. It is true that recent television commercials are beginning to increase the use of Chinese motifs to raise the product image of [instant] ramen, but to use Chinese people speaking in broken, accented Japanese (in contrast to the automobile commercials featuring Alain Delon speaking French) makes me think that this is connected to the arrogance that led to Japanese imperialism and its invasion of China, and it appears that to travel all the way to China to shoot on location a group of Chinese people eating instant ramen and clapping afterward [for a commercial] is a rather patronizing idea conjured by economic superpowerdom. As far as one can observe, this situation with respect to ramen is clear evidence of the Japanese people’s frustration with their inability to find an outlet to vent their irritation despite having achieved economic superpower status. For all the growth in affluence, all it has produced is a situation where the turning of ramen into luxury food is the result. While slurping that ramen, stress is relieved by thinking about how superior the Japanese are, again by referring back to the superiority of ramen.26

Tamamura’s critique of the circular reasoning behind the privileging of ramen is a rare example of an attempt to dislodge the dish’s history from an all-encompassing national narrative. Accordingly, while ramen tours, documentaries, and books all tended to move the still-forming noodle narrative in the direction of a nationalistic tale of improving Chinese foods, Tamamura instead viewed the new reverence for the dish as a sign of “the emptiness of Japanese affluence”27 in the post-high-growth era. The first book-length study on the history of ramen in Japan was published in 1987. Kosuge Keiko’s A Japanese Ra-men Tale: Where and When Was Chinese Noodle Soup Born? (Nippon Ra- men Monogatari: Chu- ka

136

like it is, like it was

soba wa itsu doko de umareta ka?) was the first monograph to provide an authoritative account of how Chinese noodle soup arrived and evolved in Japan. Kosuge, an academic expert on food culture in Japan, established the contours of future debates on ramen with her stories of Tokugawa Mitsukuni’s ingestion of u- shin udon, Rai-Rai Ken’s success in Asakusa, the origin of stewed bamboo shoots as a topping, and the Sapporo Ra-men boom of the late 1960s.28 Kosuge’s book was a breakthrough in bridging popular history, food studies, and ramen-related writing that wove together disparate research to create the authoritative modern history of the noodle soup. The Raumen Museum, built in Shin-Yokohama seven years later, would borrow heavily from Kosuge’s narrative in this seminal text. The most authoritative text on ramen, Studies of Noodles and Culture: Ra-men Edition, was published in 2002 by Japan’s leading ramen expert, Okuyama Tadamasa. Nearly four hundred pages long, the treatise, which begins with the origins of human agriculture in Mesopotamia, traces noodle culture from the Silk Road to China to Japan before moving on to regional variations in ramen. After examining ramen’s nutritional profile, the use of ramen in music and literature, and the business aspects of running a shop, the author concludes with a discussion of how ramen’s recent success is representative of how the Slow Food movement has taken hold in Japan. He argues that recent trends in ramen appreciation ought to be understood as part of a concerted global effort on the part of first-world consumers to rethink their relationship with food. He writes, “The procedure for making ramen involves making the noodles and the soup and flavoring the meat, each of which takes a great deal of time and effort. It is fundamentally the world of Slow Food.”29 Okuyama’s description of ramen makes it clear that by the early 2000s the dish had assumed a completely different function than it had in the 1960s, when it was considered cheap, hearty, and fast fuel for hurried workers. Also, little remained of the Chinese origins that were central to the dish’s appeal in earlier times. By relating ramen to the Slow Food movement, a phenomenon of Western European origin that is strongly associated with culinary high culture, the author confirmed the dish’s transformation from a food of necessity associated with manual labor to one of leisure and high art. As ramen’s purpose and image evolved in

like it is, like it was

137

this manner within Japan, its marketability as a component of Japanese culture for export expanded outside Japan’s cities to global centers of finance capital such as New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Taipei, Shanghai, and Bangkok.

f o o d: the n ew thin g In the 1980s, producers and writers in television and print media not only encouraged the growing popularity of ramen, but they also helped to elevate restaurant dining into a form of entertainment. The 1983 article “Event-Making out of Meals Continues” (“Shokuji no ibento ka ga susumu”) addresses the surge in family restaurants such as Denny’s (which also served ramen) and how they differed from the spaces for dining out that had previously been dominant, such as the mass dining hall and the neighborhood Chinese restaurant.30 The author, food scholar Nakae Katsuko, first refers to the growth of the urban outdoor lunch-dining industry in the previous two decades, noting how workers from the capital district became known as the “soba, curry, ramen tribe” (so-ka-ra zoku) due to their alternating daily consumption of these three foods. In the 1980s, however, the trend in outdoor dining had been toward family restaurants for three main reasons, Nakae argues. First, an increase in disposable income was allowing more families to allocate resources to luxury goods and services that previously had been out of reach. Second, the growth of female employment was creating a demand for household labor that housewives had previously performed without pay, such as cooking. Third, and most crucial, Nakae contends, was the cramped living conditions of the urban tenement housing in which most Japanese families lived, which made dining at family restaurants “basically an escape from everyday life.”31 The shift from the domination of soba, curry, and ramen shops geared toward male workers to the postindustrial marketing of eating as “an escape from daily life” for families highlights a fundamental shift in the purpose of dining out for urban residents of Japan in the 1980s. The gourmet boom also penetrated the realm of instant ramen. The appearance of “high-end” instant ramen that sold for as much as a thou-

138

like it is, like it was

sand yen per serving—or nearly double the cost of the average bowl at a store—was another manifestation of the rebranding of ramen as a delicacy. The trend began in 1981, when the Myo-jo- Foods Corporation released - ka Zanmai (literally “Chinese samadhi,” or Chinese mystical fulfillits Chu ment) line, driving its competitors to quickly follow suit with their own variations on premium instant ramen. The names that the companies chose for their new product lines all included explicit references to China, and their advertisements often employed images of Chinese mythology. - ka Hanten, To-yo- Suisan’s New product lines such as Myo-jo- Foods’ Chu Kami Sanchin, and House Foods’ Madamu Yan were all marketed using images of classical China as the center of East Asian civilization. The Chinese flavoring provided the rationale for the premium price and the marketing of the product as high end. The situation was contrasted with the prewar and early postwar periods, when Shina soba was associated with actual Chinese people in Japan, who often worked as cooks in Chinese restaurants. The introduction of high-end variations of instant ramen and the use of highbrow images of classical China in marketing them during the 1980s thus revealed how the Chinese motif gained a new function as a valuable commodity marker well after the Chinese people associated with the production of the dish, and the political circumstances surrounding their presence in Japan, had been erased from popular memory. The practice also hinted at the renewed significance of the China market for Japanese trade and investment interests. Beyond the added value of classical Chinese symbolism, the major producers of instant ramen justified their extraordinary prices on high-end instant noodle lines by pointing to material differences in the production process. The article “What Makes High-End Instant Ramen Different?,” published in the weekly newsmagazine Shu- kan Gendai, examined the disparity between the high-end instant ramen lines and the less expensive versions sold by the same companies. The author found that to produce the new instant ramen lines, the companies had developed more precise machinery that controlled the humidity and temperature of the dough better and lengthened the kneading process in order to make the noodles chewier. The article also notes that although standard instant noodles all contained salt, miso, or soy sauce in combination with artificial flavors, one of the new lines boasted “stewed beef soup base, made with real strips

like it is, like it was

139

of beef, which inevitably raises costs.” Still another noodle maker claimed, “The process is the same as cooking real Chinese food, and combines over ten soups, making it quite labor-intensive.”32 The assertions that the new instant ramen required costly ingredients and extraordinary ethnic cooking expertise illustrated how the gourmet boom had permeated even the instant noodle market. The success of the new lines of high-end instant ramen revealed how consumers had also grown weary of the idea, if not the practice, of eating mass-produced foods. The emphasis on the handmade and the attention to ingredients in the advertising for the new lines sold the illusion that the problems of mass production could be overcome through the consumption of a new type of instant ramen. By imagining the extra skill and effort involved in selecting the ingredients, flavoring the soup, and manufacturing the high-end noodles, consumers could be healed of the anxiety generated by their lack of any knowledge of the producers or the production process behind the food they ate so regularly. As ramen transformed from fuel to fun, its meanings multiplied and often became contradictory. Even as nationally acclaimed ramen shops and high-end instant ramen appeared, the dish’s representation as the embodiment of working-class Japanese ardor and resistance against the newly popular gourmet foods associated with Western Europe redoubled. In this way, the appeal of ramen in the gourmet era lay precisely in its status as an earthy and familiar comfort food, unlike elegant and flashy French or Italian cuisines. As coverage of gourmet foods grew, the association of masculinity and industry with the consumption of foods embodying manual work from the high-growth era appeared as a frequent trope in magazines targeting men. The added weight placed on ramen as a food embodying working-class masculinity in Japan was apparent from a piece in the weekly tabloid Asahi Geino-, “Bug off, Gourmand!” (“Gurume nante kuso kurae!”).33 The article is simply a guide to the favorite low-cost eateries frequented by truck drivers, but the tone is noticeably antagonistic toward the gourmet dining trend that was taking hold. Ramen’s rough-and-tumble beauty was also captured and elevated in the arena of cinema. Prior to the 1980s, ramen had appeared in many films, particularly those directed by Ozu Yasujiro-, as a means of conveying the roughness or modesty of certain characters and settings. In 1985, how-

140

like it is, like it was

- zo-, ever, with the release of Tampopo, a comedic satire directed by Itami Ju ramen became the unifying theme of a feature-length film. Tampopo visually reaffirmed the status of handcrafted ramen as the indigenous remedy to the decadence of the gourmet boom symbolized by high-end French and Italian dining. The earthiness and familiarity of ramen, in contrast to the perceived haughtiness and foreignness of highend European cuisine, is driven home in a scene in which a group of stereotypically portrayed Japanese salarymen dine uncomfortably in a French restaurant, a symbol of the gourmet boom. Ironically, only the youngest worker—the one with the lowest rank—can enjoy the meal due to his familiarity with the menu and the ritualized nature of the service. The ramen shop, in contrast, is where jovial and unperturbed workers enjoy their fare with neither pretension nor petty competition. The film’s main character, Tampopo, is a young widow who runs a small ramen shop in Tokyo, and the plot follows her encounter with a truck driver who first criticizes her ramen, then assigns himself the task of directing her mission to create the perfect bowl. The tale ends with the widow’s success in establishing the type of popular ramen shop that was appearing so frequently in guidebooks, magazines, and television programs in the 1980s. Itami’s contrasting of the historically unglamorous dish with the new zeal for its production and consumption in the 1980s forms an important theme of the film. Considering the explosion in publicity surrounding the dish at the time (indicated by Kawata’s figures, noted above), the director’s choice of ramen as the centerpiece of the story was timely, and it highlights the rapid expansion in social and economic value attributed to the food. For example, the film opens with the milk-truck driver’s assistant (played by a young Ken Watanabe) reading a book on “the art of noodle eating,” which is a subtle reference to texts such as Ra-men Daisuki!!, which began circulating in 1982. The satire embedded in the exalted treatment of ramen is clear, as the noodle soup’s material cheapness and the fact that it inspires nearly spiritual devotion provides much of the comic relief throughout the film. For example, in one scene a man dressed as a master of the tea ceremony teaches a young disciple the proper “etiquette” (saho-) for consuming ramen, a humorous idea considering the noodle soup’s associations with

like it is, like it was

141

the uncouth. Just as the consumption of tea evolved from an everyday activity to a ritualized ceremony over time, the director shows how the act of eating ramen was taking on the air of tradition in this period. Another example of the director’s satire is the homeless former professor, an expert on ramen, who with his dispossessed friends critiques the gourmet food taken from the trash of expensive restaurants. In this way, Tampopo directs the viewer to contemplate the layers of coded meanings projected onto food and eating, which are far more than just the means for continued survival (signified by the baby drinking breast milk in the concluding scene). Itami satirizes the arbitrary social meanings and statuses attributed to different foods and the manner in which they are eaten, and he does so at the height of the gourmet boom, when dining out in Japan and elsewhere had become a form of entertainment with far-reaching economic consequences. For the fortunate ramen shop owners who were able to capitalize on the publicity generated by the movies, books, and television specials, the 1980s were a time of unprecedented expansion. What made the ramen industry noteworthy in this context was that much of the capital generated at the most famous shops actually found its way into the hands of the young workers who cooked the noodle soup. At the height of the financial boom in 1989, for example, Taisho-ken, one of the best-known ramen shops of Tokyo, earned recognition as a relatively generous employer, paying 400,000 yen ($2,850) monthly salaries to starting employees, or double the average monthly starting salary of a college graduate at a large firm. The jobs were restricted to males under thirty-five, and only one in a hundred applicants was hired after a careful interview process.34 In turn, the workers endured twelve-hour days of work that was dirty (trash), dangerous (burns), and difficult (repeatedly draining noodles) with restricted toilet breaks, but they would earn enough to support a family. The remarkably high remuneration for such “unskilled” labor pointed to the dearth of reliable young workers willing to engage in such work without considerable compensation, and the profitability of renowned ramen shops such as Taisho-ken.35 The historically high demand for labor in the 1980s briefly led to situations such Taisho-ken’s, in which entry-level workers commanded considerable salaries. The end of the speculative bubble in stocks and real estate

142

like it is, like it was

prices in 1990, however, ushered in a decade of socially destabilizing corporate restructuring symbolized by large-scale layoffs, an upsurge in parttime and short-term work, and an overall sense of economic uncertainty for workers at both large and small firms. As stable, full-time employment opportunities offering wages sufficient to sustain workers’ households diminished during the 1990s, the ramen shop’s significance as a site for self-employment reached a new height. As the economy softened and capital became reconcentrated in fewer hands, ramen making regained its popular image as an economic last resort for the unemployed as well as an avenue of sociopolitical escape from the salaryman lifestyle that it had acquired in the labor-scarce 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, stable, well-paying company jobs were being cut on a mass scale through corporate restructuring (risutora). In this context, the independently owned ramen shop developed into a potential site of selfmade entrepreneurship. How-to articles on establishing a profitable independent ramen shop that appeared in weekly business magazines addressed to recently laid-off readers suggest that more than a few considered such a venture. One article from the business weekly Dakaapo notes, “Having been laid off, or perhaps having quit the company on your own, [you may be thinking,] ‘Maybe I should start a ramen shop.’ But wait a minute. Even though it may appear that opening a ramen shop is a quick and easy way to start a business, the world is not so simple. However, if you really do have what it takes to operate a ramen shop properly, you are indeed a praiseworthy entrepreneur.”36 The advice in the Dakaapo article also reveals systemic changes in the restaurant industry, where it was becoming more difficult for small firms to enter the market and chain and franchise operations were becoming increasingly common. One of the most informative parts of the Dakaapo article is a small chart analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the “five types of ramen shops” that entrepreneurs could, in theory, start up. The five types are the completely independent shop (kanzen dokuritsu gata), the apprenticeship-derived independent shop (shugyo- dokuritsu gata), the apprenticeship-derived branch shop (noren wake dokuritsu gata), the chain shop (che’en ten kamei gata), and the independent yatai shop (yatai dokuritsu gata). The completely independent shop offered the “the most independence, but also the most volatility.” The apprenticeship-derived

like it is, like it was

143

Figure 6. The Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum.

independent shop provided “reputable know-how with regard to ingredients and taste, but required some independent innovation in terms of flavoring.” The apprenticeship-derived branch shop presented the benefit of a “well-established name and flavor that draws customers, but the difficulty of restricting independent innovation.” The chain shop “allowed for a complete novice to open a shop, but forbade any type of alteration.” Most tellingly, the independent yatai shop (the type that had saturated the cityscape from the late 1920s through the early 1960s) provided “the highest level of freedom but generated many preliminary problems such as finding vending space and attaining permits.”37 After analyzing the pros and cons of each type of shop at length, the author concludes that for people who have a strong passion for eating ramen, the level of independence should be the primary factor in determining what sort of shop to own. For all others, however, the chain shop is recommended for the relative speed and ease with which it could be established. According to the article, former salaried workers running

144

like it is, like it was

independent ramen shops all point to the unexpected difficulties owners are likely to face in starting up a new shop, again suggesting that a chain operation was the best bet for a recently unemployed salaryman.38 The connection between ramen and unemployment is explicitly drawn, and owning a successful ramen shop is depicted as an enviable feat of economic independence. As the opportunities for stable, fulltime employment for young people in Japan diminished, self-made owners of ramen shops achieved an iconic status as entrepreneurs lauded by the media.

no o dl e s ou p n os ta l gia The Raumen Museum of Shin-Yokohama, which opened in 1994, may be the best evidence of the noodle soup’s canonization as a national food in Japan. Part theme park, part restaurant mall, and part museum, the 3.4 billion yen ($38 million) enterprise opened to great fanfare and is an especially popular attraction with young Japanese and foreign tourists. Following the museum’s success, a spate of ramen theme parks opened in cities throughout Japan. The Ra-men Stadium in Fukuoka, Ra-men YokochoShichifukujin (Seven Gods of Good Fortune Ramen Alley) in Hiroshima, and Ra-men Kyo-wakoku (Republic of Ramen) in Sapporo are but a few of the ramen-based theme parks that sprouted up, and each of them followed the basic formula established by the Raumen Museum of assembling famous regional ramen stores under one roof in a nostalgic atmosphere. At the museum’s gift shop, a visitor could purchase a graphics-laden commemorative edition of The Making of Shinyokohama Raumen Museum, which describes the meticulous designing and planning undertaken by the museum’s owner and employees before it opened to the public in 1994. The book states that the creators’ goal was to reproduce a small neighborhood in Tokyo as it looked in 1958, and the assemblage of vintage movie posters, telephone booths, train stalls, and store signs attested to this effort. The celebration of ramen as the quintessential fare of the Japanese common man established a narrative that treated ramen consumption as a culturally meaningful practice that was firmly grounded in postwar Japanese history.

like it is, like it was

145

Figure 7. Entry ticket to the Raumen Museum.

The canonization of ramen in the 1990s occurred as the symbols of the high-growth era were retroactively being romanticized. As ramen lost much of its original economic purpose of nourishing the industrial workforce of Japan, it became an object of food entertainment that evoked both nostalgia for a more egalitarian era and postwar struggle. Concepts and objects reinforcing a collective, egalitarian past, such as the hometown ( furusato) and the handmade (tezukuri), visibly cropped up in this period, highlighting the actual decline in the significance of these phenomena in daily life.39 Consumption of ramen at small independent shops, or preferably yatai, therefore entered a new phase as a food of

146

like it is, like it was

Figure 8. Raumen Museum gift shop.

national nostalgia, constituting a consumable form of the fleeting past that promised to soothe the anxiety of rapid social change.40 The museum was built on the popularity of ramen and the real estate boom of the 1980s. Iwaoka Yo-ji, the founder and a Shin-Yokohama native, used money that his father had generated in the real estate boom of the previous decade to construct the museum, and after enjoying unexpected success, Iwaoka stated that he next planned to open a similar venue in Las Vegas. Iwaoka noted his goal was “to introduce postwar Japanese food culture and everyday life, and have people understand Japan better.” He added, “Tasty ramen will be popular over there as well.”41 Although the Las Vegas branch of the Raumen Museum has yet to open, the wave of ramen-related publicity in New York and Los Angeles in the 2000s made it apparent that his predictions about the potential of ramen in the U.S. market were correct. The most basic impetus behind the creation of the museum was a surge in the population of the Shin-Yokohama district of Kanagawa, a distant suburb of Tokyo, in the 1980s. A study from 1990 showed that more than twenty-five thousand workers were eating lunch daily in Shin-Yokohama,

like it is, like it was

147

which gave the museum’s founder enough confidence to take the risk of opening a large eating and drinking establishment with a parking lot. From the beginning, Iwaoka’s ambition was to generate “enough impact to make it a landmark in this newly developed area.”42 While brainstorming a potential theme for this establishment, Iwaoka and the other planners decided that they “did not want to follow the trend at the time and simply open another Italian or French restaurant. The idea was to go beyond the current trends and to do something really authentic [o-senchikku].”43 The more they ruminated, the clearer it became that ramen would be a suitable object around which to build the new establishment. According to Iwaoka: If you think about it, ramen is really a food of the common people [shomin]. Various styles can be found throughout the country. Furthermore, both the young and the old, men and women, eat ramen, and there is probably not a single town in Japan that does not have a ramen shop. Ramen is the superstar of the food industry. Even more, it is not the type of star whose fame is short-lived, but rather one that is sustained by the common people and lasts a long time because of real talent. This was how we decided upon ramen as the main theme for the project.44

After settling on ramen as the central theme, the planners began conceptualizing how to create a landmark destination based on the noodles as opposed to simply a food court. Iwaoka and his team decided that the best way to reach “the masses” (masu) would be to borrow the techniques of the Walt Disney Company and build a theme park “where everybody from around the world, young and old, could become completely enthralled as they do in the magic world of Disney.”45 The planners described their ambition as follows: Visitors can indulge in a soothing nostalgia, and adults can feel like children again. In this town, each person has the opportunity to become an innocent child with a strong sense of curiosity. Everyone can revert to childhood and remember the days when they played hide-and-seek in vacant lots at sunset, or became absorbed in games such as cards, tops, and marbles. This marvelous sensation appeals to real children as well. In addition to feeling nostalgic, people gain a sense of spiritual uplift. That is because it is designed to satisfy the desire to be a star that lurks within visitors’ hearts. The re-created “Town of Sho-wa 33” [1958] truly is a

