ramenrambles

[ramenrambles]

Why Ramen

Finally have some time in this new year to write this, after so long. I guess that’s one thing to be thankful while you’re isolating at home with the covid virus in you. This post will be a lot less historical, or even “intellectual”, but really rounds up most of the deeper, more personal reasons why I got so interested in ramen. 

Warning: sad, cheesy moments ahead.  

PART THREE of three When Life Kicks You in the Groin and Gives You Yuzu

I remember crying again in my seat, just as the plane was departing Buenos Aires to Atlanta, GA. This was to be the first leg of a 29-hour flight between Buenos Aires and Tokyo. We had broken up, after some four years together (which in fairness as I looked back was probably just us dragging our cold feet for too long). And I was headed to Tokyo that summer to mend my brokenness. I cried for what was lost; but I cried also in gratitude that I could rely on my family being there for me. 

29 hours later, after two transits across the US, I was at Haneda airport, grateful that my brother was there to pick me up to his place in Ogikubo. The next few days were pretty much a blur. I remember going on half-dazed walks around the Sensoji temple in Asakusa, as if I was retracing steps from a former life. I remember joining my brother and some friends celebrating outdoors somewhere wtihin Yoyogi Park. I remember nights aimlessly following the lights of Akihabara, unsure if this was where I should be. 

But the night I remember most vividly somehow was a spontaneous dinner appointment with my brother. Meet at Ebisu station, 7:30PM. I went there on time, walked amongst the crowd before he finally came over, about fifteen minutes later, apologising deeply that he was held up at work. 

“Eh it’s ok, dont worry ...”

Before I knew it, we were at Afuri, and he was explaining to me how this was one of his favourite spots. “They do a really good yuzu shio ramen here.”

While my brother went on to explain how this style of ramen is a lot lighter (assari) with the yuzu providing a refreshing accent to the bowl, I see a staff grilling the chashu over a big flame, behind the counter glass. I remember thinking about the smokiness of the chashu complementing this lighter yuzu accent, but somehow I wasn’t able to understand it since most of the ramen bowls I’ve eaten up to this point tended to be just variations of tonkotsu paitan bowls. 

(credit: The Best Japan; Tripadvisor)

I didn’t know it at that time, but this bowl (note: I ordered the yuzu shoyu just to be different lol) would leave such a powerful memory in me. May be it was the heartbreak after all. But I think what it did to me was to give me a really good reminder that ramen -- much like life itself -- still had much to offer. There are many ways you can approach a bowl of ramen, just as you could with life. And after all that heaviness, I could really use this assari bowl of yuzu shoyu ramen. 

And in many ways, today even as I’m trying to create different bowls that are interesting to me personally, I think I still find myself chasing this feeling. Not so much the taste, but this moment of clarity that I had when I got my first bowl at Afuri. 

To take the metaphors a little further, I feel like my general approach to life has changed as well. I’m not longer looking for a life with “shots” after “shots” of heavy-hitting bowls or stimuli -- the way that I regard this global consumption of tonkotsu ramen: living life fast and strong in this adrenaline rush. What if, instead, we took to life as a slow, gentle boil, simmering away and developing deep complexities if we care enough to wait for it.   

[ramenrambles]

Why Ramen

Another day, another note. Much of what is detailed below are basically notes summarised from George Solt’s wonderful book The Untold History of Ramen (2014). Highly recommended resource!  Ok, this is gonna be a long one.. 

(credit: UC Press)

PART TWO of three A Brief History of Ramen

What’s in a name? To start, we should note that “ramen” (ラーメン) is known by many names throughout shops in Japan’s history. 

Historically speaking, this bowl of noodles and soup was really only known as “ramen” in recent decades. Prior to that, it had a much longer history where it was known as either “Shina soba” (支那そば) or “Chuka soba” (中華そば). And interestingly enough, these terms are also a reflection of Japan’s changing relationship to China.

Even before the 19th Century, “Shina soba” was used to describe noodle soups that were derived mainly from Chinese techniques of boiling animal parts in their soup. The need to categorise it as “Shina soba” (or sometimes as “Nankin soba”) introduces and emphasises a marked difference (then) from the traditions of Japanese wa-dashi, which was and continues to be primarily made by steeping kelp and dried fish. 

However, by the end of World War II, with memories of Japan’s military expansionism and war crimes still fresh in the minds of many Chinese, the term “Shina” was deemed a derogatory one -- since it was also a Japanese transliteration of Cina / China. Hence, by the time we got to the early 1950s, most shops in Japan adopted the term “Chuka soba” instead, noting China’s identity as the middle kingdom.   