148

like it is, like it was

place where everyone can become a star in the sense of the Andy Warhol quote, “Everyone has their 15 minutes of fame.”46

The quote is instructive on many levels. The designers’ appeal to an abstracted collection of childhood memories (which were actively generated by such statements) made the museum a supplier of sentimental nostalgia as well as a commercial space to rent to ramen vendors. Furthermore, although the attempt to psychologically transport visitors to an infantile state of passivity was in line with the Disney business model, in the case of the museum the “magic” was based on meticulously re-creating a time and place that many visitors were supposed to remember from lived experience. The museum’s ability to employ a reimagined neighborhood of Tokyo from merely thirty-five years prior as the basis for the “magic” (as Disney had used premodern Europe) revealed the extent to which the layout of downtown Tokyo had been transformed in such a short period. It also demonstrated the need to produce a stabilizing narrative and set of images fitting this recently forgotten place into the tight grid of national history. The next major decision for the creative team was to decide what type of scenery to use to bring the theme park to life. The planners chose to recreate downtown Tokyo as it appeared in 1958 because that was when “the Japanese people were the most spirited [genki].”47 The re-created milieu of industrial workers during the high-growth era was now a space for a national celebration of the common man’s contribution to Japan’s economic success. The re-creation of a downtown Tokyo neighborhood as it appeared in 1958 involved extensive historical research by the planners. The team, however, found that the third decade of the Sho-wa era (1955–65) had “yet to be properly categorized as history, which made it difficult to organize or acquire materials that could accurately be dated. Tokyo, as it appeared in 1958, was therefore part of a ‘lost history.’ ”48 As a result, planners were forced to rely on photos, magazines, books, and films and to study Tokyo neighborhoods that had changed less than other parts of the city, such as Nezu, Nippori, and Tsukishima. After designing the museum’s interior, assembling the antiques, and building the structures for the theme park, the next step for planners was to age many of the props by physically dam-

like it is, like it was

149

aging them or applying dirt to them as is commonly done on film sets. Such methods provided visitors with “the past that they anticipated” (kitai do-ri no kako).49 Iwaoka and his team of designers next re-created a fictional Tokyo neighborhood from 1958, adding storefronts, residences, and street objects to represent the city’s recent past. To do so, they studied population surveys from the period and created a fictional registry of town residents complete with the names, ages, family relationships, occupations, and hobbies of the town’s inhabitants. The process resulted in the museum’s publication of The Sun Sets on the Town of Ra-men, a fictional book chronicling life in 1958 Tokyo as visualized by the planners.50 The setting sun in the title refers to the artificial dusk that a visual projection system re-creates every forty minutes on the ceiling of the museum. Similar to those used in indoor shopping plazas in Las Vegas, the device is central to generating the all-encompassing effect of the theme park. In addition to the sunset, computers in the museum provide atmospherics by inconspicuously broadcasting various street noises, including the sounds of cats meowing, crows cawing, trains running, and film announcements playing.51 In Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, Michael Sorkin notes, “This is the meaning of the theme park, the place that embodies it all, the ageographia, the surveillance and control, the simulations without end. The theme park presents its happy regulated vision of pleasure—all those artfully hoodwinking forms—as a substitute for the democratic public realm, and it does so appealingly by stripping troubled urbanity of its sting, of the presence of the poor, of crime, of dirt, of work.”52 Once the theme park aspects were in order, the planners attended to the museum, which is divided into six parts: history, setting, tools, science, culture, and information. The history section focuses on the evolution of noodle dining worldwide, the roots of ramen in Japan, the history of yatai and charumera, and the history of instant ramen, while the area on setting examines the variety of noodles, soups, tools, and cooking methods found in various regions. The tools section spotlights the diversity of bowls and spoons used for serving ramen, as well as the gadgets used to cook the noodles and the soup. The science section addresses the role of alkali water in the dish’s preparation, the nutritional qualities of ramen, the noo-

150

like it is, like it was

dle production process, and the science behind the invention of instant ramen. In the culture area the origins of the term ramen are explained alongside a list of novels, movies, and comics that mention ramen and a registry of ramen-loving celebrities. The information section furnishes visitors with names of popular and unorthodox ramen stores as well as instant ramen recipes.53 The museum’s history section provides a framework for incorporating ramen into the national past through three major components: domestication of the foreign, export of the instant, and appreciation of regional variation. The museum thereby builds on the work of Kosuge Keiko’s 1987 monograph to articulate a single dominant, nationally significant history of the noodle soup. Kosuge’s account places an overarching emphasis on Japanese ingenuity in adapting foreign objects to domestic tastes, and the museum’s reiteration of the facts and purpose of that narrative effectively anchor ramen firmly in the nation’s (still developing) postwar past. The success of the Japanese instant ramen industry worldwide and the intricate history of the product lines that have dominated the market in the postwar era are another subject of the history area of the museum. The museum’s treatment of the release dates of various instant ramen product lines as historically significant events worthy of chronological documentation signal the newfound import attributed to mass consumerism as part of the national past. The exhibit on the history of ramen concludes with an examination of the noodle soup’s development in various parts of the country and notes the local histories of each version. The recently written local histories of ramen reveal that every major city in Japan had its own methods of preparation and colorful legends involving pioneering noodle chefs. The display highlights the prewar development of ramen in cities such as Sapporo, Kitakata, Sano, and the Asakusa district of Tokyo alongside more recently recognized areas such as Asahikawa and Wakayama. An example of unity through diversity, the exhibit reinforced the underlying ubiquity and accessibility of the object throughout the nation in modern times, and as such, it became a consumable emblem of the modern nation itself. The prominence accorded to regional differences in ramen illustrates the extent to which food choices and eating practices became standardized in the preceding three and a half decades.

like it is, like it was

151

Figure 9. Oversize ramen pushcart vendor character, Charumera Ojisan, on display at the Raumen Museum.

One of the most intriguing items in the museum’s area dedicated to the history of ramen is a statue of Myo-jo- brand’s animated character Charumera Ojisan, who was used in instant ramen advertisements from 1966. The invention of this character, drawn as an archetypal pushcart operator from the prewar and early postwar eras, signaled at once both the decline in the physical presence of people working as yatai vendors in the cities of Japan and the rise of Japanese-themed advertising in instant

152

like it is, like it was

food commercials. This larger-than-life-size statue, which itself was modeled after the disappearing street vendors of Tokyo, emphasizes the ersatz nature of the museum’s exhibited items. Even before opening its doors to the public the Raumen Museum generated significant interest, the novelty of combining a food court, theme park, and museum attracting publicity from all of Japan’s major newspapers, magazines, and television broadcasters. And not only did the opening of the museum in the spring of 1994 occur during a lull in other news, but the spotlighting of regional styles by the mass media in the 1980s and early 1990s and the transformation of ramen into a fashionable food among the young turned the museum’s opening into a prominent story in the press. The planners had decided at the outset not to allocate a large share of their resources to advertising because they foresaw that their venture would generate free publicity. While the company expended 12 million yen ($120,000) on promotional activities, it was able to generate roughly 1.5 billion yen ($15,000,000) worth of free publicity. Specifically, the opening of the museum generated newspaper publicity worth 160 million yen, magazine publicity worth 140 million yen, and radio and television coverage worth 1.2 billion yen. Furthermore, more than 80 percent of the media’s free advertising occurred in the spring of 1994, during the first three months of the museum’s operation.54 The media reported on the opening of the museum in mostly favorable terms, showing potential visitors the novelty and excitement of the new food theme park. One example of the magazine coverage of the museum’s opening was the article “A Time-Slip to the Sho-wa 30s? There Is a Different Flavor to the Ramen of the ‘City of Nostalgic Sorrow,’ ” published in the tabloid Friday on March 11, 1994: The sight is as if one slipped back in time to the past, most likely making an old man remember his childhood days and feel overcome with emotion. The nostalgic row of shops that has been revived in the present is not a movie set. It is the Raumen Museum of Shin-Yokohama that will open on March 6. The self-confessed ramen-loving president of the museum, Iwaoka Yo-ji, states, “I found it odd that a ramen superpower such as Japan had no facility spotlighting this fact.” . . . The time of day in the museum is always late afternoon, when the sun is setting and the stomach is getting hungry. You hear the sound of children

like it is, like it was

153

playing and the traveling tofu merchant’s horn, and then you faintly smell the delicious scent of ramen drifting out of a shop. Inevitably, you find yourself going into the shop. The bustling noises from the street are all computer-generated and provide an added dimension of background music to the experience of eating ramen. Middle-aged men can enjoy the nostalgia, while young couples who have no knowledge of the period can visit the place as an amusement park. However, the prices are not as they were in those days, so please take that part into account!55

As the example above shows, most articles touching upon the opening of the museum tended to strike a laudatory tone. However, for self-proclaimed devotees of ramen, the Disney-inspired simulacrum often represented a commercialized dilution of the nationalistic cultural milieu surrounding the sanctified independent production of the dish. One such ramen connoisseur, Satomi Shinzo-, managing co-director of the Ramen Research Association, related this position in the July 1994 issue of Bungei Shunju- . Explaining his own interest in researching the Raumen Museum, he states, “I am an unabashed lover of ramen. In the last decade I have visited over two thousand shops. But I have not done this to be some kind of gourmet food critic giving stars to one shop or another based on the tastiness of their dish. Rather, I have undertaken this task as an iconographical way to observe the ‘Japanese sense of beauty’ with all seriousness.”56 He then describes the crowd of men and women, both old and young, who are waiting to enter the museum in a line as “resembling the scenes from the Auschwitz concentration camp as depicted in the film ‘Night and Fog.’ ”57 After waiting one hour and eighteen minutes, Satomi finally enters the museum, where he must wait another hour before actually being served at one of the eight shops. He notes the incongruity between the ultramodern vending machines selling tickets to the museum and the attempt to create a “time-slip” back to Tokyo of 1958. He then scorns the long wait for restrooms, the useless souvenirs on sale at the gift shop, the dank indoor air despite the nonsmoking policy, and the instant versions of the ramen produced by the museum’s featured shops packaged for home cooking. Most striking for him, however, is the sheer number of people who line up for more than two hours in order to taste a bowl of noodles from a famous store’s subsidiary even though the original shop is

154

like it is, like it was

only a few train stations away. He comments, “For over two hours, none of us has even had a glass of water. But the people appear to actually enjoy all the waiting in line. What a strange tribe. What kind of psychological structure do they have? Could ramen really be worth such tribulation?”58 Satomi also finds himself irritated with the general increase in the lard content of ramen in the last decade. He highlights the changing composition of the noodle soup since the beginning of the regional ramen boom in the mid-1980s and its transformation into an object of fashion among young people. He particularly takes issue with the overwhelming preference for shops serving soup that is based on pork bones and thus high in lard content instead of the more traditional, Tokyo-style ramen of Ogikubo, which is made with a lighter, clearer broth. He finds that “people who prefer [the lard-laden] variety have lots of energy and tend to have unrelenting or pushy [shitsukoi] personalities, making them more tolerant of the long lines and the greasy fare.”59 Satomi notes that the popularity of shops selling ramen with a high lard content was leading to a situation in which each shop was attempting to raise the ante and use more grease than the next. New entrepreneurs were deceiving consumers who knew no better than to think the oilier the soup the tastier, and they were getting away with charging outlandish prices as a result. He also faults the newer shops for incorporating excessive amounts of monosodium glutamate, which he deems acceptable only in small doses as a sort of “hidden ingredient.”60 In this way, Satomi gripes about the perceived lack of sophistication and independence in the tastes of ramen trend followers, whose preference for greasy, salty, overflavored soup base was allegedly debasing the food and obscuring its finer characteristics. Ultimately, however, Satomi’s article signaled the emergence of a new type of public figure, the ramen purist who was disturbed by the commercialization of Chinese noodle soup. Satomi concludes his piece with a warning that too much attention ruins the object of admiration, and he calls for moderation in the world of ramen appreciation. Curiously, however, Satomi finds greater fault with the gullible consumers following media trends than with the actual creators of the museum for vulgarizing what he considers to be a type of folk practice. Despite his apparent disdain for the trendy young consumers who treat ramen as a marker of fash-

like it is, like it was

155

ionableness, Satomi claims that for him the value of the dish derives from its very status as a pedestrian, or “B-class,” food in contrast to the more rarified realm of soba noodles.61 He argues, The national specialty of this country, soba, is an “A-class” food replete with its own refined manners of consumption. In addition, experts will not treat you as an adult if you do not know the differences among the various regional soba-flours, which are further divided into gradations that are suitable for assorted degrees of noodle thickness. In contrast, ramen has no tedious rules. Moreover, no matter how hotly one discusses the subject, there is no hidden sneering or any inclination to assert connoisseurship behind the discussion. It is a small and simple pleasure. That is why it became a national food.62

The irony of Satomi Shinzo-’s situation was that his own career as an “iconographical ethnologist” of ramen was itself predicated on the dish’s transformation into an object of expertise, even as he bemoaned that process. In Satomi’s pronouncement, one can see the changing demographics associated with the dish’s consumption, the shift in its material composition, and the social transformations associated with the transition of Japan’s economy from one focused on the secondary sector to the tertiary. The rising symbolic status of ramen in this era can again be located in the macroeconomic transformations taking place in Japan and elsewhere in the industrialized world, where the onset of globalization retroactively altered the cultural milieu of pre-1960s manual labor into an object worthy of national celebration.

ne o nationa l is m a n d the no o d le s o up The transformation of ramen into a national food coincided with a resurgence in the use of the term Shina soba to refer to it. A wave of new shops boasting traditional-style ramen making greater use of seafood and domestic wheat flour, pork, chicken, and salt appeared in the early 2000s, catering to customers who desired less lard and salt content than found in the tonkotsu style of the dish. As the popularity of the tonkotsu style, which was at center of the previous boom and popular among young men,

156

like it is, like it was

began to fade, versions made with a lighter broth that appealed to a different demographic, such as older men and young women, took its place. Yet the difference between the tonkotsu ramen of the 1980s and the Shina soba resurgence of the 2000s was far from simply a material modification in the composition of the soup broth and noodles. The reappearance of Shina soba coincided with a new appreciation for Korean food and nouveau Japanese cuisine. The first decade of the twenty-first century was marked by a turn toward Asia for popular cultural inspiration and a conscious rejection of the Euro-American influence that had dominated the 1980s and 1990s. The rebirth of the term Shina soba was ripe with political and historical significance, as it occurred precisely at the same time that nationalist politicians such as Ishihara Shintaro-, academics such as Fujioka Nobukatsu, and graphic artists such as Kobayashi Yoshinori called for a reappraisal of Japan’s official apologies to foreign countries for its wartime actions.63 Fujioka in particular argued that the policy of teaching young, impressionable students about Japan’s war atrocities and history of colonialism was masochistic and ultimately counterproductive to inculcating national self-worth. In this way, the changing names and meanings attached to ramen provided a glimpse into the cultural and geopolitical trends of the still-developing post–Cold War order in Japan. Perhaps the best example of a new ramen shop specializing in Shina soba was the aptly named Shina Soba Ya, a nationally renowned ramen restaurant owned and operated by Sano Minoru. Sano’s success in Fujisawa earned him a coveted space in the Raumen Museum, which subsequently launched his career as a charismatic ramen chef on television. Sano’s training in the food business began in the outskirts of the Tokyo metropolitan area during the midst of the gourmet boom. After working as a chef in a “Western-style” restaurant for eight years, Sano opened Shina Soba Ya in Fujisawa city, Kanagawa prefecture, in 1986. After cultivating a reputation for himself as a skilled chef during the ramen boom of the late 1980s, he opened a branch shop in the Raumen Museum in 2000, and he eventually closed the original store in Fujisawa in 2004. Known as the “Demon of Ramen,” Sano achieved notoriety through his rigorous methods of selecting ingredients, disciplining subordinates, and even regulating customer behavior. His persona, which represented the

like it is, like it was

157

archetypal stubborn middle-aged man (ganko oyaji), was heroically portrayed in television documentaries and magazine articles. In this way, Sano’s personal idiosyncrasies as a chef contributed to his store’s reputation as a leading purveyor of traditional Tokyo-style ramen. Sano exhibited his strictness and stubbornness by establishing policies regulating all aspects of conduct in his shop. Signs around the shop warned “No Private Conversations Allowed!,” “No Strong Perfumes Allowed!,” and “No Wasted Food Allowed!”64 Sano’s willingness to enforce his rules by asking customers to leave or by refusing to do business at all on days when his soup stock or noodles did not achieve the high standards he established made him famous as a dedicated chef with a type of bygone integrity. Sano and other celebrity ramen chefs thus personified both the economic freedom and ethnocultural integrity projected onto the independent ramen shop owners by the mass media in an age of heightened capital concentration, corporatization, and disempowerment of labor worldwide. Sano’s reputation as a top-rated ramen chef was bolstered by his efforts to use only domestic ingredients whenever possible. Early in his career he decided to make his own noodles combining durum semolina, usually used for pasta, with wheat flour grown and milled only in Japan. This policy of purchasing as many of its supplies as possible from domestic sources was another major point highlighted in the promotion of Shina Soba Ya.65 Sano’s rise personified the emergence of another novel public figure in Japan, the celebrity ramen chef. Sano achieved celebrity status with his stubborn ganko oyaji persona between 1999 and 2003, when he regularly appeared on Gachinko!, a variety show on Japan’s TBS network.66 In a segment titled, “Ra-men Do-” (The way of ramen), Sano coached independent ramen shop owners on how to revitalize their shops through strict discipline and creative thinking. His appearances often involved screaming and throwing ramen-related objects as a way to motivate his uninspired pupils. In this way, the “Demon of Ramen” established himself as the master ramen chef, using his short temper and quirkiness as evidence of his commitment to the craft. Sano’s advocacy of domestic agricultural products, old-time discipline, and presurrender terminology naturally propelled him into a collabora-

158

like it is, like it was

Figure 10. Map of Japan showing where the ingredients in Chef Sano Minoru’s ramen are produced. His shop, Shina Soba Ya, is one of the nine in the Raumen Museum.

tion with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries in 2009. At the Ramen Show in Tokyo, a festival directed by a trade association of ramen shops, Sano opened a booth sponsored by the ministry that offered “pure domestic ramen” (jun kokusan ra-men).67 The booth tied the ministry’s campaign to promote domestic food consumption in order to reduce dependency on imports and Sano’s attention to domestic ramen ingredients that he highlighted in his television performances and at his shops. The ministry’s Campaign to Raise the Self-Sufficiency Ratio found an ideal advocate in Sano, who had long drawn praise for his attention to the people responsible for the production of the ingredients used in his shop’s ramen. The campaign attempted to raise awareness of Japan’s dwindling food self-sufficiency ratio, which declined from 73 percent in 1965 to 39 percent in 2010.68 Sano was but one of many such figures heroically depicted in the press’s spotlighting of old-time ramen shop owners during the resurgence of Shina soba. Ando- Sho-ken, owner of Ko-ka in Gifu prefecture, was another ganko oyaji–type figure specializing in Shina soba. In a short piece featuring

like it is, like it was

159

Ando-’s Shina soba in the tabloid Sunday Mainichi, food writer Yamamoto Mizue describes a visit to Ando-’s store, where she meets his loyal customers and inquires about his philosophy about noodle soup. She writes, [Ando-’s] soup base is rather thick and not transparent, despite it being called Shina soba. Because of this, some customers may be a little hesitant to try it at first, but once you have a sip, it is clear that this is a taste not available anywhere else. . . . Some customers note, “The more you eat, the more it becomes a habit. You start thinking that maybe there is a special ingredient, because after you get used to it, the other places taste so boring.” Andohimself states, “There is nothing rare about it—it is simply old-fashioned work being done with care.”69

Ando-’s description of his work as old-fashioned ( furukusai) conjured the same image of small-scale independent ramen making as advanced by the Raumen Museum and journal articles romanticizing the datsu-sara. Yamamoto’s exalted treatment of Ando-’s relationship with his work was based on the idea that the ramen chef ’s first concern should be the integrity of his craft and its social consequences; the profit motive should be secondary. Like other old-timers, Ando- determined his store hours based upon the amount of soup he prepared rather than adhering to predetermined business hours, leading him to close his shop whenever the soup ran out. Most of all, the seriousness of the noodle maker was impressed upon the reader. Ando-’s self-presentation as a worker of a bygone era plainly enjoying his craft appealed to the same sentiments as the Raumen Museum’s production of an “anticipated past” for the fans of ramen. In both, the appeal of the bowl went far beyond its flavor to include an image of the collectivized past as one of equality, selflessness, hard work, and high standards. Ando-’s use of the term Shina soba rather than Chu- ka soba or ramen was the ultimate indicator of his old-fashioned sensibility, confirming his status as a ganko oyaji and making his shop worthy of a twopage feature story in a popular tabloid. In addition to seeing a resurgence in shops serving Shina soba, the late 1990s and 2000s witnessed a new generation of owners born in the 1970s who opened shops with evocative names rooted in Japanese history. Menya Musashi (Noodle Shop Musashi), named after the legendary seventeenth-century Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, for example,