Very quickly though, things turned political once more in 1958, when Nissin invented the now-famous instant noodle soup. Nissin’s founder, Ando Momofuku, was ethnically a Taiwanese and hence he preferred to dissociate the dish from a China which was run by the communist party in power. Hence, the instant noodle soup was marketed instead as “ramen” as a Japanese transliteration of “la mian” (拉面).  In that sense, even when we use the term “ramen” today, we are speaking simply of the five components (soup, noodles, tare, oil, toppings) that make up a bowl, but also this broader history of geopolitics and changing diets. In other words, the foodways of ramen: why ramen was eaten, how it came to be and why. To understand this better, it helps to look at three origin points of ramen: ORIGIN ONE c.1660s: Chinese Approaches to Soups Tokugawa Mitsukuni, a feudal lord of Tokugawa Japan, had a Chinese adviser by the name of Zhu Shunshui. Zhu was essentially a scholar of Confucianism but also a political refugee from Ming China who enjoyed a close relationship to his overlord. Noting Tokugawa Mitsukuni’s preference for udon soup, Zhu proceeded to recommend five additional ingredients commonly used in Chinese soups: onions, garlic, garlic chives, green onion and ginger.  Today, we tend to treat these ingredients as “aromatics” that we add to the ramen broth, usually at the last hour of simmering, or something we add into the braising liquid for chashu to help mask the funk that comes with certain animal parts. This is often done today without any hesitation or thought that these “aromatics” were not considered a part of Japanese cooking traditions until the 17th century. 

(credit: matcha.jp)

On the surface, this historical moment doesn’t seem like much, given how far away it seems from the eventual bowl of ramen that we recognise today. But it is worth pointing out that the Ramen Museum, which is located in Yokohama (an area known for having the largest Chinatown in the whole of Japan), chooses to emphasise this as one of ramen’s origin points. This places, in other words, an importance in feudal Japan’s admiration for pre-Qing China, for its vast archives of knowledge and wisdom gathered not only in statecraft and governance, but also in the culinary arts. 

ORIGIN TWO c.1853–1884: Changing Appetites in Japan The second origin point for ramen takes place some time during the Meiji Restoration, after Commodore Perry’s gunboat diplomacy forced the Tokugawa Shogunate to open Japan up for trade. Casting aside the usual caricature of Tokugawa Japan as a period of isolation for now, it is nonetheless interesting to note that the ensuing influx of foreign traders into Japan saw a rise of local restaurants spring up in order to cater to the appetites of their new visitors. Here, in the Yoshokuyas (”Western restaurants”) everything from European, American and Chinese cuisine were served under one roof. In many ways, the dishes offered were very much domesticated versions, as interpreted and filtered through Japanese ingredients and techniques. But one particular dish called “Nankin soba” (named so after the capital of Nanjing) were served in many of these Yoshokuyas. Seen from today’s perspective and ramen nomenclature, Nankin sobas were mostly pork or chicken chintans served with a shio tare and topped off simply with chopped scallions. 

Nankin sobas, by today’s standards, do not seem to offer much beyond a very basic bowl of ramen. Historically, however, they are crucial as popular dishes that marked Japan’s slow acceptance and metabolism of Chinese-style animal-base soups. At the same time, it is important too to note that the Meiji Revolution was conducted with the eventual lifting of an earlier ban on red meats as enforced by the Tokugawa Shogunate. In fact, the lifting of such a ban simultaneously also opened up modern Japan’s appetite for foreign cuisines and diets, something that was seen as necessary in order for the Japanese to develop and match the bigger physique of their new visitors. In essence, the Meiji government had hoped that changing and expanding Japan’s diet would lead, hopefully, to Japan catching up and becoming like the West. Not surprisingly, it is also the period in which many of Japan’s brightest were then sent overseas in order to learn from the West. Eventually, this ingestion and incorporation of foreign ideas and foreign diets would lead to Japan’s own appetite for an imperialist expansion.  Put differently, it’s important to rethink Nankin Soba’s appearance between the 1850s and 1880s in relation to these larger contexts, and how it potentially fuelled Japan towards its victories in the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and then later during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). Nankin Soba’s resemblance to a contemporary bowl of ramen is undoubted, though it was very much a shime or closing side dish served in Yoshokuyas rather than a main course or a complete meal in itself. Yet, it’s personally for me the most interesting origin point for ramen given its broader historical contexts.  

ORIGIN THREE c.1910s: Ramen as a Complete (Japanese) Dish Five years after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, in 1910, a civil servant by the name of Ozaki Kenichi left his job to open up a Chinese (Shinashoku) restaurant called Rai Rai Ken, in the working-class neighbourhood of Asakusa in Tokyo. Rai Rai Ken served their noodles soup differently however, offering a much more substantial bowl than a standard Nankin Soba. Depending on which account, Rai Rai Ken’s Shina Soba came with menma (bamboo shoots), pork chashu, boiled spinach, naruto (fish cake), nori (seaweed) and green scallions. But perhaps the most important addition was the use of shoyu (soy sauce) which helped tamper the gamey taste of Nankin soba’s animal-based soup. Ozaki’s noodle soup, or “Shina soba” as it was termed in his shop, was very much modified to suit the broader Japanese audience, including a familiar element that helped in many ways to further domesticate a bowl of Nankin soba. 