160

like it is, like it was

opened in 1998. The shop’s owner, Yamada Takeshi, was inspired by Musashi’s self-taught mastery of his craft and his development of his own style of fighting through trial and error.70 Like Menya Musashi, most new shops that opened after the late 1990s no longer used the term ramen in their names but had more traditional Japanese names instead. Not only the names changed, however, but the colors used to decorate the newer ramen shops changed as well. Gone were the red and white hanging signs (noren) adorning the shop entrances as they had during the era of high growth, and in their place were purple and black signs with handwritten calligraphy. In this manner, as the national symbolism of ramen grew thicker, the interior colors of the shops changed to create an atmosphere that was less Chinese and more Japanese. The diffusion of Internet use among young people in Japan heavily influenced the evolution of the newer ramen shops in the 1990s, similar to the way that catalogue books impacted the industry in the 1980s. On countless Internet forums and websites, fans of specific shops exchanged information and ranked their favorite spots for the perusal of other interested devotees. In turn, shop owners copied aspects of other shops that were popular and created new fads, like wafu- ramen, a Japanese-style dish based on a fish broth that appeared in 2005. Media scholar and ramen expert Hayamizu Kenro- argues that the development of the Internet as a form of social media in Japan owed a good deal to the ramen industry rather than the other way around (similar to his theory that reality television was increasingly responsible for informing people’s sense of reality itself rather than the reverse).71 Ramen’s mutation into a global standard-bearer of Japanese food and urban youth culture is perhaps best illustrated by the changes in the appearance of the ramen shop and its workers in the 1990s. One of the clearest signals of ramen’s dissociation from China and its rebranding as Japanese was the change in uniform chosen by ramen chefs. During the high-growth era, operators of ramen shops typically wore the trademark white jacket and cylindrical hat of the Chinese chef, paying homage to the Chinese origin of the food. In the late 1990s and 2000s, however, younger ramen chefs, inspired primarily by Kawahara Shigemi, founder of the - do-, started to wear Japanese Buddhist work clothing, ramen shop Ippu known as samue. Usually worn by Japanese potters and other practition-

like it is, like it was

161

ers of traditional arts, the samue, usually in purple or black, was worn by craftsmen in eighteenth-century Japan and would not have been considered appropriate for the ramen chef prior to the 1990s rebranding of ramen as a national food. The new clothing suggested that the ramen maker was now considered a Japanese craftsman with a Zen Buddhist sensibility rather than a Chinese food chef. Another important physical change marking the new wave ramen shop was the use of large displays of poems and life advice composed by the store’s owner to underscore their seriousness about the work of making ramen. The practice began with Shimokawa Takashi, the owner of Kyushu Jangara in Tokyo’s electronics district, Akihabara, who hand-wrote a wallsized poem at his first shop in 1984 and did the same at his branch shops.72 The encouraging poem instructed diners to dream big and work hard to realize their goals. Ramen poems and life advice spread to other stores in the 1990s, and in the 2000s they evolved into books written by celebrity ramen chefs who shared their philosophies and revealed the secrets to their success. For example, Sano Minoru (owner of Shina Soba Ya) and - do-) both published monographs on Kawahara Shigemi (owner of Ippu their noodle-making philosophies in 2001, and Yamagishi Kazuo (owner of Higashi-Ikebukuro Taisho-ken and inventor of dipped ramen noodles, or tsukemen) published his in 2003. The ramen philosophy books, which numbered in the dozens and were readily available in most Japanese bookstores, further cemented the celebrity status of the successful store owner, who in the popular imagination was an independent entrepreneur who could create a following with a small investment of capital, diligence, and some innovative ideas. The lack of stable employment opportunities for Japanese youths contributed to this glorification of the few who were able to find economic success making their signature noodle soup for avidly appreciative young customers. Jazz, reggae, R&B, and rap music also found their way into instore soundtracks as a new generation of young owners redesigned and updated their ramen shops to better suit the times in the late 1990s. The high regard for American rap music among Japanese youths, in part because of its representation of resistance against the dominant social formation, endowed it with a currency in the newer ramen shops among eaters/listeners who had grown up on the poetry of disenchanted African

162

like it is, like it was

American youths.73 In this way, the rebranding of the ramen shop affected not only the noodle soup, which became more sophisticated and expensive, but also the sounds, thoughts, and sights that went along with the experience of eating ramen. In addition, each new component of the experience confirmed the status of ramen as an icon of Japanese fashion, youth, and national identity, in effect rebranding the category of Japan itself in the process. The Japanish decor that characterized the post-1990s ramen specialty shop essentially marked a new relationship between the younger generation of Japanese and their understanding of national history. As media critic and ramen scholar Hayamizu Kenro- observes, the new approach toward Japanese history among young ramen chefs and their followers was not predicated on whether a practice was historically rooted, recently developed, or completely contrived. What mattered instead was simply the appearance of an item or practice as something rooted in national tradition, resembling the relationship between reality and reality television. Referring to the writing of Osawa Masachi, a scholar of nationalism, Hayamizu explains: Until recently, when leftists criticized nationalism, they often pointed out the invented nature of the nationalist’s traditions as a way of challenging their historical accuracy and legitimacy. For example, Japan has a long tradition of imperial rule that dates back to the founding of the country. In order to refute this, there is the argument that the monarchy was a modern invention established in the Meiji era. However, Osawa notes that twentyfirst-century nationalism is immune to such methods of debunking. The reason is that [the nationalists] are fully cognizant of the contrived nature of their traditions and have embraced this invented nationalism regardless. . . . Let us now attempt a critique of the right-wing turn in ramen with the same logic. The samue worn as a uniform by [the chefs] only dates back to the 1990s. And more fundamentally, ramen has nothing at all to do with Japan’s traditions. However, such a critique has absolutely no impact on those who follow and support the ramen industry. The fact that rameninspired nationalism is spurious, that it is an invented tradition, has no bearing on its acceptance since this point is already understood as self-evident. Instead, it is being done as a form of amusement in a reality-show-like fashion.74

5

Flavor of the Month american ramen and “cool japan”

Restaurant-made ramen was unknown to most people in the United States until the 2000s. Americans not residing in a city with a substantial population of Japanese residents would probably still have difficulty finding a bowl in 2013, and those over forty might be reluctant to try it even if offered. Although American familiarity with instant ramen can be dated to the early 1970s with Nissin Foods’ release of the Top Ramen brand, the restaurant-made variety entered American public consciousness only in the last decade after a number of news stories featuring successful shops in New York and Los Angeles appeared. In the United States, ramen arrived as a trendy, young ethnic food associated with a cool and economically unthreatening Japan rather than China. As such, the Japanese rebranding of ramen as a national food for domestic purposes between the 1980s and 2000s served a new function, allowing it to be packaged for export to foreign consumers eager to devour whatever could be imagined as “authentically Japanese” and had grown tired of sushi and teriyaki chicken. In the process, the “Japan” performed by Japanese for American consumption in places like New York ramen shops and the notion of “Japanese tradition” offered by young ramen chefs in Japan for domestic consumption increasingly merged into one symbolic and material 163

164

flavor of the month

universe with tenuous connections to either the history of Japan or the history of ramen. Instead, a new realm of Japanese tradition was created through self-conscious repackaging of a comestible once understood as belonging to the domain of the beleaguered worker. The process pointed to the development of a new paradigm in the relationship of both young Japanese and non-Japanese people with the history of Japan, where sights, sounds, and tastes stood in for texts, events, and ideas. In other words, the ramen poems, Buddhist work clothing, and disciplinarian attitude of the chef were now sufficient markers to generate a sense of connection to the abstraction of national tradition, not only for foreigners mystified by the thought of the East, but even to Japanese themselves. The ramen boom of the 2000s occurred precisely a decade after the peak of the trade wars of the early 1990s. The friction, which had been driven by U.S. frustration over the balance of trade favoring Japan, dissipated considerably in the late 1990s and 2000s as Japan’s economy entered a period of prolonged recession while the United States recovered. In this period the U.S. mass media developed a newfound appreciation for Japanese popular culture in contrast to its traditional focus on the country’s economy and high arts. In the process, Japan slowly shed its reputation as an “economic animal” (an appellation dating back to the 1970s) and gained a new identity as an incubator of fashion and cultural trends on par with Western Europe. The exposure of American youths to Japanese popular culture in the late 1990s and 2000s, in the forms of graphic arts (Spirited Away, Pokemon), clothing (BAPE, Uniqlo), and food (Nobu, Koi), contributed to the spread of ramen in U.S. cities such as New York and Los Angeles. Through this process of foreign export and globalization, ramen became a product of transnational hipster youth culture with an even stronger identity as a national food of Japan. Just as American rap music entered Japanese public consciousness through a subsection of fashion-conscious urban youths, ramen spread in the United States by winning over the young and trendy hipsters residing in gentrified parts of large cities. The ramen fad of the 2000s in New York and Los Angeles took hold among a new generation of young Americans, many of them of Asian heritage, who had been thoroughly exposed to Japanese popular culture since childhood. Although ramen shops catering to Japanese tourists and expa-

flavor of the month

165

triate businessmen had existed in Los Angeles since 1976 (Ra-men Ko-raku) and in New York since 1975 (Sapporo Ra-men), the newer, trendier ramen shops catering to young Americans did not appear until the early 2000s. The “Japan” that these young people expected and encountered in the ramen shop, furthermore, was one already familiar through Japanese graphic novels and animated films, which frequently referenced food. The updated ramen shop that was imported to the United States contrasted strongly with the Japanese barbecue (teppan yaki) restaurant or sushi bar of an earlier generation: the Japanese chef was no longer to perform dinner as a show, or to make anything the customer pleased, but instead would do business on his own terms. Concretely, this meant refusing to speak English and using an artisanal bowl of noodle soup as a way to relate the value of his work. In the United States, magazine articles on ramen often began with references to the film Tampopo and its intimation of the significance of ramen’s place in Japanese food culture. The reverential treatment of ramen - zo- had satirized in Tampopo was therefore the starting point that Itami Ju for American engagements with Japan’s now-nationalized noodle. The American coverage of ramen in the mid-2000s was also aided by the success of the 2003 film Lost in Translation, which presented audiences with the updated American portrayal of Japan as an international center of fashion, urbanity, and indecipherable comedy. In 2004 the free alternative newspaper the LA Weekly ran “Lost in Tampopo,” which noted the growing interest in ramen among young trendsetters in Los Angeles. The role of one shop, Daikokuya, in introducing ramen to city residents was duly documented. Jonathan Gold, a food writer for the paper, notes, Most Japanese restaurants in the United States tend toward either Meiji-era gracefulness or the hypermodern Tokyo thing, but Daikokuya looks like a set from a 1960s Imamura [Sho-hei] picture, decorated with rusted advertisements and faded postwar movie posters, furnished with straight-backed vinyl booths that seem plucked from ancient coffee shops, lubricated with endless mugs of Asahi beer on tap. The cooks are probably working their way through USC film school, but they out-yakuza the yakuza behind their vats of sputtering liquid, sporting fierce tufts of beard, hair cut with an artful brutishness, and complex, reptilian tattoos almost alive beneath athletic sheens of sweat. A television blares

166

flavor of the month

at one end of the room, soap operas mostly. At lunchtime, the counter fills up with impossibly hip local high school students; after hours, you are unlikely to see clothing in any color but black—except for sneakers, which might as well be on loan from a rare-Nike museum. Even the menus, stained documents printed in a blocky midcentury font, look like relics from a junk shop. . . . If Daikokuya is the Asian equivalent of a neo-retro burger stand like Café 50s or Johnny Rockets, where all the signifiers are so artlessly reproduced that it seems hokey to anybody who may have experienced the original, I don’t really want to hear about it. Because from this end of things, the restaurant feels exactly like Japan.1

Gold’s insight with respect to the retro signifiers of the shop and the comparison to the artlessness of Johnny Rockets are both striking because they intimate a view of urban Japan as another version of the same rather than a vastly different space of the East. The appetite for consumable nostalgia is understood as a phenomenon familiar to both Americans and Japanese, and the author’s own position in relation to the youth consumer culture of hipness offered by the ramen shop is one of eager participation and slight modesty. The descriptions of the workers and clientele also impart a basic knowledge of the symbols and stories of the Japanese underworld. In this way the ramen shop reflected the new image of Japan, which was a global center of taste making through design, food, and art.2 Japan was cool now, and Americans were taking notice. A buzz also surrounded ramen in New York City’s East Village in 2004, when David Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar and Kamada Shigeto’s Minca Ramen Factory opened. Chang, a Korean-American chef trained at Craft Restaurant (co-owned by Food Network celebrity chef Tom Colicchio), opened what became the first American-style ramen shop using bacon, ham hocks, dark chicken meat, roasted pork bones, and sake in the soup base.3 He appears to have named his high-end ramen restaurant after the acclaimed founder of Nissin Foods Corporation, who is discussed in chapter 3. Yet, like Ando- Momofuku, who never acknowledged any connection between his choice for his company’s name and the name of the wheatmilling giant Nisshin Seifun, Chang claimed that his choice of Momofuku was simply based on its meaning “lucky peach” in Japanese (another possible rendering of Ando-’s given name using different written characters).

flavor of the month

167

In late 2004 the New York Times confirmed the arrival of an American ramen fad by running a feature with a half-page illustration and the title “Here Comes Ramen, the Slurp Heard Round the World” printed in large letters. As could be expected in a publication catering to an older crowd, a good portion of the piece by Julia Moskin was concerned with the fact that there was a difference between instant ramen and the restaurant-made variety, and that the latter was “fiercely beloved” by Japanese expatriates and “eaten with as much slurping as possible.” Referring to the food as “Japan in a bowl,” Moskin notes, “It is the national dish, cheaper than sushi, available everywhere and perpetually fashionable.”4 Like the LA Weekly article, the piece presents ramen as a food offering the opportunity for a concrete engagement with a fashionable, young, and urban Japan rather than the version associated with tea ceremonies and rock gardens. The article also spotlighted the owner of New York’s Minca Ramen Factory, Kamada Shigeto, who was a jazz musician in Japan with a penchant for tasting different regional ramen styles before opening his own shop. Kamada notes, “I only started making ramen here because I needed some to eat. I can’t live without it.” Moskin continues, “He is hardly alone.”5 The Raumen Museum–inspired idea that ramen was the beloved national food of Japan and that real Japanese people could not make do without regularly eating it was thus emphasized in the article. This type of coverage would not have been possible had ramen not already been transformed into an icon of Japanese food culture as a result of the books from the 1980s, the museum that opened in 1994, and the television shows featuring ramen chef celebrities from the early 2000s. Ramen’s mutation into a national food in Japan allowed it to be marketed as a symbol of the updated “cool Japan” in the United States, as the category of “Japan” itself transformed into a marker of global youth culture. Japan’s passion for ramen began to define Japan itself; the more the Japanese defined ramen in national terms, the more the nation became identified with the noodle soup. One of the recurring themes in American writing on ramen was the slurping sound that Japanese people tended to make when eating the noodles. When writing about the popularity of ramen in the United States from the mid- to late 2000s, food writers were unable to resist pointing out the seeming oddness of the Japanese in slurping while eating and

168

flavor of the month

thereby breaching European-American table manners.6 In Japan, however, slurping is considered a practical way to eat something hot and wet without burning oneself or making a mess, and, when done correctly, it can be an impressive method allowing one to avoid burns and flying specks of soup. In the United States, the act continues to be understood as a sign of the cultural singularity of the Japanese. The emergence of ramen fandom in New York and Los Angeles also took the form of store review websites, most prominently in the form of the Rameniac site launched in 2006 by Rickmond Wong, a native of Alhambra, California. Wong wrote reviews of shops in Japan, the United States, Britain, and Italy, creating the best-known American ramen review site in the likeness of the popular Japanese sites that had emerged in the mid-1990s. A profile of the blogger in the LA Weekly in 2009 noted, “Rickmond Wong considers himself a ramen shaman. . . . His blog is a strong argument for a ramen as a subject of higher education. [sic] He’s already earned a P.H.D. [sic]”7 Wong explained his motivations for launching the best-known American ramen website: I didn’t initially conceive of rameniac as a food blog. When I was conceptualizing the site, I had no idea what a food blog was. I wanted to build a worldwide English-language ramen archive, something of a repository that people could reference if they were in the mood for a good bowl of noodles or simply information on the dish. I can’t even take credit for the idea. There was a Japanese guy named Bon who had a site going up until about 2003. It’s still online at http://www.worldramen.net, but I don’t think he’s updated his content in the last six years or so. And admittedly, his English is a bit choppy. There are probably around 80 to 100 ramen shops in Southern California currently. I’ll get to them all eventually, but I’m in no rush. . . . As there are several new ramen shops opening in L.A. in the near future, we appear to be in the midst of a ramen boom. I’d like to think that my efforts have contributed in some part to that, to the education, the ramenizing, of the English-speaking world.8

In an interview from 2010 uploaded to YouTube by the University of California at Los Angeles’s Daily Bruin, Wong, an alumnus of the school, comments on the work of ramen blogging and the meaning of ramen for the Asian American community: “There’s this kind of like Asian-American cultural thing to [ramen] too. I want to see like this kind of stuff infiltrate

flavor of the month

169

culture on a level where it just becomes mainstream. Like pizza is mainstream. Sure, it’s Italian, but everyone’s into it. It’s like, oh, that’s cool. If you can kind of like create that in the minds of people, then they won’t think of like Asia as this strange exotic place.”9 Wong understood his work of reviewing ramen shops, which he admitted could become a burden at times, as part of a greater effort to promote the mainstreaming of Asian American food culture. By extension, ramen was endowed with yet another purpose: making Asian Americans appear less exotic and foreign to their non-Asian American counterparts. In the process, ramen lost some of its specificity as a Japanese food with Chinese associations and developed into an object standing in for the ambiguous ethno-racial-cultural category of “Asian” in America.10 In one of his most spirited reviews, Wong evaluated the nouveau fusion shop Ramen California, run by celebrity chef Nakamura Shigetoshi. The shop opened in 2009 promising a new approach to ramen inspired by the freedom of California living, but it closed in 2011. Few places will ever go as far as Ramen California, which—and you read it here first—may well shape up to be the most groundbreaking new restaurant, not just ramen shop, in America today. . . . Starbucks-style portions of small, medium, and large ramen were introduced to the menu, and by the time I returned (yet again), diners could well craft their own “tasting course” of noodle samplers complete with wine pairings as suggested by the staff. It was off to the races when I ordered three minis: the “Heirloom Tomato,” the cheese, and the “Marsala Curry Ramen.” All were positively righteous in their own way; the tomatoes sparkled, the curry punctured the senses, and a reprise of the cheese tour-de-force confirmed my suspicions; it hadn’t been a mirage at all. I asked the chef about the noodles. He mentioned a specific grade of semolina, typically used in pasta, to firm up his strands, and even the previously incongruous chicken soup began to win me over with its simple, austere charm. Ramen in Japan has[,] over the years, become all-too synonymous with “hiding the natural flavor of the ingredients,” he explained. “I want to make things simple again.” It’s true that a bowl of ramen is normally assessed by its complexity of flavor and overwhelming profundity of taste. Measuring that has been this website’s stock in trade; it’s what keeps rameniacs going. Nakamura’s California experiment[,] on the other hand, is a deliberate attempt to break free of the confines of a conformist Japanese mindset, the product of ramen

170

flavor of the month

royalty in self-imposed exile. Were the fare handled by less skilled hands, I might have dismissed the place outright as either gimmicky or a cynical stab at prestige. But instead Ramen California is world-class artistry—meticulous and daring, the most thrilling new restaurant in town noodle-related or otherwise. Its impact on the landscape could be huge.11

Ramen California’s short run as the fashionable new fusion restaurant for ramen occurred at the same time that Wong ceased updating the Rameniac site with ramen reviews. In one of his last postings, in June 2011, Wong noted that for health reasons he was eating much less ramen and had taken to a Mediterranean diet. As indicated by the self-anointed shaman of ramen’s turn toward couscous, a new phase in the evolution of ramen in the United States had begun to unfurl, marked by a diminution in hype and self-consciousness by Americans eating the food. In addition, the shortening lifespan of the fashionable ramen shop was a phenomenon that transcended nation, occurring in both the United States and Japan at an increasingly rapid pace starting in the mid-2000s. At the same time that a younger generation of Americans such as David Chang and Rickmond Wong worked to introduce ramen to Americans, Ivan Orkin, a native of Syosset in Long Island, New York, took up the challenge of opening the first American-owned and -operated ramen shop in Japan (with his Japanese wife and brother-in-law). Inspired by the film Tampopo, Orkin developed an interest in opening a ramen shop after visiting David Chang’s Momofuku in New York and attending the Tokyo Ramen Expo.12 Orkin, a chef of French cuisine in New York, decided to try his hand at making his own ramen, which consisted of handmade noodles and a “double soup” that combined seafood and chicken broths, a formula that had become fashionable in Tokyo in the mid-2000s. Orkin first encountered limited success with his restaurant, which opened in June 2006. His fortune turned around, however, when he attracted the attention of the Demon of Ramen himself, Sano Minoru, who visited with the crew for his television show Gachinko!13 Orkin had generated a small buzz by appearing on other television programs for interviews, and Sano was ready to shine his spotlight on the American chef making Japanese ramen. Describing the televised encounter between the American ramen maker and the Demon of Ramen, Orkin noted:

flavor of the month

171

He came into my shop with lots of cameras and two members of a popular boy band. Like every other TV show I’d appeared on, the bit began with the visitors reacting in shock to the sight of a white Western face behind the counter. I waved my hand, said “Hi,” and tried to keep up while they peppered me with questions about the whys and hows of opening my shop. Then it was put up or shut up. I made three bowls of shio ramen and handed them over the counter. . . . He didn’t smash the bowl or scream that I was a fake, and I, for my part, managed not to cry.14 The show constituted his nod of approval, and it more or less elevated Ivan Ramen to the top tier of Tokyo shops. If I’d worried before that my success would be temporary, that it was a fluke, that was the moment I convinced myself that I’d done something real. A wannabe ramen chef from New York had made good in Tokyo. The crowds continued to flow. Sano Minuoru did make one suggestion during his visit. Leaning over the counter, his cameras off, he told me I should consider increasing the water content of my noodles by 1 percent. Then he congratulated me on my success, rounded up his crew, and left. The next day, I tried it. He was right. The ramen tasted better than ever.15