(credit: Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum)

Such a substantial bowl of noodle soup also meant that Shina soba became less of a side dish and more of a hearty complete meal in itself, served out in a restaurant setting that did not emphasise the dish’s foreignness (as was the case of Nankin sobas served in Yoshokuyas) but rather aimed to further domesticate the dish for the Japanese palette. For these reasons, Rai Rai Ken and Ozaki Kenichi’s Shina soba is often seen as the precursor to the ramen we recognise today. Something that is a substantial bowl of noodle soup, and something substantially Japanese. (Compare this, after all, to the Nankin sobas which were cooked by immigrant Chinese chefs coming into Meiji Japan, and were served mainly to Chinese students.) 

Among the present-day ramen community, it’s not hard to see why Rai Rai Ken gets an inordinate amount of attention in the history of ramen. There’s a certain “punk rock” appeal or romanticisation here: that of a salaryman quitting the rat race in order to feed his hungry community, and modifying a dish to such a popular success that it enters into the Japanese culinary repertoire. Of course, it also helps that there was, in 2020, an attempt to revive Rai Rai Ken at the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum, recreated based on the memories of Ozaki Kenichi’s grandson (Kunio Takahashi). 

 (credit: SoraNews24)

1945 onwards : Postwar Emergence of Ramen During WWII, as part of an effort to reserve resources for its expanding military, a rationing system was put in place by the Japanese imperial government. After the war, however, during the American occupation of Japan (1945-1952), the government in postwar Japan managed to retain its rationing system in light of an impoverished nation. Yet, American intelligence feared that the frustrations of an impoverished nation would soon lead to violent uprisings in Japan. Hence, food aid to Japan came largely in the form of imported American wheat, even as the incumbent government made simultaneous efforts to crack down on an illegal black market that developed as a result of the rationing system. 

Here, it is also crucial to point out that the Japanese diet, at this point, remained largely based on rice as a staple rather than wheat. But this influx of wheat into Japan led, eventually, to the emergence of ramen as a substantial bowl of noodle soup to feed a starving nation. The resulting proliferation of ramen yatais (push carts) hawking bowls after bowls of ramen made the Japanese government, however, anxious that the wheat procured by these ramen yatais were obtained via illegal means. Hence, it was not uncommon to see ramen hawkers being arrested for grounds of suspicion.

Nonetheless, ramen’s sheer ubiquity during the postwar decades meant that many of the labourers working on the rebuilding of Japan were fed on bowls after bowls of hearty noodle soup. That is to say, Japan’s postwar economic recovery was by and large fuelled by ramen, turning ramen into a symbol of the working class.   

(I’ll skip the history here, of the development of regional variations (e.g. Hakata Tonkotsu ramen, Sapporo Miso ramen, Kitakata Shoyu ramen), except to note that these variations only developed in the recent decades – and as part of local prefectures developing unique ramens to promote domestic tourism during the boom years of Japan’s bubble economy.) 

Perhaps it remains just that for many in Japan, ramen – a symbol of the working class who built up Japan. For many who remain insistent on this symbolism of ramen, the new wave of gourmet and refined ramen do not qualify as ramen in spirit. Especially when most of these bowls now cost an upwards of 1000yen, and start to incorporate many foreign ingredients (e.g. truffle oil) or foreign techniques (e.g. sous vide). We have to understand this symbolism of ramen essentially as a kind of postwar nationalisation of the dish. It still is possible to find bowls of old school ramen shops serving out bowls to feed hungry and less well-to-do labourers in Japan. Nonetheless, ramen has, in the last decade or so, become somewhat elevated as a Japanese dish, making it into Michelin guides and having its own media industry – e.g. ramen magazines like TRY (Tokyo Ramen of the Year).

Interestingly too, there remains shops that term their own bowl of noodle soup differently, preferring to use “Chuka soba” (e.g. many old school shops selling shoyu chintan bowls) or sometimes even “Shina soba” (as did Sano Minoru with his shop Shinasobaya) or “Japanese soba” (as termed by Michelin-starred Tsuta). For me, these are all fascinating case studies in themselves to think through what exactly is, or was, ramen. 

To conclude, it should be said that the three originary points offered are not meant to point to some definitive history of ramen. Rather, as George Solt himself puts it as a historian, choosing to emphasise or anchor ramen’s history in either of these reflects much more about our present times and/or relationship to ramen, Japan, China, or Japan’s relationship to China.       

Reference George Solt, The Untold History of Ramen: How political crisis in Japan spawned a global food craze (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).