Although Orkin was far from the first non-Japanese to run a successful ramen shop, he was the first American to do so, which made him a predictable target for Internet publicity and reality television coverage in Japan. In his 2009 book Sano Minoru’s Ramen Revolution, Sano backhandedly praised Orkin’s shop as the “Black Ship of the Ramen World,” alluding to the unwelcome visit by Commodore Matthew Perry’s U.S. Navy squadron to Japan in 1853.16 Sano notes that Orkin “even writes ‘homemade noodles’ on his New Year’s card, instead of ‘Happy New Year,’ ” exhibiting a disregard for Japanese New Year ritual sensibilities (akin to writing “artisanal pasta” instead of “happy holidays” on a Christmas card).17 Sano continues, “He should add more water to his noodles” and “use more ingredients in his soup.”18 In concluding his evaluation of Orkin, Sano praises Ivan Ramen’s cha-shu- pork, admitting that the French restaurant training had given Orkin a competitive advantage in handling meats, and writes, “Coming from abroad to start a ramen shop of his own, he is getting along well with his neighborhood shop owners. I admit I like this guy Ivan.”19 In 2008, Orkin published an autobiography in Japanese, Ivan’s Ra-men, joining the ranks of other ramen chefs with self-published books contain-

172

flavor of the month

ing their philosophy about ramen.20 Orkin’s celebrity reached new heights, however, with the release of his own line of instant ramen in 2009 in collaboration with Sanyo- Foods’ Sapporo Ichiban line. Sanyo-, which distributed the brand nationwide, sold out of the 300,000 units it produced in less than a month, making it the fastest-selling instant ramen in the company’s history according to Orkin’s autobiography.21 Orkin’s shop drew attention in the United States as well. In 2007, a Wall Street Journal article featuring Orkin and his shop in Tokyo, Ivan Ramen, ran under the headline “Trying to Out-Noodle the Japanese.”22 Reflecting on his reputation as the American ramen celebrity of Japan, Orkin notes, “I know that I am a big attraction. I’m a gaijin, and I’m from New York.”23 The success of Orkin’s noodle-making venture in Japan encouraged him to set his sights on New York City’s East Village, where he had initially been inspired by the innovations of David Chang. As of late 2012, Orkin was planning to open a fifty-seat megashop in the East Village, claiming, “The kind of ramen I’m going to do, New York hasn’t even heard about yet.”24 The full impact of Orkin, the American ramen chef stamped with the Japanese establishment’s seal of approval, has yet to be seen, but it is clear that Hollywood-style ramen chefs have entered the culinary consciousness of foodies in the United States as a result of the shops opened by the likes of Orkin, Chang, Nakamura, and Kamada. In 2011, the first text dedicated to the appreciation of ramen appeared in the United States, a full three decades after the first full-length book on ramen was published in Japan. The first American celebrity ramen chef, David Chang, launched the food journal Lucky Peach with an inaugural issue devoted to ramen. Soon after, the issue became a collector’s item that was sold for more than $300 on eBay, while other back issues of the journal sold for an average of $8. In the journal, David Chang and food writer Peter Meehan engaged in a personal exploration of ramen with graphics and anecdotes about the authors’ experiences traveling to Tokyo. National Public Radio (NPR) subsequently interviewed Meehan about his “irreverent look at cooking from all over the world.”25 Meehan explained that the creators dedicated the first issue of Lucky Peach to ramen because of David Chang’s restaurant and the food’s importance in Japanese culture. Referencing a famous scene from Tampopo, he comically pontificates,

flavor of the month

173

“You’re gonna slurp those noodles, you’re not chewing them, you’re not cutting them up, you’re trying to inhale them like a human noodle vacuum, and they should slurp in a pleasing way. And then that broth that they’re served in, it should dress the noodles, it should coat the noodles, it should flavor the noodles. It seems like the simplest thing for a bowl of noodle soup to do, but when you’re in front of a bowl and that’s happening . . . you’re most of the way there.”26 Again, when discussed by Americans, ramen was unable to escape the Tampopified language and fetishistic imagery that Itami had satirized, and perhaps unwittingly standardized, in his first and only “noodle Western.”27 In addition, the NPR story repeated the inescapable adage about the frequency with which American college students ate ramen and how different the restaurant version was from the instant version of the food. American news stories about ramen tended to replicate one another and follow a predictable story line, beginning with Tampopo as a way to explain the food’s supposed ritual significance to the fashionable Japanese, followed by a description of its difference from the instant version, a joke about slurping, and finally the introduction of a few local shops. By relating the deep significance of ramen to the Japanese (evinced by Tampopo, of course), the coverage invariably reinforced the image of Japan as a land defined by ramen, and ramen as the definitive dish of postwar Japan. Similar to Ra-men Daisuki!! by Sho-ji Sadao, David Chang’s special edition of Lucky Peach is a collection of celebrity monologues and comic illustrations loosely organized around the appreciation of ramen. The issue includes a travelogue of Chang and Meehan’s visit to Tokyo to eat ramen and an article by Anthony Bourdain on David Chang’s career as American ramen trendsetter, among other articles. Readers are informed that Chang, like the rameniac Rickmond Wong, worked as an English teacher in Japan while learning to eat ramen but did not actually learn to speak much Japanese in the process (as is typical of many Americans living in the country).28 In the style of Dave Barry Does Japan29 and other popular travelogues written by Americans who feel empowered by their status as Americans in Japan, the first chapter in the journal, “Things Were Eaten,” highlights Peter Meehan’s experience being received as a VIP in Tokyo by top-rated chefs and bartenders with David Chang as his guide. Meehan draws attention to the vending machines dispensing alcoholic

174

flavor of the month

beverages, the displays of menus in the form of plastic food in front of restaurants, the clean automatic toilets, the gangsters with missing pinkies, and other well-worn aspects of life in Japan that foreigners unacquainted with the country never tire of writing about. Furthermore, Meehan, a former food writer for the New York Times, admits his sense of being lost and overwhelmed upon learning of the New York restaurant world’s relative provinciality during his first trip to Tokyo.30 Flaunting his lack of interest in understanding Japanese sensibilities and standards of politeness, Meehan gleefully writes about how he ordered so much food that he couldn’t finish it at famous shops, and how he met Yamagishi Kazuo, a legendary ramen chef and inventor of dipped ramen (tsukemen), without comprehending his significance in the Japanese ramen world or why he was treated with such reverence by his staff.31 A photograph of David Chang passed out drunk on the floor in front of a closed restaurant inside of a high-end building attests to the irreverence of the authors. “Things Were Eaten” is also illustrative of the expectations that firsttime visitors to Japan entertain based upon their exposure to the updated image of Japan as “cool.” For instance, Meehan visits the ramen shops of Tokyo expecting to observe what he calls “ramen fashion.” He notes, “I’d thought that this issue would include a Ramen Fashion Notebook, detailing all the crazy shit people in Japanese ramen shops wear—the ramen cooks in New York all wear different and slightly outlandish headwraps, and often some variety of rain boots or galoshes, too. But the couple at Aoba [ramen shop] was simply, even maybe fashionably, attired in nicerthan-just-practical cotton garments, like they shopped at the R by 45 rpm store in SoHo. Nothing funny or weird about it. So my ramen fashion idea died there.”32 Meehan’s expectation that he would find a bizarre land of head wraps and galoshes was therefore betrayed by the banality of the actual people living in Japan. As in so many articles written about Japan (or any place in the so-called non-West) by the cliché-prone food writer, in Chang and Meehan’s work the audience is familiarized with the same half discoveries that reveal more about the writer’s self-referential point of view than the actual social organization to be encountered in their destination. Although this can be understood as part of a long trajectory of American writing on the charms of the exotic East, the same clichés often take on a life of their own and

flavor of the month

175

reverberate among the Japanese (or non-Westerners) themselves, becoming incorporated into a part of their self-definition over time. The samue worn by ramen chefs since the 1990s and the Japan-inspired (or Japanish) - do- in New York fall into decor of newer ramen shops at places such as Ippu this category. Anthony Bourdain, whose hit television show on the Travel Channel, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, earned him an Emmy in 2010 and a role as of one of America’s best-known celebrity chefs and food critics, wrote a quip-loaded meditation on David Chang’s career as the American ramen pioneer in the article “Chang,” published in the first issue of Lucky Peach. Bourdain interprets Chang’s career through three films that he argues stand as parables for the life trajectory of the English-teacher-turned-ramenchef-extraordinaire. The first is, obviously enough, Tampopo, which, according to Bourdain, encapsulates Chang’s discovery of ramen. The second is Obayashi Nobuhiko’s 1977 horror comedy House, in which “one discovers the shocking precursor to what has been referred to as the ‘postnoodle epiphany,’ at which time Chang and his collaborators ‘departed from the script,’ so to speak, and began a new phase of recipe development.” He continues, “David Chang’s post-noodle phase answered a question that no one had asked. No one in New York had expressed a yearning for Japanese/ Korean/Modernist/Southern-Americana Fusion. Much like Obayashi, had Chang revealed his plans prior to dropping them on an unprepared public, he would likely have been dismissed as insane. These eerie parallels, and his earlier residence in Japan, lead me to believe that Mr. Obayashi’s filmic work is a clear and continuing influence—the blueprint for Chang’s ascent.” The third is the 2008 film Ramen Girl, in which Bourdain locates “sheer autobiographical parallels” with the life of David Chang.33 Bourdain explains: The Momofuku empire predates this cruelly underappreciated independent film. And yet, watching it, I couldn’t help but think: was it coincidence or something else that this heartwarming tale of a young American’s apprenticeship to a seemingly cruel and demanding ramen master was made exactly when Chang’s star was on the rise? And was it coincidence that Brittany Murphy’s character, Abby, has her breakthrough when she—like Chang—dares to defy convention, to dig deep, to take what she has learned

176

flavor of the month

from her teacher and move forward into uncharted territory? I think not. The story is too close to Chang’s. And while Brittany Murphy might not have been the ideal choice to play the lead, it is his story just the same.34

The parallels between the plot of Ramen Girl, an independent film directed by Robert Allan Ackerman, and the life of David Chang are indeed striking. Released in 2008 and shot mostly in Japan, Ramen Girl starred the late Brittany Murphy as Abby, an American woman who develops a passion for cooking ramen under the apprenticeship of a stubborn middleaged Japanese chef played by Nishida Toshiyuki. After developing her own style of ramen, named “Goddess Ramen,” which includes peppers, corn, and tomatoes, Abby returns to New York to open a shop of her own named Ramen Girl. Despite the film’s lack of success at the box office or in the DVD market, it was an important milestone marking the evolution of American depictions of Japan in popular culture, as was David Chang’s restaurant and the ramen phenomenon of the 2000s in general. What distinguished Ramen Girl from other American feature films set in Japan (Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha, and even Lost in Translation) was that it was shot in Japan with Japanese characters who spoke Japanese rather than broken or accented English. This was a breakthrough in American cinematic representations of Japan, and it was a dramatic departure from films with characters such as the Japanese widow who falls in love with the American who kills her husband (Last Samurai), the Japanese geisha who falls in love with the American who rescues her from the brutality of Japanese patriarchy (Memoirs of a Geisha), and the Japanese actors who serve as stage props or as jokes in and of themselves (Lost in Translation). The differences were not lost on the film’s star, Brittany Murphy. When asked by the Japan Times how the film compared with Lost in Translation, Murphy noted, “It’s different in terms of plot, plus—and I really like this—it has more local actors in it. If you think about it, ‘Lost in Translation’ didn’t have very many Japanese in roles that were significant. It’s like Tokyo was more of just a background to that movie. In ‘Ramen Girl,’ Japan is more than a background, it’s . . . well, it’s part of everything in the movie, and I’m in the middle of it. It’s great!”35 As evidenced by the appearance of celebrity chefs, specialty critics, publishers, and filmmakers interested in ramen, the birth of ramen appre-

flavor of the month

177

ciation in the United States in the 2000s took much the same form that it did in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. The ramen critic Rickmond Wong, the celebrity chef David Chang, the journal publisher Peter Meehan, and the film director Robert Allan Ackerman all heralded the ascension of the food to a new level of fame in the United States, just as enthusiasm about ramen was showing signs of waning in Japan. The fact that David Chang and Peter Meehan published the inaugural issue of Lucky Peach in 2011, a year after Raumen Museum founder Iwaoka Yo-ji published The Day That Ra-men Disappears, lamenting the twilight of passionate ramen consumption in Japan, illustrates the lag in ramen fandom between the United States and Japan. Reversing a pattern that had held until the early 1990s, Japan was now generating the popular cultural trends that American youths were following roughly a decade later, not only in terms of food but also in fashion and coiffures. Japan’s era of “soft power,” or benign cultural influence abroad, however, peaked in the mid-2000s and was quickly overshadowed by the “Korean wave” that followed it into the United States (as evidenced, for example, by “Gangnam Style”).

Conclusion time will tell: a food of opposition The man uttered . . . My life . . . My soul . . . Contained within . . . a bowl Taste it! Mita Ryo-sei, owner of Tokyo ramen shop Rokurinsha

Two decades of stagnant growth and weak employment prospects for young people have changed the meanings of work and job security for Japanese brought up during the prolonged recession and the growth of the Chinese and South Korean economies. As the unlikely heroes of the younger generation brought up in recession, the independent ramen shop owners have become celebrities who redefined not only Japanese popular culture, but the idea of Japan itself, both at home and abroad. Just as the founders of Sony, Honda, and Panasonic did for an earlier generation, the ramen shop owners born in the 1970s are now coming into their own as the faces of Japan’s scaled-down global entrepreneurship of the 2000s. If there is one consistent thread that runs through the narrative of ramen, it is that it is a food of contradictions. It began life in Japan as a modern food from China at a time when the West represented modernity and the East represented backwardness. The main producers of the dish were Chinese chefs at Chinese restaurants in Japan, as well as the Japanese chefs who worked with them and learned from them, although this was an era noted for its conflict and violence between China and Japan. In the early years, an era touted for the success of rapid industrialization and the adoption of Western ways by the country’s governing elites, the main 179

180

conclusion

consumers of Shina soba were manual laborers, night workers, and soldiers. The venues at which Shina soba was served—pushcarts, Chinese food restaurants, Western-style eateries, and cafes—were places of employment for migrant workers from the countryside, ethnic minorities, and other displaced groups, providing opportunities for entry-level employment, although the likelihood of financial stagnation was high. After largely disappearing from Japan’s cities during the war, the noodle soup returned as Chu- ka soba during the U.S. occupation as one of the few “stamina” foods available in a time remembered for widespread hunger. It subsequently powered the labor of young working-class bachelors during the era of rapid economic growth (1955–73), when disposable income was increasing and the middle-class nuclear family became mainstream. Furthermore, as large export-driven corporations such as Toyota became the international face of the Japanese economy in the 1970s, independent ramen shops developed into a place of refuge for disgruntled corporate workers. In the 1980s, when a financial bubble predicated on real estate and stock speculation produced a spurt in the consumption of luxury goods and leisure services, ramen evolved to epitomize the Japanese commoner’s antidote to fine French and Italian cuisine, which were then in vogue. In the 1990s, when American dominance in the international fast-food industry produced global consumer homogeneity on a newfound scale, ramen’s national symbolism grew thicker and more political, generating patriotic, or neonationalistic, ramen shops in the 2000s. Ramen has always been eaten primarily by young people in Japan, although the country’s population balance is indubitably tilting toward the gray. Ramen continues to be a fatty, salty, and starchy dish in most instances, even though the trend is decidedly toward healthier foods. Ramen is a distinctly regional specialty that confirms the homogeneity of the national whole. Ramen is affordable to nearly everyone in Japan, but the long lines of devoted fans make it all but impossible to taste the best noodle soups without committing hours of one’s time. It is a token of pan-Asianism in an era of declining but undying American hegemony. Lastly, but perhaps most significantly, ramen making in Japan is an industry that resists the monopolizing tendencies of corporate capital

conclusion

181

through the noren wake system of creating branch shops. Eighty percent of ramen shops in Japan are independently owned, and small ramen shops remain resilient despite the struggles of most other independent food businesses since the 1990s.1 The noren wake system, in which the ramen store owner provides a former worker who has at least a year of experience with his personal supply routes, broth and sauce recipes, and personal coaching, usually without any charge, has allowed for the spread of shops modeled after popular stores without any pyramid-like corporate structure. Yamagishi Kazuo (owner of Higashi-Ikebukuro Taisho-ken), Yamada Takeshi (owner of Menya Musashi), and Yamada Takumi (owner of Ra-men Jiro-) have all allowed apprentices to open branch shops with their blessing, resulting in more independent shops offering the same taste without any financial benefit accruing to the original owner. In an interview with Yamagishi Kazuo (the inventor of dipped ramen, or tsukemen) by the Demon of Ramen, Sano Minoru, Yamagishi explains his willingness to create competitor shops, saying, “Some people pretend as if their recipes are closely guarded company secrets and refuse to reveal them, but they really ought to share their recipes and techniques. It cannot only be about ‘my taste.’ It also needs to be about who is going to continue ‘my taste.’ I do not have any children, so when many people enjoy ‘my taste’ I am thrilled.”2 The noren wake system has encouraged the creation of a host of shops that take after successful owners, the branch shops serving as an indicator of both the success and generosity of the original owner. This system offers young ramen workers the hope of a stable if not particularly lucrative future in the form of small business ownership. Although many smallscale eateries, such as the common Japanese diner (taishu- shokudo-), have folded since the 1990s due to competition from the fast-food industry’s success in cost cutting and economies of scale, many young Japanese continue to take up training at successful ramen shops with the intention of eventually opening an independent branch. In this way, the ramen shop as a place of employment for ambitious young workers who are not interested in or ineligible for joining the ranks of the corporate world has emerged as one of its most significant features since the downsizing of the 1990s. The anticorporate elements of the noren wake system and the food’s inclusion in the Slow Food movement since the 2000s have

Figure 11. A common diner, or taishu- shokudo-, in a Tokyo residential neighborhood.

Figure 12. A traditional ramen shop.

conclusion

183

Figure 13. A newer ramen shop.

endowed the production of ramen with a political valence that may well be viewed as leftist, although the ramen poems, store names, samue, and hairstyles of ramen chefs are decidedly right-wing. Ramen is therefore at the fulcrum of a rapidly changing national identity in Japan that is defined by a new, reality-television-inspired sensibility toward history, mixing and matching elements of a “Japan” that is as much the product of foreigners’ expectations as anything else. The role of the post-1990s ramen shop as a site of employment and potential business ownership for Japanese born in the 1970s, and thus left out of the nation’s experience of rapid growth, has endowed the food with a strong symbolic currency as a form of opposition to corporate America and the American fast-food industry that represents it. In The Ramen Shop versus McDonald’s, for example, economist Takenaka Masaharu captures the oppositional politics projected onto the production and enthusiastic consumption of ramen.3 The book begins with a prologue denouncing the tendency of Japanese academics to unabashedly criticize their own country while abroad, particularly when in the United States, and adds that this author’s aim was instead to understand what is worth

184

conclusion

preserving about Japan in the face of increasing U.S. influence. He argues for the need to draw a general comparison between the practices of the two countries rather than simply extolling the United States to arrive at a balanced assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of each country’s business culture. Takenaka finds that Japan’s value can be located in the country’s smaller scale of production on average compared with the United States and its relative lack of capital concentration across industries, both of which allow for a culture of variation, eccentricity, and creativity to flourish. The less concentrated the capital in the industry, the more diversity and originality there is, he claims. The smaller-scale production needed protection, as America’s large-scale, bottom-line-driven logic of production threatened to overwhelm what remained good about Japan. In the first chapter, “The American Who Remains Dependent on McDonald’s vs. the Japanese Who Masters Ramen,” Takenaka observes: Big business needs to focus on grand performance-based goals, meaning it aims to satisfy the demands and desires of the greatest number of people. When the process is repeated over time, it becomes a pattern of eliminating outliers and achieving a certain homogeneity or standardization in production. This is essentially the McDonald’s style of business. . . . The success of McDonald’s is the flipside of the poverty of American food culture. Its spread across the world is essentially the globalization of American junk food. On the contrary, in Japan’s animated films or graphic novels, a “ramenshop-style supply structure” remains, which is deeply rooted. Rather than trying to satisfy the greatest number, the producer insists on his own sensibility, thereby generating a multitude of possibilities and renewing the product as necessary. Following from this, each business transaction creates little revenue, but what results is diverse and unique. Goods produced in this setting are often surprising and exceptional.4

Although Takenaka’s understanding of the value of small businesses is straightforward and difficult to refute, his categorization of the structure he seeks to preserve as a “ramen-shop-style” mode of production that is in direct opposition to American-style big business is noteworthy for its novel application of the ramen shop as a national style of business. According to his logic, large-scale capital is representative of American

conclusion

185

culture (epitomized by McDonald’s), and the artisanal craftsman (represented by the independent ramen chef ) with little regard for outsized profits and overexpansion is the quintessential Japanese. What is perhaps most striking about the book is that, despite the title, there is no actual discussion of ramen making or its business structure to be found anywhere except in the passage quoted above. Instead, the reader is treated to a review of the differences in political, economic, and social organization in the United States and Japan (with chapter titles such as “The Debating American vs. the Blogging Japanese”) that underscore the significance of ramen as a stand-in for the cultural singularity of Japanese small-scale production in post-1990s Japan. Ramen has been the most prominent and successful global export of the Japanese restaurant industry since the internationalization of sushi in the 1980s, and it has become a global phenomenon in the last two decades. In the 2000s, the packaging of Japanese culture as a commodity for overseas consumption shifted from accentuating the reconfigured remnants of the early modern (kabuki, sushi, and wood-block prints) to promoting the postwar lifestyle (anime, ramen, and video games). In this sense, the period of high economic growth had itself entered the realm of the afterlife, consisting of academic studies and museum displays.5 The shift allowed the products of Japanese daily life from the 1960s to serve as a repository for the redefinition of the nation as one defined by lifestyle, in contrast to the more dominant tropes of militarism, economism, and aestheticism characteristic of the twentieth-century image abroad. Over the course of the last century, what started as an exotic food from China famed for its affordability, quickness, and nourishing qualities developed into a staple of Japanese working-class cuisine, and eventually a slow food symbolizing the value of hand-crafted, old-fashioned, and small-scale production representing national tradition. In this process, it is possible to observe a reaction against the lengthening of the food supply chain and the misalignment of profit incentives with the task of producing safe, healthy, and tasty foods for the anonymous mass of consumers. The history of ramen in Japan reveals how these associations developed over time, and how cooking and eating practices seamlessly shifted from the realm of working-class custom to that of national tradition. The vari-

186

conclusion

ous categories into which the food is simultaneously placed (Japanese food, comfort food, “Chinese” fast food, nighttime post-drinking food, working-class lunch food, young people’s food, bachelor’s food) each contain a small history of the evolution of food practices in Japan for different groups of people, instructing us in both the differences within the nation and how they have changed. In this way, the dish provides a window into the process of the making of culture at the level of the nation, but also at the level of class (blue-collar), gender (masculine), age (youth), and ethnicity (“Chinese”). The exceptional fact about ramen in Japan is that it provides a site for studying historical change by highlighting the interrelatedness of so many different areas of social organization. Its evocative power in encapsulating the small pleasures of urban life surpasses that of other foods that are also made primarily with wheat flour, such as okonomiyaki and udon.6 The ironies or incongruities associated with ramen are also instructive of the contradictions inherent in the political history of modern Japan. For example, the dish is Chinese in origin but American in terms of its ingredients and Japanese in its symbolism. It has also changed from a dish representing the mechanization of food production and the greater demand for speed in the 1930s to a slow-cooked object of handcrafted devotion produced by artisan chefs in the 1990s. The accentuation of regional tastes in the 1980s highlights the homogenization of food practices in the period of high growth. In addition, although instant ramen is now a globally circulated food product rarely associated with Japan, restaurant-made ramen is exported throughout the globe as the iconic food of young Japan. Ramen is therefore a proxy for important aspects of social change in modern Japan. The complicated nature of Sino-Japanese relations as seen through representations of food, Japan’s dependence on wheat imports from the United States, changes in nutritional science, the transformation of eating into entertainment, and the national narrative of postwar struggle, success, and stagnation are all integral to the noodle soup’s history. At its root, however, the history of ramen is inseparable from the containment of the industrial workforce as a decision-making force in the political arena. The national narrative of ramen fostered the idea of an organic productive community at a time when the international economic struc-

conclusion

187

ture that had guided Japan’s high growth and bubble economy gave way to neoliberal policies of deregulation and privatization. The collective will of the entire populace, represented as a culturally unified workforce, changed the food emblematic of industrial laborers into one representing the abstraction of the national everyman.

Notes

introduction. national food 1. Osaki Hiroshi, Nihon ra-men hishi (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbun shuppansha, 2011), 223. 2. Though they are not commonly included, beef or beef bones can be used as - kotsu Ra-men Matado-ru, near Kita-Senju - stawell, as one finds at the shop Gyu tion in Tokyo. 3. Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Bureau of Statistics, 2011 National Survey of Prices, www.e-stat.go.jp. 4. The foreign origins, regional variations, ubiquity, affordability, and symbolic associations with youth and the working class are some of the key features shared by both ramen in Japan and pizza in the United States. 5. The museum’s planners decided to use the term raumen rather than ramen because its pronunciation is purportedly closer to the original Chinese term for the dish. Such touches endow the museum with an aura of credibility as the undisputed institution tracing the roots of the dish in Yokohama, the city where the modern Chinese noodle soup originated in Japan.

189

190

notes to pages 16–19

chapter one. street life 1. As the Qing dynasty cemented its authority over southern China, a number of Confucian scholars employed by the Ming government f led to Korea and Japan to work as advisors. 2. Kosuge Keiko, Nippon Ra- men Monogatari: Chu- ka soba wa itsu doko de umareta ka (Tokyo: Shinshindo-, 1987), 45–59. 3. Ibid., 57. 4. These five ingredients are the ones presently used by ramen shops serving “Mito-han ra- men” in the city of Mito, Ibaraki prefecture, such as Ishidaya in Yanagimachi. The actual five spices that Zhu Shun Shui suggested to Tokugawa Mitsukuni, however, remain unknown. 5. Until 1854, when the first Perry Treaty took effect, Japan’s Tokugawa regime had maintained a policy of avoiding contact with the Western powers other than Holland for more than two centuries to limit the turmoil caused by the proselytizing efforts of Christian missionaries in Japan. Holland alone had agreed to limit the relationship to trade, and as a result it became the only European country to maintain commercial and diplomatic contact with Japan from 1639 to 1854. 6. The Chinatown districts of the port cities were all referred to as Nankinmachi (Nanjing town). 7. Okuyama Tadamasa, Bunka menruigaku: ra-men hen (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2003). 8. Iwaoka Yo-ji, Ra-men ga nakunaru hi (Tokyo: Shufu no tomo, 2010), 28. 9. Hayamizu Kenro- , Ra- men to aikoku (Tokyo: Ko- dansha Gendai Shinsho, 2011), 18. 10. A note on the term Shina: As the image of China shifted in the late nine- goku, or Middle Counteenth century from that of a center of high culture (Chu try) to an aging, conquered nation unable to modernize (Shina), the term for the dish and the social strata of those associated with its consumption changed as well. Known initially as Nankin soba (Nanjing noodles) by the few cultured elites to try it during the early Meiji period, the dish was gradually reconfigured into Shina soba (Chinese noodles, using the colonial Japanese term for China) during the 1910s and 1920s, when it became associated with the factory workers of urban Japan and consumed on a mass scale. At the same time, Western foods such as beefsteaks, biscuits, and French bread became associated with the diets of the Europeanizing elite, illustrating the ways in which cultural hierarchies based on the geopolitics of the time were constructed and reinforced at the everyday level through the differentiation of eating practices. The conceptual remaking of China as “Japan’s Orient” in light of the perceived need to construct Japan itself as a Euro-American-style imperialist nation-state thus led to a shift away from a city-specific identification for the noodles (Nankin soba) to a nation-specific identification (Shina soba), in which a totalized, static,

notes to pages 19–26

191

imaginary community of the denigrated Other came to be represented by the word Shina. The epistemological construction of Shina (the presurrender Japanese term for China) as an “early, glorious stage of oriental culture” that was at the same time “helpless, antiquarian, arrogant, guileful, militarily incompetent, and misunderstanding of Japan’s true aims” was central to Japanese rationalizations for imperialism in East Asia. See Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 200–201. 11. Just as Shina soba became Chu- ka soba or ramen after the war, Shina chiku became known as menma (short for men no machiku, or “bamboo shoots for noodles”) in the postwar period because of a desire to eliminate the use of words loaded with the memory of imperialism. Okuyama, Bunka menruigaku, 47–48. 12. Ibid., 46. - ka ryo- ri kankyo- eisei do- gyo- kumiai (Chinese Restaurant 13. To- kyo- to Chu - kan Asahi, ed., Nedan no Meiji, Taisho-, Sho-wa, Union of Tokyo), cited in Shu Fu zoku shi, jokan (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1987), 41. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Akiyama Teruko, “Nisshin, Nichiro senso- to shokuseikatsu,” in Kingendai no shoku bunka, ed. Ishikawa Naoko and Ehara Ayako (Tokyo: Ko- gaku shuppan, 2002), 62. 17. Ibid., 73. 18. Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 139. 19. Akiyama, “Nisshin, Nichiro senso- to shokuseikatsu,” 73. 20. Takemura Tamio, Taisho- bunka teikoku no yu- topia: sekaishi no tenkanki to taishu- sho-hi shakai no keisei (Tokyo: Sangensha, 2004), 92. 21. Takafusa Nakamura, Economic Growth in Prewar Japan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 148. - jiro- Hayami and V. W. Ruttan, “Korean Rice, Taiwan Rice, and Japa22. Yu nese Agricultural Stagnation: An Economic Consequence of Colonialism,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 84 (November 1970): 562–89. 23. Katarzyna Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power, and National Identity (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 121. 24. Okada Tetsu, Ra-men no tanjo- (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo-, 2002). 25. Ibid., 104. 26. Elise Tipton, Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000), 122–23. 27. Louise Young, “Marketing the Modern: Department Stores, Consumer Culture, and the New Middle Class in Interwar Japan,” International Labor and Working-Class History 55 (April 1999): 52–70. 28. Katarzyna Cwiertka, “Eating the World: Restaurant Culture in Early Twentieth Century Japan,” European Journal of East Asian Studies 2, no. 1 (2003): 89–116.

192

notes to pages 27–35

29. Hitori Musuko (The Only Son), director Ozu, Yasujiro- (Sho- chiku 1938; DVD 2003). 30. Naomichi Ishige, The History and Culture of Japanese Food (New York: Routledge, 2001), 157. 31. Ibid. 32. Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine, 113. 33. Yamamoto Mitsuhiko launched the journal Kaizo- in 1919, which became known for its left-leaning and Christian pieces addressing the social problems accompanying capitalist development. Authorities shut down the publication of the journal and charged its publishers with promoting Communism in 1942 as part of the Yokohama Incident. 34. Satomura Kinzo-, “Shina soba ya kaigyo- ki,” Kaizo-, December 1933, 54. 35. Ibid., 55. 36. Hayamizu, Ra-men to aikoku, 20. 37. Ibid. 38. Although the charumera, a wooden reed instrument that is usually played to the tune of so-la-ti-la-so, so-la-ti-so-la, disappeared from most Japanese neighborhoods (along with the roaming yatai business as a whole) in the 1970s, is still used by food cart vendors in parts of Southeast Asia. 39. Hayamizu, Ra-men to aikoku, 57. 40. Ibid., 60. 41. Kobayashi Kurasaburo- , “Sobaya no Hanashi,” Chu- o- ko-ron, December 1938, 428. 42. Ibid., 430. 43. Okuyama, Bunka menruigaku, 70. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 54. 46. Koreans living in Japan often took Japanese names, although many chose not to as well. 47. Raumen Museum website, www.raumen.co.jp/rapedia/study_japan/study_ raumen_wakayama.html (accessed July 31, 2013). 48. Senryo- is the Japanese term for the Sarcandra glabra plant, which grows wild throughout East Asia and is used as a decoration in Japanese New Year’s decorations. 49. Okuyama, Bunka menruigaku, 77. 50. Ibid., 84. 51. Chanpon Museum, Shikairo- Restaurant, Nagasaki, June 3, 2006. 52. Chinese cooks as a proportion of Chinese residents in Japan increased steadily, from 122 out of 8,529 (1.4 percent) in 1910, to 549 out of 22,427 (2.4 percent) in 1920, to 2,007 out of 39,440 (5 percent) in 1930. Oda Kazuhiko, - eisha, 2010). Nihon ni zairyu- suru Chu- gokujin no rekishiteki henyo- (Tokyo: Fu

notes to pages 38–48

193

53. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Japanese Wartime Standard of Living and Utilization of Manpower (Washington, DC: Manpower, Food, and Civilian Supplies Division, 1947), 2. 54. Takafusa Nakamura, The Postwar Japanese Economy: Its Development and Structure, 1937–1994 (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1995), 3. 55. Ibid. 56. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982). 57. Bruce F. Johnston, Japanese Food Management in World War II (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1953), 198. 58. Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 16–17. 59. Amy Bentley, Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 1. 60. Ibid., 4. 61. United States War Food Administration, Final Report of the War Food Administrator, 1945 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945), 30. - ichi Narita, 62. See also Yasushi Yamanouchi, J. Victor Koschmann, and Ryu eds., Total War and “Modernization” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

chapter two. not an easy road 1. Hayamizu Kenro- , Ra- men to aikoku (Tokyo: Ko- dansha Gendai Shinsho, 2011), 20. 2. See, for example, Sanma no Aji, director Ozu Yasujiro- (Sho-chiku 1962), discussed in chapter 3. 3. John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2000), 100. 4. Ino Kenji, Tokyo yamiichi ko-bo-shi (Tokyo: Futabashi, 1999). 5. Specifically, the conscription of 874,000 able-bodied farm workers into the army between February 1944 and February 1945, the redirection of ammonia supplies from agricultural use as nitrogenous fertilizer to munitions manufacturing in the form of nitric acid, a 75 percent reduction in the amount of iron allocated to farm-tool production, and a requisitioning of farm horses by the army all severely hampered Japan’s ability to grow food. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Japanese Wartime Standard of Living and Utilization of Manpower (Washington, DC: Manpower, Food, and Civilian Supplies Division, 1947), 9. 6. Prior to the Pacific War, rice had been imported primarily from Korea and Taiwan, sugar from Taiwan and the Dutch East Indies, wheat from Australia,

194

notes to pages 48–54

Canada, and the United States, and soybeans from Manchuria. After 1943, however, blockades, the sinking of ships, and crop failures reduced imported food to roughly 9 percent of the total calories consumed in Japan, or half of the pre-1941 level, leaving the Japanese no choice but to consume the substitute staples. After losing access to supplies of wheat and encountering difficulties transporting rice from Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia due to Allied blockades, the Japanese government turned to Manchuria for soybeans and other grains. Shipping was more secure between Japan and Manchuria, and, as a result, although rice imports from Korea fell by 90 percent between 1939 and 1945, soybean imports from Manchuria increased by 30 percent between 1941 and 1945. The added imports from Manchuria, as well as a vigorous drive to boost the small-scale production of staple foods on school grounds, home gardens, and other public land, somewhat offset the enormous loss in imported food from the colonies. However, the substitution of soybeans, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and coarse grains for rice in the government’s staple food rations after 1943, and the decrease in ration volumes, clearly signaled to the people that the war was not going according to plan. Ibid., 18. 7. Okumura Ayao, Shinka suru menshoku bunka (Tokyo: Foodeum Communication, 1998), 174. 8. Lori Watt, When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010). 9. Steven Fuchs, “Feeding the Japanese: MacArthur, Washington, and the Rebuilding of Japan through Food Policy,” PhD diss., SUNY Binghamton, 2002, 129. 10. Owen Griffith, “Need, Greed, and Protest in Japan’s Black Market, 1938– 1949,” Journal of Social History 35, no. 4 (Summer 2002): 858. 11. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Economic and Scientific Section, Price Control and Rationing Division, “Food Situation during the First Year of Occupation,” undated, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo), p. 11. 12. Ibid., 9. 13. Dower, Embracing Defeat, 115–16. 14. Ibid., 117. 15. Howard Handleman, “Only Scratches Surface: Main Problem of Hoarded Goods Held Not Being Tackled in Official Probe,” Nippon Times, April 26, 1948. 16. Cable from Secretary of War Patterson to Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, February 28, 1946, in Ara Takashi, ed., GHQ/SCAP Top Secret Records (Tokyo: Kashiwashobo-, 1995), set 1, vol. 2, 175. 17. Cable from Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, General MacArthur, to Army Chief of Staff, General Eisenhower, April 13, 1946, in ibid., 166–67. 18. Cable from Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, General MacArthur, to General Hodge, Commanding General of U.S. Forces in Korea, April 26, 1946, in ibid., 161.

notes to pages 54–68

195

19. Joint Chiefs of Staff Document 1662, Memorandum from the U.S. Army Chief of Staff to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, April 27, 1946, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo). 20. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Office of the Chief of Staff for the Supreme Commander, Memorandum from the Office of the Chief of Staff, January 15, 1946, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo). 21. Ibid. 22. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Economic and Scientific Section, Price Control and Rationing Division, “Food Situation during the First Year of Occupation,” undated, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo), p. 11. 23. Dower, Embracing Defeat, 115. 24. Michael Schaller, “Securing the Great Crescent: Occupied Japan and the Origins of Containment in Southeast Asia,” Journal of American History 69, no. 2 (September 1982): 392–414. 25. Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 90. 26. Fuchs, “Feeding the Japanese,” 130. 27. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Economic and Scientific Section, Labor Division, “Supplementary Distribution of Commodities for Workers,” undated, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo). 28. Japan Ministry of Health and Welfare, Kokumin eiyo- no genjo- (Tokyo: Koseisho-, 1994), “Introduction.” For the 1947–2000 editions, see www.nih.go.jp /eiken/chosa/kokumin_eiyou/index.html. 29. Otsuka Shigeru, Shushoku ga kawaru (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyo-ronsha, 1989), 79. 30. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Civil Information and Education Section, “Survey of Bread and Flour Utilization by the Japanese People,” March 3, 1950, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo). 31. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Headquarters, Public Health and Welfare Section, “Allocation of Imports for Japanese School Lunch Program,” May 25, 1948, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo). 32. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Headquarters, Civil Information and Education Section, “Imported Food Utilization Program Progress Report,” undated, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo). 33. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Headquarters, Civil Information and Education Section, “How to Cook Your Food Ration,” undated, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo).

196

notes to pages 68–74

34. Dower, Embracing Defeat, 576. 35. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Civil Information Section, April 8, 1948, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo). 36. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Civil Information Section, March 16, 1948, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo). 37. Okumura, Shinka suru menshoku bunka, 175. 38. Ibid., 176. 39. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Headquarters, Government Section, “Report on Arrest of Violators of Emergency Measures Ordinance for Eating and Drinking Business,” September 18, 1948, National Diet Library U.S. Occupation Archives Microfilm (Tokyo). 40. Aoki Kazuo, “Tonchi Kyo-shitsu” no jidai: rajio o kakonde Nihonju- ga waratta (Tokyo: Tenbo-sha 1999), 75. 41. Ibid., 73. 42. Ochazuke no aji, director Ozu Yasujiro- (To-ei 1952). 43. Bangiku, director Naruse Mikio (To-ho- 1954). 44. Okuyama Tadamasa, Bunka menruigaku: ra- men hen (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2003), 226–27.

chapter three. move on up 1. Kawata Tsuyoshi, Ra-men no keizaigaku (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 2001), 22. 2. Takafusa Nakamura, The Postwar Japanese Economy: Its Development and Structure, 1937–1994 (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1995), 91. - kan Asahi, ed., Nedan no Meiji, Taisho-, Sho-wa, Fu- zoku shi, jo-kan 3. Shu (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1987), 41. 4. “Chikin” is “chicken” in romanized Japanese. 5. Japan External Trade Organization, Changing Dietary Lifestyles in Japan: JETRO Marketing Series 17 (Tokyo: Japan External Trade Organization, 1978), 6. 6. Ibid., 8. 7. Vaclav Smil and Kazuhiko Kobayashi, Japan’s Dietary Transition and Its Impacts (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 72–73. 8. The wheat exported from the United States to Japan was grown primarily in Oregon and Washington. Because U.S. demand along the Pacific coast was insufficient to match the high yields obtained through the use of industrial farming, foreign outlets that absorbed the surplus wheat, such as Japan and other anti-Communist allies of the United States in Asia, became critical for the growth of U.S. agribusiness.

notes to pages 74–85

197

9. Suzuki Takeo, Amerika komugi senryaku to Nihonjin no shokuseikatsu (Tokyo: Fujiwara shoten, 2003). 10. Ibid., 16. 11. Ibid., 19–20. 12. Shigeki Shibata, “U.S. Foreign Assistance to Japan (MSA) and the Japanese Aircraft Industry after the Korean War (1950–53),” Shakai-keizai-gaku 67, no. 2 (2001): 169–90. 13. Suzuki, Amerika komugi senryaku to Nihonjin no shokuseikatsu, 22–23. Also see www.fas.usda.gov/excredits/FoodAid/pl480/pl480brief.html. 14. Suzuki, Amerika komugi senryaku to Nihonjin no shokuseikatsu, 36. 15. Ibid., 52. 16. Ibid., 56. 17. Ibid., 99. 18. Quoted in ibid., 64–65. 19. Quoted in ibid., 76. 20. Ibid., 77. 21. Michael Conlon, “The History of U.S. Exports of Wheats to Japan,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, Global Agriculture Information Network, June 29, 2009, www.usdajapan.org/en/reports/History%20 of%20US%20Exports%20Wheat%20to%20Japan.pdf. 22. Ibid. 23. Miyazaki Motoyoshi, “Nihonjin no shokuko- sei to eiyo- ,” in Nihongata shokuseikatsu: kenko- to atarashii shokubunka no shinpojiumu, ed. KondoToshiko (Tokyo: Ko-dansha, 1982), 35. 24. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 16–17. 25. Andre Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty-First Century (New York: Psychology Press, 2004), 191–93. 26. The term is also used by Japanese-Brazilians who move to Japan with the intention of returning to Brazil, although many stay in Japan, where they form communities of their own. Takeyuki Tsuda, Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese-Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 27. For data on the history of regional participation in seasonal migration, see Kenji K. Oshiro, “Postwar Seasonal Migration from Rural Japan,” Geographical Review 74, no. 2 (April 1984): 145–56. 28. He is better known for his work Kinga Tetsudo- 999. 29. Hayamizu Kenro-, Ra-men to aikoku (Tokyo: Ko- dansha Gendai Shinsho, 2011), 116. 30. Ibid., 108. 31. Sanma no Aji (An Autumn Afternoon), director Ozu Yasujiro- (Sho- chiku 1962).