[ramenrambles]

Why Ramen

As awkward as introductions go, I suppose the best place to start might simply be: why ramen? And there are several answers to this, one deeply personal, one historical, another simply a reaction to the ramen scene here in Singapore.

It’s easier to go in the reverse order of that list; so I’ll start mainly with some observations on ramen in Singapore. 

Ok I should add as a disclaimer here: I’m not a cook, nor a foodie so I’m probably getting some things factually wrong. I don’t know enough of gastronomy, but I’ve always been interested in thinking about ramen (and food) much more broadly. So I hope these notes are useful, nonetheless, for a general audience. 

PART ONE of three Ramen in Singapore Perhaps it’s not all that surprising to find the heavy hitters from Japan setting up shops in Singapore: you know, the usual suspects of Ippudo, Santouka, etc. We can definitely add Kanada-Ya or Ramen Keisuke here too. In other words, chain or business ramen, as some ramen heads might call them. Which is still great regardless, because growing up all I remembered was Ajisen (and thank god we’ve all moved beyond that). At the same time, we’ve also seen a recent wave of newer shops set up here in Singapore, from the likes of Tsuta, to Afuri, Sanpoutei, Marutama and Enishi offering bowls that are not centred on tonkotsu broth -- truffle shoyu at Tsuta, yuzu shio at Afuri, niboshi shoyu at Sanpoutei, tori paitan at Marutama, and tantanmen at Enishi, just to name a few. Interestingly too, we are seeing clusters of local shops spring up around the island, but these are Singaporean shops that mostly offer tonkotsu ramen. You have those who sell themselves as affordable ramen for the “average Singaporean” (Takagi’s signature bowl of tonkotsu shio averages out to SGD7); Buta Kin sells hawker-fare ramen (yet another tonkotsu shio); and Suparakki offers an affordable bowl of tonkotsu gyokai (yes, another porky one, though tempered with seafood/fish). These are bowls that seem to be designed below the threshold of SGD10. On the other end of that spectrum, we might add Brothers Ramen who do a good bowl of paitan (approx. SGD13) made from pork and chicken bones. 

The sheer amount and dominance of tonkotsu ramen shops is not unique to Singapore. And it’s easy to understand why: a decent bowl of tonkotsu is not particularly difficult to make, in terms of techniques and ingredients needed. Taste wise, it’s also pretty straight up. Good, strong porky depth, uncomplicated, and almost always familiar to anyone who grew up eating pork, and definitely for those who prefer their food with a 重口味 (heavy taste). Which, of course, seems like the “average Singaporean” -- but only if we ignore broader questions of class or race. Of course, I do understand the need to turn a profit for these shops, and hence tonkotsu remains the most economic of choices in Singapore (whether we are thinking here of the consumer pool, or the lower requirements for kitchen staff to be formally trained in the broader repertoire of ramen techniques). 

(credit: Takagi Ramen)

But my interest in making and thinking about ramen from here in Singapore is, precisely, animated by some of these broader questions. Now I’m not claiming to make “inclusive” bowls myself, not by any stretch. Yet I think that the foodways of tonkotsu ramen -- to borrow a term from food studies -- are important things to think about, and whether or not we should be doing something differently in response. 

In essence, foodways are the study of what we eat, how and why we’ve come to eat that. Or as Willa Zhen puts it in Food Studies: “Foodways are focused on the consumption of food and how these food-related behaviors mark membership in a community, group, or society.” At the risk of sounding melodramatic, we are in danger of ramen becoming almost a kind of monoculture, defined largely by variations on a bowl of tonkotsu paitan. A bowl where we almost always expect to see rolled up pork belly chashu (preferably charred), and runny ajitamas (marinated eggs). The difference would then be whether or not the bowl cost above or below SGD10 (thus indicating your social economic class in Singapore, whether or not you are the “average Singaporean”), or you go instead to the o.g. shops from Japan to eat your imported bowl of tonkotsu.  Thankfully, outside of this porky class divide, there are still shops that offer non-tonkotsu bowls like those mentioned earlier, who focus more on chintan (clear soup) ramen that are less heavy on the palette, but almost always heavier on the wallet because of the techniques, labour and ingredients involved. And there are also, simultaneously, chains offering halal-certified ramen like the tori paitans at Ichikokudo Ramen or Tokyo Shokudo.  Anyway, to round up PART ONE for this post, it’s also interesting to consider how a bowl of tonkotsu paitan even came to be a style of ramen, and in turn look to the origins / history of ramen in Japan. Most of us are no doubt familiar with ramen’s history as a translated form of Chinese 拉面 (La Mian). But this goes beyond the consumption patterns of a place like Singapore today, and brings us back centuries to the broader question of Japan’s engagement with modernity, Japan’s changing diet and understanding of the Japanese body (see PART TWO).

Reference Willa Zhen, Food Studies: A Hands-On Guide (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).