198

notes to pages 86–96

32. Kawata Tsuyoshi, Ra-men no keizaigaku (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 2001), 10. 33. The term salaryman, or sarari’i man, is a term of borrowed English that refers to a male white-collar office worker employed by a large company in Japan. The image of the urban salaryman as the common man in television shows and movies (Ozu’s being the best example) served as a powerful reinforcement of media-projected middle-class norms in postwar Japan. 34. “Datsu-sara repo-to,” Shu- kan Sankei, January 22, 1976, 97. 35. Hayamizu, Ra-men to aikoku, 163. 36. Ibid. 37. For more on this trend in the United States, see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage, 2003). 38. Nakamura, The Postwar Japanese Economy, 121. 39. Makoto Kumazawa, Portraits of the Japanese Workplace: Labor Movements, Workers, and Managers, ed. Andrew Gordon, trans. Andrew Gordon and Mikiso Hane (New York: Westview Press, 1996), 125–58. 40. Tsurumi Yoshiyuki, Banana to Nihonjin (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1982). 41. These dietary improvements for people in Japan came at the cost of largescale environmental degradation and labor exploitation in surrounding countries also under the U.S. Cold War umbrella such as Indonesia and the Philip- shinsha, 1982). pines. Murai Yoshinori, Ebi to Nihonjin (Tokyo: Jiji Tsu 42. Marilyn Ivy, “Formations of Mass Culture,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 249. 43. Japan External Trade Organization, Changing Dietary Lifestyles in Japan, 10. 44. Ibid., 9. 45. Nissin Foods Corporation, Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka: Nisshin Shokuhin shashi (Osaka: Nissin Foods Corporation, 1992), 57. 46. Momofuku Ando-, Rising to the Challenge: Living in an Age of Turbulent Change (Tokyo: Foodeum Communication, 1992), iii. 47. See Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997). 48. Ando-, Rising to the Challenge, 18. 49. Ibid., 19. 50. Ibid., 25. 51. Ibid., 28. 52. Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 4. 53. Ando-, Rising to the Challenge, 35. 54. Ibid., 36. 55. Nissin Foods Corporation, Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka, 47–48. 56. Ibid., 210.

notes to pages 97–108

199

57. Ibid., 108–9. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 60. 60. See Eiji Oguma, A Genealogy of Japanese Self-Images (Victoria, Australia: Trans-Pacific Press, 2002). 61. Ibid., 63. 62. Andrew Gordon, “Contests for the Workplace,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 63. Nissin Foods Corporation, Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka, 62, 72. 64. Ibid., 68. 65. Gordon, “Contests for the Workplace,” 256. 66. Nissin Foods Corporation, Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka, 68. 67. Ibid. 68. According to Nissin’s corporate history, the invention of instant yakisoba developed from a company worker’s idea of turning scraps of broken Chikin Ramen, which were provided to employees as a free snack in the cafeteria, into another form of instant noodles. Ibid., 100. 69. Ibid., 76. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., 77–78. 72. Ibid., 78. 73. Ibid., 80. 74. Ulrike Schaede, Cooperative Capitalism: Self-Regulation, Trade Associations, and the Anti-Monopoly Law in Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 75. Nissin Foods Corporation, Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka, 82. 76. Ibid., 72. 77. The Nissin Foods–sponsored program World’s Greatest Quiz Show replicated the format of the popular American quiz program The $64,000 Question, which ran on CBS between 1955 and 1958. 78. Nissin Foods Corporation, Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka, 74. 79. Ibid. - nen,” Sunday Mainichi, March 12, 1967, 44. 80. “Insutanto ra- men kigen ju 81. Nissin Foods Corporation, Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka, 130. 82. Ibid., 129. 83. Ibid., 130. 84. Ibid. 85. Millie Creighton, “Consuming Rural Japan: The Marketing of Tradition and Nostalgia in the Japanese Travel,” Ethnology 36, no. 3 (1997): 239–54. 86. Ibid., 127. 87. Ibid., 131. 88. Ivy, “Formations of Mass Culture,” 248.

200

notes to pages 108–117

89. Nissin Foods Corporation, Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka, 218. 90. Ibid. - meishi no sokuseki ra- men mikaku shinsa,” Shu- kan Gendai, 91. “Shokutsu October 28, 1971, 42. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid. 94. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960). Rostow was an economic advisor to President Kennedy, which added weight to his arguments concerning the universality of the “stages” of national economic development. 95. For example, see the six-volume series based on conferences held in Japan funded by the Ford Foundation and published between the late 1960s and early 1970s: Marius Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); William Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); R. P. Dore, ed., Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967); Donald H. Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); John W. Hall, ed., Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973); James Morley, ed., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974). 96. “Kore wa ikeru: shin sokuseki yashoku 20,” Young Lady, December 4, 1972, 130–33. 97. Ibid. 98. “Reito- shokuji,” Sho-setsu Ko-en, December 1955, 84. 99. Ibid. 100. Ibid. - nandemo ‘sokuseki,’ ” Shu- kan Asahi, 101. “Insutanto jidai desu: ishokuju November 13, 1960, 6. 102. Ibid., 11. 103. See also D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1959). - nandemo ‘sokuseki,’ ” 11. 104. “Insutanto jidai desu: ishokuju 105. “Insutanto shokuhin,” Chijo, February 1961, 130. 106. “Insutanto shokuhin no saiten: o-sugiru ‘aji sae gaman sureba,” Shu- kan Shincho-, March 13, 1961, 22. 107. Ibid. 108. Murashima Kenichi, “Insutanto shokuhin so-makuri,” Ushio, November 1966, 286. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid., 288. 111. Ibid., 290.

notes to pages 118–128

201

112. Ibid., 292. 113. Ibid., 293. 114. Hayamizu, Ra-men to aikoku, 125. 115. Ibid. 116. Ibid., 129–30. 117. Ibid. 118. Nissin Foods and other members of the World Instant Noodle Association have donated to more than eighteen major disaster relief efforts since 2004, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the earthquake in Sichuan, China, in 2008, and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. See http://instantnoodles.org/noodles/disasterrelief.html. 119. “Share Survey: Instant Noodles,” Nihon Keizai Shinbun, August 7, 2005, www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Search/Nni20040807D06MS301.htm. 120. Marla Dickerson, “Steeped in a New Tradition,” Los Angeles Times, October 21, 2005, 1. 121. Ibid. Maruchan is a top-selling brand by To-yo- Suisan. While Nissin Foods dominates the Japanese market, with roughly 40 percent of the share, and To-yoSuisan has only 18 percent, in Mexico To- yo- Suisan controls 85 percent of the market with its Maruchan line. 122. Ibid. 123. Ibid. 124. Olshan, Jeremy. “Cell-Block Busters: Sale Items Spice Up Life at Rikers Prison,” New York Post, March 1, 2010, www.nypost.com/p/news/local/cell_block_ busters_OJz5YxDJrupc00khqpmwCP. 125. http://wkbca.xankd.ser vertrust.com/v/vspf iles/downloadables/ PRISON_RECIPES.pdf.

chapter four. like it is, like it was 1. David Leheny, The Rules of Play: National Identity and the Shaping of Japanese Leisure (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). 2. Kawata Tsuyoshi, Ra-men no keizaigaku (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 2001), 19. 3. Ibid., 21–29. 4. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990). 5. John Bellamy Foster. “The Long Stagnation and the Class Struggle,” Journal of Economic Issues 31, no. 2 (June 1997): 445–51. 6. Marilyn Ivy, “Formations of Mass Culture,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 254. - kai, Nihon Ra-men Taizen: Naruto no nazo, Shina 7. Iidabashi Ra-men Kenkyu chiku no shinpi (Tokyo: Kobunsha, 1997), 76.

202

notes to pages 128–137

8. Okuyama Tadamasa, Ra- men no bunka keizaigaku (Tokyo: Fuyo- shoboshuppan, 2000), 92. 9. Hakata ramen consists of a thick and milky pork bone marrow broth and thin white noodles made with no kansui (water with sodium carbonate). Shredded ginger that has been dyed red and roasted sesame seeds, both used as toppings, are also distinctive features of Hakata-style ramen. 10. “Yabusaka taidan: shinka suru ra- men,” Sho-setsu ko-en, March 2000, 194–201. 11. Sapporo was the first of the nineteen cities to gain national recognition nationwide for its distinct ramen, which incorporated miso and garlic into the soup and used thicker noodles made with more kansui (as much as 40 percent). Sanyo- Foods’ release of the Sapporo Ichiban line of instant miso-flavored ramen in 1966 reinforced the idea that eating ramen was one of the city’s main attractions. 12. See www.raumen.co.jp/home/study_japan.html. 13. Iwaoka Yo- ji, Ra- men ga nakunaru hi (Tokyo: Shufu no tomo shinsho, 2010), 20. 14. For example, see Kojima Takashi’s “Mazushiki Henshokusha” (The poverty of the picky eater) in the March 3, 1981, issue of Bungei Shunju- (pp. 82–84). - sha, 15. The three books are Sho- ji Sadao, ed., Ra-men Daisuki!! (Tokyo: To-ju 1982); Hayashiya Kikuzo , Naruhodo za Ra men (Tokyo: Kanki, 1981); and Okuyama Ko-shin, Takaga Ra-men, Saredo Ra-men (Tokyo: Shufu no tomo, 1982). - wa,” January 20, 1984, 62. 16. Focus, “Zo-datsu jidai no gu 17. Shoji, ed., Ramen Daisuki!! 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 186. 20. Ibid., 120–25. 21. Ibid., 122–23. - shi as Critique of Orientalist Knowledges,” 22. See Takashi Fujitani, “Minshu Positions 6, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 303–22. 23. Tamamura Toyo’o, “Takaga ra-men ga ‘Nihonjin erai ron’ ni naru kowasa,” Shu kan Yomiuri, May 8, 1983, 72. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 72–73. 26. Ibid., 73. 27. Gavan McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Aff luence (New York: M. E. Sharpe), 1996. 28. Kosuge Keiko, Nippon Ra-men Monogatari: Chu- ka soba wa itsu doko de umareta ka (Tokyo: Shinshindo-, 1987). 29. Okuyama, Bunka menruigaku, 39. 30. Nakae Katsuko, “Shoku no sengo seken shi (9): shoku no ibento ka ga susumu,” Hito to Nihonjin, April 1983, 106–13.

notes to pages 137–154

203

31. Ibid., 112–13. - ra- men wa doko ga chigau noka,” Shu- kan gendai, November 27, 32. “Ko- kyu 1982, 99. 33. “Gurume nante kuso kurae,” Asahi Geino-, October 16, 1986, 111–15. 34. Discrimination in hiring based on gender was outlawed in 1999 by a revision of the Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society (Danjo Kyo-do- Sankaku Shakai Kihon Ho-). - ka soba Taisho- ken de tsui ni gekkyu - yonju - man no kyu - jin ho- koku,” 35. “Chu Shu kan Shincho, September 21, 1989, 45–48. 36. “Ra-men ten no keizai gaku,” Dakaapo, August 18, 1998, 95. 37. Ibid., 97–99. 38. Ibid., 98–99. 39. Jennifer Robertson, “Furusato Japan: The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 1, no. 4 (Summer 1988): 494–518. 40. Marilyn Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 41. “Ra-men no te’ema pa-ku de machi okoshi o mezasu,” Keizaikai, December 8, 1998, 80–81. 42. Graphics and Designing, The Making of Shinyokohama Raumen Museum (Tokyo: Mikuni, 1995), 9. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 10. 46. Ibid., 17. - no machi’ no ramen wa hitoaji 47. “Sho-wa 30 nendai ni taimu surippu!? ‘Aishu chigauzo,” Friday, March 11, 1994, 42–43. 48. Ibid., 20. 49. Ibid., 23. 50. Ibid., 19. 51. Ibid., 34. 52. Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), xv. 53. Ibid., 49. 54. Ibid., 61–64. 55. “Sho-wa 30 nendai ni taimu surippu!?,” Friday, March 11, 1994, 42–43. 56. Satomi Shinzo- , “Yokohama ‘Ra- men hakubutsukan’ gyo- retsu no kai,” Bungei Shunju- , July 1949, 308. 57. Ibid., 309. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 311. 60. Ibid., 312–13.

204

notes to pages 155–168

61. See also Satomi Fukutomi, “Connoisseurship of B-Grade Culture: Consuming Japanese National Food Ramen,” PhD diss., University of Hawai‘i, 2010. 62. Ibid., 310. 63. For the clearest official apology to victims of the wartime Japanese state issued to date by a Japanese prime minister, see the Murayama Statement of 1995, read during a ceremony on the fiftieth anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/pm/murayama/9508.html. 64. “Teiban Shina soba kara Wakayama, Asahikawa made ‘kotoshi kaiten shita ra-men ya’ umasa de eranda 50 ten,” Shu- kan Gendai, December 15, 1998, 200–204. 65. Japan’s food security (or self-sufficiency in terms of food production) has steadily declined from a high of 89 percent in 1960 to 40 percent in 1998, where it has remained for the last decade despite government efforts to promote selfsufficiency. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry, www.maff.go.jp/j /zyukyu/fbs/dat/2–5-1–2.xls. 66. “Gachinko,” used in the world of sumo wrestling, connotes an intense bout. 67. Hayamizu Kenro- , Ra-men to aikoku (Tokyo: Ko- dansha Gendai Shinsho, 2011), 224. 68. For more data, see the ministry’s website, www.maff.go.jp/j/zyukyu /zikyu_ritu/012.html. 69. Yamamoto Mizue, “Aji o kitaeru: Shina soba ‘Ko- ka,’ ” Sunday Mainichi, November 26, 2000, 143. 70. Hayamizu, Ra-men to aikoku, 251. 71. Ibid., 196. 72. Ibid., 241. 73. See Ian Condry, Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). 74. Hayamizu, Ra-men to aikoku, 260.

chapter five. flavor of the month 1. Jonathan Gold, “Lost in Tampopo,” LA Weekly, April 30–May 6, 2004, 56. 2. See also Douglas McGray, “Japan’s Gross National Cool,” Foreign Policy 130 (May–June 2002): 44–54. 3. Julia Moskin, “Here Comes Ramen, the Slurp Heard Round the World,” New York Times, November 10, 2004. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. See, for example, Adam Winer, “Ramen: Suck It Up! How the Dorm Room Staple Became the Gastronomic Must-Slurp of the Moment,” Maxim,

notes to pages 168–173

205

December 2009, 63. See also Barak Kushner, Slurp! A Social and Culinary History of Ramen—Japan’s Favorite Noodle Soup (London: Global Oriental, 2012). 7. Erica Zora Wrightson, “Meet Your Food Blogger: Rickmond Wong of Rameniac,” LA Weekly, October 8, 2009, http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2009/10 /meet_your_food_blogger_ramenia.php. 8. Ibid. 9. “Rameniac Explains the Evolution of Noodle Blogging,” uploaded on April 30, 2010, by dailybruintv at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jy-Ox2YyJ0. 10. See Naoki Sakai, “‘You Asians’: On the Historical Role of the West and Asia Binary,” in Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present, ed. Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 167–94. 11. Rickmond Wong, review of Ramen California, www.rameniac.com /reviews/comments/ramencalifornia_torrance/. 12. Yuka Hayashi, “Trying to Out-Noodle the Japanese,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2007. 13. The Wall Street Journal article by Hayashi cited above translates Sano Minoru’s nickname, Ra- men No Oni, as “Ramen Fiend” instead of “Demon of Ramen.” 14. Orkin is referring to the established script of this “reality” television series, in which Sano scolds inept ramen shop owners, inevitably driving them to tears and inspiring in them a newfound determination to improve the taste of their noodle soup. 15. Ivan Orkin and David Chang, “Ivan Ramen,” Lucky Peach 1 (Summer 2011): 36. 16. Sano Minoru, Sano Minoru no Ra-men Kakumei (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun, 2009). 17. Ibid., 86. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 87. 20. Ivan Orkin, Ivan’s Ra-men (Tokyo: Little More, 2008). 21. Orkin and Chang, “Ivan Ramen,” 36. 22. Hayashi, “Trying to Out-Noodle the Japanese.” 23. Ibid. 24. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, “First Bites at Ivan Orkin’s Game-Changing Ramen with April Bloomfield,” Serious Eats, October 18, 2012, http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2012/10/ivan-orkin-april-bloomfield-ramen.html. 25. “ ‘Lucky Peach’: An Irreverent Look at Cooking,” All Things Considered, August 5, 2011, www.npr.org/2011/08/07/139019770/lucky-peach-an-irreverentlook-at-cooking. 26. Ibid.

206

notes to pages 173–186

27. American publicity for the film described it as a “noodle Western,” alluding to the “spaghetti Western” films by Italian directors from the mid-1960s. See, for example, Sheila Benson, “Movie Review: ‘Tampopo’ Dishes up a Sexy Noodle Western,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1987. 28. David Chang and Peter Meehan, “Things Were Eaten,” Lucky Peach 1 (Summer 2011): 9. 29. David Barry, Dave Barry Does Japan (New York: Ballantine, 1993). 30. Chang and Meehan, “Things Were Eaten,” 11. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 9–10. 33. Ramen Girl, director David Allan Ackerman (Image Entertainment 2008). 34. Anthony Bourdain, “Chang,” Lucky Peach 1 (Summer 2011): 23. 35. George Hadley-Garcia, “Broth in Translation,” Japan Times, January 23, 2009, www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ff20090123r1.html.

conclusion. time will tell 1. “Gaishoku sangyo- ma- ketingu binran,” Fuji keizai. Cited in Hayamizu Kenro-, Ra-men to aikoku (Tokyo: Ko-dansha Gendai Shinsho, 2011), 247. 2. Sano Minoru, Sano Minoru no ra-men kakumei (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun 2009), 70. 3. Takenaka Masaharu, Ra-menya to makudonarudo (Tokyo: Shincho- sha, 2008). 4. Ibid., 33–34. 5. See, for example, the Shitamachi Museum of Tokyo in Taito- ward. www .taitocity.net/taito/shitamachi/sitamachi_english/shitamachi_english.html. 6. The Tokyo-centric nature of the mass media in Japan partially accounts for the disproportionately high coverage of ramen in relation to okonomiyaki and udon, which are consumed more frequently in Osaka and other parts of western Japan.

Works Cited

Akiyama Teruko. “Nisshin, Nichiro senso- to shokuseikatsu.” In Kingendai no shoku bunka, ed. Ishikawa Naoko and Ehara Ayako. Tokyo: Ko-gaku shuppan, 2002. Ando-, Momofuku. Rising to the Challenge: Living in an Age of Turbulent Change. Tokyo: Foodeum Communication, 1992. Aoki Kazuo. “Tonchi Kyo-shitsu” no jidai: rajio o kakonde Nihonju- ga waratta. Tokyo: Tenbo-sha, 1999. Ara Takashi, ed. GHQ/SCAP Top Secret Records. Tokyo: Kashiwashobo-, 1995. Asahi Geino-. “Gurume nante kuso kurae.” October 16, 1986, 111–15. Barry, David. Dave Barry Does Japan. New York: Ballantine, 1993. Benson, Sheila. “Movie Review: ‘Tampopo’ Dishes up a Sexy Noodle Western.” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1987. Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Bourdain, Anthony. “Chang.” Lucky Peach 1 (Summer 2011): 23. Chang, David, and Peter Meehan. “Things Were Eaten.” Lucky Peach 1 (Summer 2011): 9. Chijo-. “Insutanto shokuhin.” February 1961, 130. Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Vintage, 2003. Condry, Ian. Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 207

208

works cited

Conlon, Michael. “The History of U.S. Exports of Wheats to Japan.” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, Global Agriculture Information Network. June 29, 2009. www.usdajapan.org/en/reports /History%20of%20US%20Exports%20Wheat%20to%20Japan.pdf. Creighton, Millie. “Consuming Rural Japan: The Marketing of Tradition and Nostalgia in the Japanese Travel Industry.” Ethnology 36, no. 3 (1997): 239–54. Cwiertka, Katarzyna. “Eating the World: Restaurant Culture in Early Twentieth Century Japan.” European Journal of East Asian Studies 2, no. 1 (2003): 89–116. . Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power, and National Identity. London: Reaktion Books, 2006. Dakaapo. “Ra-men ten no keizai gaku.” August 18, 1998, 95. Dickerson, Marla. “Steeped in a New Tradition.” Los Angeles Times, October 21, 2005, 1. Dore, R. P., ed. Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967. Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2000. - wa.” January 20, 1984, 62–63. Focus. “Zo-datsu jidai no gu Foster, John Bellamy. “The Long Stagnation and the Class Struggle.” Journal of Economic Issues 31, no. 2 (June 1997): 445–51. - no machi’ no ramen wa Friday. “Sho-wa 30 nendai ni taimu surippu!? ‘Aishu hitoaji chigauzo.” March 11, 1994, 42–43. Fuchs, Steven. “Feeding the Japanese: MacArthur, Washington, and the Rebuilding of Japan through Food Policy.” PhD diss., SUNY Binghamton, 2002. - shi as Critique of Orientalist Knowledges.” Positions Fujitani, Takashi. “Minshu 6, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 303–22. Fukutomi, Satomi. “Connoisseurship of B-Grade Culture: Consuming Japanese National Food Ramen.” PhD diss., University of Hawai‘i, 2010. Garon, Sheldon. Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Gold, Jonathan. “Lost in Tampopo.” LA Weekly, April 30–May 6, 2004, 56. Gordon, Andrew. “Contests for the Workplace.” In Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. . A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Graphics and Designing. The Making of Shinyokohama Raumen Museum. Tokyo: Mikuni, 1995. Griffith, Owen. “Need, Greed, and Protest in Japan’s Black Market, 1938–1949.” Journal of Social History 35, no. 4 (Summer 2002).

works cited

209

Hadley-Garcia, George. “Broth in Translation.” Japan Times. January 23, 2009. www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ff20090123r1.html. Hall, John W., ed. Political Development in Modern Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973. Handleman, Howard, “Only Scratches Surface: Main Problem of Hoarded Goods Held Not Being Tackled in Official Probe.” Nippon Times, April 26, 1948. Harootunian, H. D. Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990. - jiro-, and V. W. Ruttan. “Korean Rice, Taiwan Rice, and Japanese Hayami, Yu Agricultural Stagnation: An Economic Consequence of Colonialism.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 84 (November 1970): 562–89. Hayamizu Kenro-. Ra-men to aikoku. Tokyo: Ko-dansha Gendai Shinsho, 2011. Hayashi, Yuka. “Trying to Out-Noodle the Japanese.” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2007. Hayashiya Kikuzo-. Naruhodo za Ra-men. Tokyo: Kanki, 1981. - kai. Nihon Ra-men Taizen: Naruto no nazo, Shina Iidabashi Ra-men Kenkyu chiku no shinpi. Tokyo: Ko-bunsha, 1997. Ino Kenji. Tokyo yamiichi ko-bo-shi. Tokyo: Futabashi, 1999. Ishige, Naomichi. The History and Culture of Japanese Food. New York: Routledge, 2001. Ivy, Marilyn. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. . “Formations of Mass Culture.” In Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Iwaoka Yo-ji. Ra-men ga nakunaru hi. Tokyo: Shufu no tomo, 2010. Jansen, Marius, ed. Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965. Japan External Trade Organization. Changing Dietary Lifestyles in Japan: JETRO Marketing Series 17. Tokyo: Japan External Trade Organization, 1978. Japan Ministry of Health and Welfare. Kokumin eiyo- no genjo-. Tokyo: Ko-seisho-, 1994. (For 1947–2000 editions, see www.nih.go.jp/eiken/chosa /kokumin_eiyou/index.html.) Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Bureau of Statistics. 2011 National Survey of Prices. www.e-stat.go.jp. Johnson, Chalmers. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982. Johnston, Bruce F. Japanese Food Management in World War II. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1953.

210

works cited

Kawata Tsuyoshi. Ra-men no keizaigaku. Tokyo: Kadokawa, 2001. Keizaikai. “Ra-men no te’ema pa-ku de machi okoshi o mezasu.” December 8, 1998, 80–81. Kobayashi Kurasaburo-. “Sobaya no Hanashi.” Chu- o- Ko-ron, December 1938, 428. Kojima Takashi. “Mazushiki Henshokusha” (The poverty of the picky eater). Bungei Shunju- , March 3, 1981, 82–84. Keiko. Nippon Ra-men Monogatari: Chu- ka soba wa itsu doko de umareta ka. Tokyo: Shinshindo-, 1987. Kumazawa, Makoto. Portraits of the Japanese Workplace: Labor Movements, Workers, and Managers, ed. Andrew Gordon, trans. Andrew Gordon and Mikiso Hane, 125–58. New York: Westview Press, 1996. Kushner, Barak. Slurp! A Social and Culinary History of Ramen—Japan’s Favorite Noodle-Soup. London: Global Oriental, 2012. Leheny, David. The Rules of Play: National Identity and the Shaping of Japanese Leisure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Lockwood, William, ed. The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965. Lopez-Alt, J. Kenji. “First Bites at Ivan Orkin’s Game-Changing Ramen with April Bloomfield.” Serious Eats, October 18, 2012. http://newyork.seriouseats .com/2012/10/ivan-orkin-april-bloomfield-ramen.html. McCormack, Gavan. The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. McGray, Douglas. “Japan’s Gross National Cool.” Foreign Policy 130 (May–June 2002): 44–54. Miyazaki Motoyoshi. “Nihonjin no shokuko-sei to eiyo-.” In Nihongata shokuseikatsu: kenko- to atarashii shokubunka no shinpojiumu, ed. Toshiko Kondo-. Tokyo: Ko-dansha, 1982. Morley, James, ed. Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Moskin, Julia. “Here Comes Ramen, the Slurp Heard Round the World.” New York Times, November 10, 2004. - shinsha, 1982. Murai Yoshinori. Ebi to Nihonjin. Tokyo: Jiji Tsu Murashima Kenichi. “Insutanto shokuhin somakuri.” Ushio, November 1966, 286. Nakae Katsuko. “Shoku no sengo seken shi (9): shoku no ibento ka ga susumu.” Hito to Nihonjin, April 1983, 106–13. Nakamura, Takafusa. Economic Growth in Prewar Japan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983. . The Postwar Japanese Economy: Its Development and Structure, 1937–1994. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1995.

works cited

211

National Public Radio. “ ‘Lucky Peach’: An Irreverent Look at Cooking.” All Things Considered, August 5, 2011. www.npr.org/2011/08/07/139019770/ lucky-peach-an-irreverent-look-at-cooking. Nissin Foods Corporation. Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka: Nisshin Shokuhin shashi. Osaka: Nissin Foods Corporation, 1992. Nihon Keizai Shimbun. “Share Survey: Instant Noodles.” August 7, 2005. www. nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Search/Nni20040807D06MS301.htm. Oda Kazuhiko. Nihon ni zairyu- suru Chu- gokujin no rekishiteki henyo-. Tokyo: - eisha, 2010. Fu Oguma, Eiji. A Genealogy of Japanese Self-Images. Victoria, Australia: TransPacific Press, 2002. Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Okada Tetsu. Ra-men no tanjo-. Tokyo: Chikuma shobo-, 2002. Okumura Ayao. Shinka suru menshoku bunka. Tokyo: Foodeum Communication, 1998. Okuyama Ko-shin. Takaga Ra-men, Saredo Ra-men. Tokyo: Shufu no tomo, 1982. Okuyama Tadamasa. Bunka menruigaku: ra-men hen. Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2003. . Ra-men no bunka keizaigaku. Tokyo: Fuyo- shobo- shuppan, 2000. Olshan, Jeremy. “Cell-Block Busters: Sale Items Spice Up Life at Rikers Prison.” New York Post, March 1, 2010. www.nypost.com/p/news/local/cell_block_ busters_OJz5YxDJrupc00khqpmwCP. Orkin, Ivan. Ivan’s Ra-men. Tokyo: Little More, 2008. Orkin, Ivan, and David Chang. “Ivan Ramen.” Lucky Peach 1 (Summer 2011): 36. Osaki Hiroshi. Nihon ra-men hishi. Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbun shuppansha, 2011. Oshiro, Kenji K. “Postwar Seasonal Migration from Rural Japan.” Geographical Review 74, no. 2 (April 1984): 145–56. Otsuka Shigeru. Shushoku ga kawaru. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyo-ronsha, 1989. “Prison Cuizine [sic].” http://wkbca.xankd.servertrust.com/v/vspfiles /downloadables/PRISON_RECIPES.pdf. Robertson, Jennifer. “Furusato Japan: The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 1, no. 4 (Summer 1988): 494–518. Rostow, W. W. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960. Sano Minoru. Sano Minoru no ra-men kakumei. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun, 2009. Sakai, Naoki. “ ‘You Asians’: On the Historical Role of the West and Asia Binary.” In Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the

212

works cited

Recessionary 1990s to the Present, ed. Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian, 167–94. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Satomi Shinzo-. “Yokohama ‘Ra-men hakubutsukan’ gyo-retsu no kai.” Bungei shunju- , July 1949, 308. Satomura Kinzo-. “Shina soba ya kaigyo- ki.” Kaizo-, December 1933, 54. Schaede, Ulrike. Cooperative Capitalism: Self-Regulation, Trade Associations, and the Anti-Monopoly Law in Japan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Schaller, Michael. The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. . “Securing the Great Crescent: Occupied Japan and the Origins of Containment in Southeast Asia.” Journal of American History 69, no. 2 (September 1982): 392–414. Shibata, Shigeru. “U.S. Foreign Assistance to Japan (MSA) and the Japanese Aircraft Industry after the Korean War (1950–53).” Socio Economic History: Shakai-keizai-gaku 67, no. 2 (2001): 169–90. Shively, Donald H., ed. Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971. - sha, 1982. Sho-ji Sadao, ed. Ra-men Daisuki!! Tokyo: To-ju Shosetsu Koen. “Reito shokuji.” December 1955, 84. Sho-setsu Ko-en. “Yabusaka taidan: shinka suru ra-men.” March 2000, 194–201. - nandemo ‘sokuseki.’ ” November Shu- kan Asahi. “Insutanto jidai desu: ishokuju 13, 1960. Shu- kan Asahi, ed. Nedan no Meiji, Taisho-, Sho-wa, Fu- zoku shi, jo-kan. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1987. - ramen wa doko ga chigaunoka.” November 27, 1982. Shu- kan Gendai. “Ko-kyu . “Shokutsu meishi no sokuseki ra-men mikaku shinsa.” October 28, 1971. . “Teiban Shina soba kara Wakayama, Asahikawa made ‘kotoshi kaiten shita ra-men ya’ umasa de eranda 50 ten.” December 15, 1998. Shu- kan Sankei. “Datsu-sara repo-to.” January 22, 1976. - ka soba Taisho-ken de tsui ni gekkyu - yonju - man no kyu - jin Shu- kan Shincho-. “Chu hokoku.” September 21, 1989. . “Insutanto shokuhin no saiten: o-sugiru ‘aji sae gaman sureba.” March 13, 1961. Silverberg, Miriam. “Constructing a New Cultural History of Prewar Japan.” In Japan in the World, ed. Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. Smil, Vaclav, and Kazuhiko Kobayashi. Japan’s Dietary Transition and Its Impacts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Sorensen, Andre. The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty-First Century. New York: Psychology Press, 2004.

works cited

213

Sorkin, Michael, ed. Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992. Suzuki, D. T. Zen and Japanese Culture. New York: Pantheon Books, 1959. Suzuki Takeo. Amerika komugi senryaku to Nihonjin no shokuseikatsu. Tokyo: Fujiwara shoten, 2003. - nen.” March 12, 1967. Sunday Mainichi. “Insutanto ramen kigen ju Takemura Tamio. Taisho bunka teikoku no yu- topia: sekaishi no tenkanki to taishu- sho-hi shakai no keisei. Tokyo: Sangensha, 2004. Takenaka Masaharu. Ra-menya to makudonarudo. Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 2008. Tamamura, Toyo’o. “Takaga ra-men ga ‘Nihonjin erai ron’ ni naru kowasa.” Shu- kan Yomiuri, May 8, 1983. Tanaka, Stefan. Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Tipton, Elise. Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997. Tsuda, Takeyuki. Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese-Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Tsurumi Yoshiyuki. Banana to Nihonjin. Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1982. United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The Japanese Wartime Standard of Living and Utilization of Manpower. Washington, DC: Manpower, Food, and Civilian Supplies Division 1947. United States War Food Administration. Final Report of the War Food Administrator, 1945. Washington, DC:U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945. Watt, Lori. When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010. Winer, Adam. “Ramen: Suck It Up! How the Dorm Room Staple Became the Gastronomic Must-Slurp of the Moment.” Maxim, December 2009, 63. Wrightson, Erica Zora. “Meet Your Food Blogger: Rickmond Wong of Rameniac.” LA Weekly, October 8, 2009. http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2009/10 /meet_your_food_blogger_ramenia.php. Yamamoto Mizue. “Aji o kitaeru: Shina soba ‘Ko-ka.’ ” Sunday Mainichi, November 26, 2000. - ichi Narita, eds. Total War Yamanouchi, Yasushi, J. Victor Koschmann, and Ryu and “Modernization.” Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Young Lady. “Kore wa ikeru: shin sokuseki yashoku 20.” December 4, 1972. Young, Louise. “Marketing the Modern: Department Stores, Consumer Culture, and the New Middle Class in Interwar Japan.” International Labor and Working-Class History 55 (April 1999).

214

works cited

films Bangiku (Late Chrysanthemums). Director Mikio Naruse. To-ho- 1954. Hausu (House). Director Obayashi Nobuhiko. To-ho- 1977. Hitori Musuko (The Only Son). Director Ozu Yasujiro-. Sho-chiku 1938. DVD 2003 Lost in Translation. Director Sofia Coppola. American Zoetrope/To-hokushinsha 2003. Ochazuke no aji (The Taste of Tea over Rice). Director Yasujiro- Ozu. To-ei 1952. Ramen Girl. Director David Allan Ackerman. Image Entertainment 2008. Sanma no Aji (An Autumn Afternoon). Director Ozu Yasujiro-. Sho-chiku 1962. - zo-. Itami Production 1985. Tampopo (Dandelion). Director Itami Ju

Index

Ace Cook company, 102–3, 120 Acheson, Dean, 58 Ackerman, Robert Allan, 176, 177 advertising, 88, 89, 124; Japanese-themed, 107, 109–10, 151; by Nissin Foods Corporation, 103–10 agricultural production: and importation of food, 23, 48, 74, 76–77; and industrialization, 21, 22, 23, 31; war’s impact on, 48, 193n5; and waterworks project, 77 American food, 4, 61, 73, 77, 78, 79, 169, 184. See also wheat, postwar importation of U.S. Americanization, 7, 106, 108, 112, 114, 183–85 Anderson, Clinton, 58 Ando– Momofuku, 8, 91–98, 99, 102, 103, 104, 119, 166 Ando– Sho– ken, 158–59 anti-Communism, 57–64, 192n33, 196n8 Asahikawa, 33, 35, 150 Asahikawa ramen, 130 Asakusa district, Tokyo, 19, 22, 24, 26, 136, 150 Asama Mountain Lodge Incident, 119–20 atomization, social, 24–25, 73, 113–14 Australia, 75 baby boom, postwar, 73, 105 Baby Star Ra–men, 91

bachelors, as food consumers, 84, 88, 89, 104, 108, 113, 114, 118, 122, 180, 186 bamboo shoots, 5, 20, 136, 191n11 Becycle protein extract, 94, 96 beef, 121, 138–39, 189n2, 190n10 Bentley, Amy, 40–41 bento– boxes, 2, 39, 120 black market, postwar, 43–50, 56, 60, 63, 65–67, 71–72, 84 blogs, 1, 168, 185 blue-collar workers. See working class Bourdain, Anthony, 173, 175–76 bread, 2, 10, 11, 23, 60–61, 62, 66, 76, 77–78, 79, 80, 83, 89, 94–95, 120, 190n10 Britain, 36, 37 Buddhism, 114, 116, 160, 161, 164 bullet trains, 83 cafés, 25–26 Canada, 74 canned food, 21, 77, 111, 113, 123 capitalism, 12, 30, 93, 110, 127, 192n33 cartelism, 103 catalogue magazines, 127 Chang, David, 166, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177 chefs, 3, 4, 36, 87, 132, 150, 165, 185, 186; books written by, 161, 171–72; celebrity, 7,

215

216

index

chefs (continued) 123, 156–58, 161, 166, 167, 169–77; Chinese, 5, 19, 20, 32, 34, 160, 179; uniforms worn by, 160–61, 162, 175 Chiang Kai-shek, 37 Chibikko character, 106, 107 chicken, 3, 18–19, 25, 65, 93–94, 96–97, 99, 106, 155, 163, 166, 169, 170 Chikin Ra–men, 73, 91, 97–99, 101, 104–6, 109, 115, 119, 199n68 children, advertising aimed at, 104–6 China: Communist rise to power in, 57; Nationalist Party in, 37, 57 China, Japan’s relations with, 138, 190– 91n10; and First Sino-Japanese War, 21, 23; and Japanese occupation of Manchuria, 36; and origin of ramen, 4–5, 9, 16–20, 35–36, 179, 186; and Second SinoJapanese War, 37; and treaty ports, 18 Chinese food: and gourmet boom, 138; and nutritional science, 27–28; and origin of ramen, 4–5, 16–20, 186; postwar attitudes toward, 44, 67; in treaty ports, 17–19, 35; and Westernization, 89. See also Chinese restaurants; Nankin soba; Shina soba Chinese immigrants, 5; and Ando– ’s Chinese ancestry, 98; discrimination against, 32–33, 98; postwar, 46, 66–67; Shina soba consumed by, 138; in treaty ports, 18–19, 35 Chinese restaurants, 80, 83, 179, 180; Chu–ka soba served in, 70; decline of, 122, 123; depicted in comic strip, 84; and origin of ramen, 18–20; Shina soba served in, 22, 25, 31–35; in Tokyo, 19–20, 22, 25, 26, 27; in treaty ports, 18–19, 35; wartime restrictions on, 39 Chu–ka soba, 5, 44, 46, 48, 57, 60, 65–71, 180 Cold War, 6, 7, 45, 57–59, 75, 110–11, 156, 198n41 Colicchio, Tom, 166 colonialism, 5, 10, 22, 23, 24, 41, 44, 67, 156, 190n10 comic strips, 83–84. See also graphic novels Communism, 10, 57, 192n33 Communist Party, 45, 51, 52, 63–64 Constitution, Japanese postwar, 44, 99 construction workers, 2, 6, 9, 18, 21, 72, 83, 88, 122, 123, 127 consumerism, 26, 41, 88–89, 90, 105 corruption, political, 50–51, 56, 63 Cup O’Noodle brand, 119

cupped ramen, 73, 91, 119, 120 curry, 2, 4, 20, 30, 72, 90–91, 132, 137, 169137 Cwiertka, Katarzyna, 26, 28 Daikokuya ramen shop, Los Angeles, 165–66 daikon, 47, 48 decolonization, 48, 49, 67, 98 democratization, 47, 50–51 desalinization, 96 dipped ramen (tsukemen), 161, 174, 181 disasters, natural, 25, 26, 120, 201n118 Disney corporation, 147, 148, 153 distribution, food, 21, 33, 98 domestic labor, 108, 112–14, 118, 137 Dower, John, 45–46, 57 Draper, William, 58 dumplings, 10, 19, 24, 47, 60, 65, 66, 83, 89 earthquakes, 25, 26, 120 economic relations: and black market, 46, 50; and cartelism, 103; and Cold War alliance with U.S., 110–11; and financial boom, 141–42, 180; and government stimulus, 123, 124; and inflation, 20, 38, 50, 72; and Japanese invasion of Manchuria, 36; and labor activism, 89–90; and nonWestern model of development, 110–11; and patent rights, 101–2, 103; and ramen shops, 86–88; and shift from manufacturing to service, 122, 125; and stagnation, 127, 180; and trading companies, 99; and U.S. management of postwar recovery, 57–59, 93; and war’s impact on postwar system, 38–39. See also advertising; capitalism Edo period, as marketing theme, 107, 109 eggs, 25, 37, 74 Eisenhower, Dwight, 52, 54, 56, 74 elderly persons, as food consumers, 108–9 electric appliances, 11, 90, 91, 112 emergency food, 6, 10, 45, 48, 54, 56, 57, 62, 74, 111, 116, 117, 120, 131 entertainment, food consumption as, 1, 10, 36, 86, 122, 123, 124, 132, 137, 141, 145, 186 exportation, 125, 164, 180; of food, 8, 119, 120–21, 137, 164, 185, 186 family relations, 107, 137, 180 femininity, 113 fiction, 28–30, 71

index film, 27, 62, 69–70, 84, 85, 122, 125, 139–41, 165, 175–76. See also Tampopo financial boom, 141–42 Forrestal, James, 58 Foster, John Bellamy, 127 “From ramen to missiles” slogan, 99 frozen food, 88, 90, 91, 111, 112, 123 Fujioka Nobukatsu, 156 Fujisawa, 156 Fujiyama Aiichiro, 93 Fukuoka, 123, 144 fusion food, 169, 170, 175 garlic, 16, 48, 51, 65, 111, 121, 202n11 Garon, Sheldon, 39–40 gender: and domestic labor, 108, 112–14; food consumption based on, 69–71, 139; and instant food, 108, 112–14, 117–18; and labor unions, 99 Germany: Japan’s relations with, 36; U.S. occupation of, 54–55, 62 Ginza district, Tokyo, 26, 119 Gold, Jonathan, 165–66 Gordon, Andrew, 99 gourmet boom, 122, 137–41, 156 government, Japanese: and cost of U.S. occupation, 56–57, 63; and economic stimulus policy, 123, 124; and food industry, 93–97; and food safety, 116; and food selfsufficiency, 158, 204n65; household food expenditures studied by, 88; and interfirm competition, 102–3; and nutritional science, 28, 62, 74; and nutritional surveys, 59–60; postwar rationing implemented by, 49; ramen consumption measured by, 125; and revitalization campaigns, 124–25; rice consumption promoted by, 80; and transition to postwar economy, 38–39; and U.S. wheat imports, 62, 75, 77, 94–95; wartime rationing implemented by, 37–39 graphic novels, 1, 7, 122, 125, 131, 165, 184 Great Depression, 36 guidebooks, ramen, 1, 6, 7, 127–28 Hakata, 128, 130, 202n9 Hakodate, 18 Hakodate ramen, 130 handmade ramen, 31, 134, 139, 140, 145, 170, 186 – Department Store, Osaka, 97 Hankyu Harriman, Averell, 58

217

Harugiya ramen shop, Tokyo, 84 Hayamizu Kenro–, 160, 162 Hayashi Takashi, 79 Hiroshima, 130, 144 history, people’s (minshu–shi), 132 Holland, Japan’s relations with, 190n5 Hoover, Herbert, 58, 61–62 Hope-ken ramen shop, Tokyo, 84 House Foods, 138 housewives, 39, 40, 60–61, 74, 77, 90, 104, 105, 111, 112, 114, 118, 137 Ide Sho–ten ramen shop, Wakayama, 84 Ikeda Hayato, 43, 79, 90 Ikeda-Robertson talks, 75, 76 Imai Michiko, 110 imperialism, 5, 17, 21, 36, 44, 190–91nn10–11 importation of food, 23, 38, 41, 44, 193– 94n6; U.S. wheat, 6, 10, 11, 44–46, 48, 52–54, 57, 60, 62, 73–83, 93–96, 98–99, 196n8 industrialization, 6, 21–24, 28, 30–31, 32, 34, 35, 179 inflation, 20, 38, 50, 72 instant ramen, 11, 73, 88, 89, 90–91, 123; advertising of, 103–10; Ando–’s development of, 91, 92, 94–98, 104, 119; Chikin Ra–men brand of, 73, 91, 97–99, 101, 104–6, 109, 115, 119, 199n68; discussed in periodicals, 111–18; as emergency food, 116–17, 120; exportation of, 119, 120–21; and food safety, 115–16; and gender, 108, 112–14, 117–18; high-end, 137–39; and mass consumption, 116–17; and nutritional supplements, 94, 96, 97, 108; and nutritional value, 106, 107, 114–15; Orkin’s line of, 172; and patent rights, 101–2, 103; Raumen Museum’s representation of, 150; Sapporo Ichiban line of, 172, 202n11; and social atomization, 113–14; and social rationalization, 118; and U.S. wheat imports, 93–96, 98–99 Instant Ramen Manufacturers’ Association, 103 instant rice, 80 instant shiruko, 115 Internet, 1, 121, 123, 160, 168, 171, 185 – do– ramen shop, 160, 161, 175 Ippu Ishige Naomichi, 27 Ishihara Shintaro–, 156 Italy, 36, 75 – zo–, 140, 165 Itami Ju

218

index

Ivan Ramen shop, Tokyo, 172 Ivy, Marilyn, 90 Iwaoka Yo–ji, 130, 146, 149, 152, 177 jingles, advertising, 105 – Nagai, 19 Kafu Kagoshima ramen, 130 Kamada Shigeto, 166, 167, 172 Kanto– Instant Ramen Manufacturing Cooperative, 102 Kawahara Shigemi, 160, 161 Kawata Tsuyoshi, 132 Keiko, Kosuge, 15 Kimura Tsutomu, 87 Kitakata, 123, 127–28, 130, 150 Kita Morio, 109 kitchen appliances, 11, 90, 91 kitchen cars, 77 Kobayashi, Kazuhiko, 74 Kobayashi Kurasaburo–, 30–31 Kobayashi Takiji, 28–29 Kobayashi Yoshinori, 156 Kobe, 18 Korea: Japan’s relations with, 21, 23, 41, 44; U.S. occupation of, 52–54; and U.S. popular culture, 177 Korean food, 156 Korean immigrants, 33, 34, 35, 46, 66–67, 68, 98 Kosuge Keiko, 135–36, 150 Kumamoto ramen, 130 Kurume ramen, 130 Kyoto, 87, 130 labor unions, 24, 38, 99, 100 lard, 1, 46, 65, 66, 154, 155 Las Vegas, 149 Liberal Democratic Party, 80, 124 Los Angeles, ramen fad in, 164–65, 168 Lucky Peach (periodical), 172–73, 175, 177 lysine supplements. See protein MacArthur, Douglas, 52–55 magazines. See catalogue magazines; periodicals Manchuria, 35, 36, 38, 41, 194n6 manufacturing sector, 21, 22, 23, 28, 59, 122, 125 marketing. See advertising masculinity, 139 mass consumption, 88–89, 116

mass culture, 23, 27 mass media, 7, 11–12, 27, 103–4, 123–24, 125, 128, 135, 152, 157, 164, 206n6. See also newspapers; periodicals; radio; television mass production, in food industry, 23, 31, 35, 139 Matsuda Sangyo– company, 91 McDonald’s restaurants, 7, 183–85 meat. See beef; chicken; pork mechanization, in food industry, 24, 28, 32, 186 Meehan, Peter, 172, 173–74, 177 Meiji period, 21 Mexico, instant ramen exported to, 120–21 middle class: and consumerism, 26, 88–89, 90, 125; instant ramen consumed by, 89; and nuclear family, 180; and salaryman lifestyle, 86; and wartime rationing, 39, 40, 41 Miike coal mine strike, 89 military: Chinese food consumed by, 28; Manchuria invaded by, 36; and postoccupation remilitarization, 75; wartime food consumption by, 37 milk, 61, 74, 76, 140, 141 Minca Ramen Factory, New York, 166, 167 minshu–shi (people’s history), 132 miso, 3, 23, 76, 113, 138, 202n11 Misora Hibari, 70–71 missile production, 99 Mita Ryo–sei, 179 Mito ramen, 190n4 Mitsubishi Trading, 98–99 Mitsui trading house, 99 modernization, 25, 26, 38, 110 Momofuku Noodle Bar, New York, 166, 170 Monroe Doctrine, 36 Moskin, Julia, 167 Motoyama Kenichi, 87 movie theaters, 25, 26–27. See also film Murashima Kenichi, 116–18 Murphy, Brittany, 176 music, popular, 70–71, 86, 161, 164 Myo–jo– Foods, 120, 138, 151 Nagasaki, 18, 34 Nakae Katsuko, 137 Nakamura, Takafusa, 38 Nakamura Shigetoshi, 169, 172 Nakamura Takafusa, 89 Nanjin: Japanese occupation of, 34; Nanjin soba named for, 18

index Nankin soba: and origin of ramen, 15, 18–19; in treaty ports, 17–19, 24 Naruse Mikio, 70 nationalism, 8, 134, 156, 160, 162, 180 Nationalist Party, Chinese, 37 neo-Confucianism, 16 newsmagazines. See periodicals newspapers, 103, 104 New York, ramen fad in, 163, 164, 165, 166– 67, 168, 172, 175 nightlife, ramen consumption as part of, 86, 88, 123 Nishida Toshiyuki, 176 Nisshin milling company, 98, 108, 166 Nissin Foods Corporation, 11, 17, 67, 73, 80; advertising by, 103–10; Ando–’s leadership of, 8, 91–98, 99, 102, 103, 119, 166; Chikin Ra–men produced by, 73, 91, 97–99, 101, 104–6, 109, 115, 119, 199n68; cupped ramen developed by, 119, 120; Demae Itcho produced by, 106, 109; exportation of products by, 119, 120; “From ramen to missiles” slogan of, 99; instant ramen developed by, 91, 92, 94–98; Japanese-themed marketing by, 107, 109–10; labor relations at, 99–101; name of, 98; and nutritional supplements, 94, 96, 97, 108; and nutritional value, 106, 107; and partnership with Mitsubishi Trading, 98–99; and patent rights, 101–2, 103; production process at, 99–100; promotional giveaways by, 107; and relations with government, 93–97; Sanshi’i Shokusan as predecessor of, 97, 98; Top Ramen produced by, 119, 163; trademark characters created by, 105–6; and U.S. wheat imports, 93–96, 98–99; yakisoba produced by, 108, 199n68 noren wake system of branch shops, 181 nostalgia, 9, 12, 47, 86, 107, 144–48, 152–53, 159, 166 nutritional science, 27–28, 62, 73, 74, 77–79 nutritional supplements, 94, 96, 97, 108, 115 nutritional surveys, 59–61, 73 nutritional value, 106, 107, 114–15, 180 – Obayashi Nobuhiko, 175 Ogihara Yaeko, 77 Ogikubo ramen, 84, 128, 130, 154 – Oiso Toshio, 78 Okada Tetsu, 132 Okinawa, 52 okonomiyaki, 48, 60, 89, 186, 206n6

219

Okumura Ayao, 65, 66 Okuyama Tadamasa, 132, 136 Olympics of 1964, 83 onions, 3, 16, 25, 121 Onomichi, 34 Onomimchi ramen, 130 origin of ramen, 4–5, 15–20, 33, 35–36, 69, 136, 185, 186 Orkin, Ivan, 170–72 Osaka, 97, 206n6 – Osaki Hiroshi, 1 – Osawa Masachi, 162 – Oshima Akihiko, 128 outdoor dining, 137 Oyatsu Company, 91 Ozaki Kenichi, 19–20, 36 Ozu Yasujiro–, 27, 69, 84, 85, 139 Pakistan, 75 patent rights, 101–2, 103 patriarchy, 176 Patterson, Robert, 58 periodicals, 86–87, 103, 105, 109, 111–18, 125, 130, 134, 137, 138, 152–55, 159, 165, 167, 172; Lucky Peach, 172–73, 175, 177 Perry, Matthew, 17, 18, 171, 190n5 poetry, 161, 164, 183 political relations: and anticorporate attitudes, 181, 183–85; and corruption, 50–51, 56, 63; and democratization, 47, 50–51; and labor activism, 89–90; and neonationalism, 134, 156, 160, 162, 180; and postwar leftism, 45, 51, 52–54, 57, 63–64; and postwar shortages, 45, 50–57, 63; and terrorism, 119; and U.S. occupation, 45, 52–58, 63–64; and U.S. wheat imports, 45, 52–54, 74; and working class, 24, 25, 64, 89–90 popular culture, 67–71, 85, 86, 164. See also film; radio; television pork, 3, 5, 10, 18, 19, 24, 33, 34, 69, 72, 83, 128, 154, 155, 166, 171, 202n9 precursors of ramen, 15 prices, food, 20, 72–73, 103, 115, 138, 154 prison inmates, U.S., instant ramen consumed by, 121 production process for ramen, 99–100, 138– 39, 186 protein, 27, 62–63, 66, 74, 96, 97, 108, 115 pushcart vendors, 10, 11, 19, 22, 25, 26, 27, 29–30, 45, 46, 71, 73, 84, 122, 131, 151, 180. See also yatai (street vendors)

220

index

racism, 55 radio, 68–69, 103, 105, 172–73 railroads, 21, 32, 33, 35, 83 Rai-Rai Ken restaurant, Tokyo, 19–20, 31, 36, 136 Ramen Bank website, 1 ramen books, 130–37, 161 Ramen California fusion shop, 169–70 Ramen Day, 97 Ramen Girl (film), 175–77 Ramen Show trade festival, Tokyo, 158 ramen shops, 3, 4, 6–7, 32, 67, 84, 125, 139, 140, 141; American, 163, 165–67, 168–72; depicted in comics, 84; depicted in film, 69, 85, 125, 140, 141; guides to, 1, 6, 7, 127–28; new wave of, 159–62; noren wake system of branch, 181; self-employment in, 7, 85–88, 142–44, 180, 181; worldwide presence of, 8–9, 179 rationalization, social and economic, 26, 87, 88, 89, 100, 114, 115, 118 rationing: postwar, 44–45, 47, 49–50, 52, 54–56, 58–59, 61–63, 65; wartime, 37–42 Raumen Museum, 12, 17, 47, 67, 125, 128, 130, 143, 144–53, 156, 159, 167, 177, 189n5 “reality” television, 1, 7, 160, 162, 171, 183, 205n14 regional styles of ramen, 4, 6–7, 73, 123, 128, 130, 136, 144, 150, 152, 154, 167, 180, 186, 189n4 restaurants: ramen served in, 73. See also Chinese restaurants; Western-style restaurants revitalization campaigns, 124–25 rice, 23, 37–38, 39, 41, 44, 49, 58, 63, 64; and ramen rice, 83, 84; and shift to wheat consumption, 23, 73, 77–80 Rice Riots of 1918, 23 Rokurinsha ramen shop, Tokyo, 179 rural life, postwar, 107 Russia, Japan’s relations with: and RussoJapanese war, 21, 22, 36; and treaty ports, 18 – ho– ramen shop, Sapporo, 84 Ryu safety, food, 115–16 Saigo– Takamori, 21 sake, 22 salaryman lifestyle, 20, 86–87, 88, 109, 113, 114, 142, 144, 198n33 samue work clothing, 160–61, 175, 183 Sanan Sho–ji, 98

Sano, 32, 35, 150 Sano Minoru, 156–58, 161, 170–71, 181 Sano ramen, 130 Sanshi’i Shokusan company, 97, 98 Sanyo– Foods, 120, 172, 202n11 Sapporo, 24, 25, 32, 44, 84, 123, 128, 130, 144, 150, 202n11 Sapporo Ichiban line of ramen, 172, 202n11 Sapporo Ra–men Dosanko, 87 Satomura Kinzo–, 29–30, 71 Schaller, Michael, 93 school lunch program, postwar, 61–62, 94, 95 Seinan Civil War, 21 Sekiya Mako, 77 self-sufficiency, food, 158, 204n65 service sector, 23, 122, 123, 125 Shibakura Mariko, 105 Shibata Shigeki, 75 Shimoda, 18 Shimokawa Takashi, 161 Shina chiku, 20, 191n11 Shina soba: and modernization, 25, 26; nostalgia for, 130, 131; and origin of ramen, 5, 15, 19–20, 33; postwar consumption of, 44, 63, 131, 138; price of, 20; represented in fiction, 28–30; represented in film, 27; resurgence of, 155–56, 158–59; served in Chinese restaurants, 22, 25, 31–35; wartime restriction of, 37–40; working-class consumption of, 22–25, 28, 32–36, 180 Shina Soba Ya ramen shop, Fujisawa, 156, 161 Shina udon, 34–35 Shinjuku district, Tokyo, 26 Shin-Yokohama, 12, 17, 128, 136, 144, 146, 152 ship-building industry, 34 Shirakawa ramen, 130 Sho–da family, 98 Sho–da Michiko, 103, 108 Sho–ji Sadao, 130–31 shortages, postwar, 44, 47–57, 63 Sino-Japanese War: First, 21; Second, 37 Slow Food movement, 136181 slurping, culturally based perception of, 167–68 small businesses, 26, 66, 181, 184. See also ramen shops Smil, Vaclav, 74 Sorkin, Michael, 149 Soviet Union, 36, 57–58, 75, 93 soybeans, 23, 38, 41 stagnation, economic, 127, 180 “stamina” foods, 47, 48, 51, 65, 180

index Star Macaroni, 101 state. See government street vendors. See yatai strikes, labor, 89–90 suburbanization, 73 sugar, importation of, 41 Sumitomo trading house, 99 supermarkets, 11, 73, 88, 89, 95, 115 sushi, 2, 9, 67, 126, 163, 165, 167, 185 Suzuki Takeo, 74, 76, 77 sweet potatoes, 47, 48, 73, 194n6 Tada Michitaro–, 132 Taisho–ken ramen shop, Tokyo, 141 Taiwan, 23, 41, 44 Taiwanese immigrants, 34, 35, 98 Takayama ramen, 130 Takenaka Masaharu, 183–84 Tamamura Toyo’o, 134–35 Tampopo (film), 122, 140–41, 165, 172–73, 175, 206n27 Tanaka Kakuei, 124 Tanizaki Junichiro–, 26 taste of instant foods, criticism of, 115 teahouses, 22, 26 television, 6–7, 16, 84, 103, 104–5, 108, 125, 130, 157, 170–71, 175, 205n14; and “reality” shows, 1, 7, 160, 162, 171, 183, 205n14 tenement housing, 73, 137 Tenka Ippin franchise, 87 terrorism, 119–20 theme parks, 6, 144, 149, 152 Tipton, Elise, 26 To–hata Asako, 77 Tokugawa dynasty, 17 Tokugawa Mitsukuni, 15–17, 136 Tokushima ramen, 128, 130 Tokyo: Asakusa district of, 19, 22, 24, 26, 136, 150; cafés in, 25–26; children’s hospital in, 106; department stores in, 25, 26; earthquake of 1923 in, 25, 26; Ginza district in, 26, 119; and industrialization, 22, 25; Kinshi-cho– district in, 84; modernization in, 25, 26; movie theaters in, 25, 26; Ogikubo station district in, 84, 154; origin of ramen in, 19–20; postwar construction in, 83; postwar rationing in, 49–50; pushcart vendors in, 19, 22, 25, 26, 27, 84; Ramen Expo in, 170; ramen shops in, 84, 131, 141, 172, 179; Raumen Museum’s depiction of, 148–49; Shinjuku district in, 26; subway in, 83; Tokyo Tower in, 103;

221

Ueno district of, 22, 26; Western-style restaurants in, 22, 25, 27; working class in, 22, 24–25 To–mei Sho–ko– company, 101–2 tonkotsu ramen, 3, 34, 84, 155–56 Top Ramen, 119, 163 Totsuka Fumiko, 114 tourism, 1, 6, 7, 107, 123, 124–30, 134, 144, 164 To–yo– Suisan company, 120, 138 trade festivals, 158 trademark characters, 105–7, 151–52 trade unions. See labor unions traditionalism, 107, 114, 116, 164, 185 treaty ports, 17–19, 24, 35 Truman administration, 51, 58, 61, 62 Turkey, 75 udon, 16–17, 34–35, 83, 95, 136, 206n6 Ueno district, Tokyo, 22, 26 United Red Army, 119–20 United States: agribusiness in, 74; ramen boom in, 163–77; wartime rationing in, 40–41 United States, Japan’s relations with: and American-owned ramen shop in Japan, 170–72; and economic development during Cold War, 110–11; and Ikeda-Robertson talks, 75, 76; and Mutual Security Act (MSA), 75–76, 77; and opposition to U.S. big businesses, 181, 183–85; and Perry Expedition, 17, 18, 171, 190n5; and popular culture, 164; and post-occupation food aid, 74–77, 79–80; and post-occupation remilitarization, 75; and Second SinoJapanese War, 37 United States, postwar occupation of Japan by: and anti-Communism, 57–64; and black market, 45–46, 51, 63; and continuation of wartime regulations, 38; cost of, 56–57, 63; and economic recovery, 57–59, 93, 180; and food shortage, 47–57, 63; and Japanese Constitution, 44; and nutritional surveys, 59–61; political aspects of, 45, 52–58, 63–64, 74; and wheat imports, 6, 10, 11, 44–46, 48, 52–54, 57, 60, 62, 73, 74, 93, 94, 196n8 urban dwellers, food consumption by, 5–6, 21–24, 26, 27, 35–36, 38, 123, 137, 160, 164, 167, 186, 190; during postwar economic recovery, 73, 85, 88, 105, 109, 113;

222

index

urban dwellers (continued) during U.S. occupation, 44, 47, 52, 56, 61, 67, 68 urbanization, 6, 22–23, 24–25, 26, 36 victory gardens, 41 wafu– ramen, 160 wage laborers. See working class Wakayama ramen, 33, 84, 128, 130, 150 websites, 1, 121, 123, 160, 168, 171 Westernization, 89, 179, 190n10 Western-style food, 23–24, 27, 89, 190n10 Western-style restaurants, 22, 25, 27, 32, 156, 180 wheat: and industrialization, 32; and Mutual Security Act (MSA), 75–76, 77; postwar importation of U.S., 6, 10, 11, 44–46, 48, 52–54, 57, 60, 62, 73–83, 93–96, 98–99, 196n8; and rail transport, 33; substituted for rice, 23, 73, 77–80; and Western-style food, 23 white-collar workers, 20, 85, 86, 88, 198n33 Whitney, Courtney, 55 Wong, Rickmond, 168–70, 173, 177 working class: Chu–ka soba consumed by, 44, 46, 67, 71; and construction workers, 2, 6, 9, 18, 21, 72, 83, 88, 122, 123, 127; and employment at large corporations, 100– 101; and female employment, 99, 137; and financial boom, 141–42; and industrialization, 21–23, 28, 34; and labor unions, 24, 38, 99, 100; and politics, 24, 25, 64, 89–90; and postwar nutrition, 58–63, 71;

ramen consumed by, 6, 9–10, 12, 84–88, 89, 122, 127, 139, 185–87; Shina soba consumed by, 22–25, 28, 32–36, 180, 190n10; and strikes, 89–90; wartime food consumption by, 37–38 World War I, 22, 23 World War II, 36–42, 43 yakisoba, 48, 60, 83, 89, 108, 199n68 Yamada Takeshi, 181 Yamada Takumi, 181 Yamagishi Kazuo, 161, 181 Yamaguchi Yoshitada, 49 Yamamoto Mitsuhiko, 192n33 Yamamoto Mizue, 159 Yasumaru Yoshio, 132 yatai (street vendors), 22, 29, 30, 32–34, 46, 65–67, 71, 84, 86, 87, 91, 113, 115, 131, 132, 142, 143, 145, 149, 151, 192n38. See also pushcart vendors Yokohama, 18, 19, 49, 106, 130 Yokohama Incident, 192n33 Yonezawa ramen, 130 Yoshida Shigeru, 75 young people: advertising aimed at, 104–6, 124; and American appreciation for ramen, 163, 164, 165, 177; food consumption by, 1, 2, 6, 11, 12, 67, 68, 72–73, 119, 122–23, 124, 160, 186; and “new breed,” 122–23, 160–62 Yugoslavia, 75 Zen Buddhism, 114, 161 Zhu, advisor to Mitsukuni, 16