A Field Guide to Ramen Types

"How many kinds of ramen are there?" There is no single right answer. You can sort ramen by "flavor," as in soy sauce, salt, miso and tonkotsu; by "broth," such as tori paitan or niboshi; by "way of eating," such as tsukemen or abura soba; by "shop lineage," such as iekei or Jiro-kei; or by "region," such as Sapporo or Hakata. Real bowls of ramen are combinations of all of these. Hakata ramen, for example, is a regional ramen from "Fukuoka" with a "tonkotsu" broth, a "salt or soy sauce" tare (the seasoning base), "ultra-thin noodles," and its own way of eating, "kaedama" (a refill of noodles).

This field guide sorts ramen in five ways and explains what each type tastes like and why it was born. At the end, we look to history to ask why Japanese ramen branched out into so many types. Regional ramen is covered in detail in Chapter 4, and the stories behind the lineages in Chapter 6.

At a Glance: Five Ways to Sort Ramen

1　The Four Basic Flavors

2　Broth Styles

3　Ways of Eating

4　Shop Lineages

5　Ramen at Home

Why So Many Branches?

Soba and udon are noodle dishes too, but they do not come in nearly so many types. Why did Japanese ramen branch out this far? Looking from three directions, history, geography and culture, we find that many reasons overlap.

Through History: A New Dish with No Fixed Form

There was no fixed form. Ramen arrived in Japan in the Meiji era as Chinese food and has been remade again and again to suit Japanese tastes. Unlike soba and udon, it had no etiquette or "correct form" handed down since the Edo period, so its flavor could change without the weight of tradition holding it back. Even soy sauce chuka soba was originally a "new dish," a remake of Chinese noodle soup (Chapter 1).

Disaster and war scattered cooks across the country. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 burned shops in Tokyo and Yokohama, and cooks moved to other regions. This is the era, from the Taisho period into the early Showa period, when ramen shops appeared in Sapporo, Kitakata, Kurume and elsewhere (Chapter 1). After the war, street stalls in the ruins, wheat sent from America and repatriates returning from the continent gave rise to new shops all over the country at once (Chapter 2). The fact that there was never "one national center" from the start led to differences in flavor from town to town.

It was an easy business to start and to spread. Ramen could be started from a street stall, and a shop could be opened with little capital, so it became a livelihood for many people. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, department store product fairs, franchise shops and instant noodles carried regional flavors nationwide (Chapter 4). The growth of noodle factories and makers of commercial broth, which let people open shops even if they could not make noodles or broth from scratch, also increased the number of shops.

Competition and the media set off chains of booms. As shops multiply, each one has to serve a bowl different from the rest to survive. TV, magazines and the internet introduced new shops and flavors one after another, and booms came and went, each followed by the next trend: tori paitan, rich seafood, doro-kei, tanrei-kei (Chapter 6).

Through Geography: A Long Archipelago, the Sea, and Bones

Climate differences along a long north-south archipelago. The Japanese archipelago stretches a long way from north to south, from Hokkaido to Kyushu and Okinawa, and the cold of winter and the heat of summer vary greatly by region. In Sapporo and Asahikawa, with their harsh winters, people favored warming miso broths and a film of lard that holds in the heat. In the Yamagata basin, with its hot summers, hiyashi ramen in a cold broth was born (Chapter 4).

Stock ingredients from a country surrounded by sea. Japan is surrounded by sea, and seafood used for stock, such as kombu, katsuobushi, niboshi and mackerel flakes, is caught all over the country. Niboshi in Tsugaru, small fish from the Seto Inland Sea in Onomichi, salt ramen in the port town of Hakodate. The ability to use seafood stock became a hallmark of Japanese ramen not found in Chinese noodle soups (Chapter 5).

Bones available locally. The bones that form the base of the broth also differed by region. In Kyushu, where pig farming thrived, pork bones were used; in parts of Tottori, where cattle were widely traded, beef bones; and in many regions, easy-to-get chicken bones. Making stock from ingredients that were cheap and plentiful: layer upon layer, that became the flavor of each region.

Towns of ports, markets and factories. Ramen's points of entry were port towns open to the outside world, such as Yokohama, Hakodate and Nagasaki. And what nurtured ramen were towns with many people working in markets, coal mines, factories and ports. The ultra-thin noodles and kaedama of Hakata and Nagahama, for serving market workers fast; the extra-thick noodles of Tsubame, made so they would not go soggy on deliveries to factories. A town's industry shaped its ramen (Chapter 6).

LikelyThe fact that much of Japan's water is low-mineral "soft water" is also sometimes cited as a condition that makes it easier to draw out the umami of stock.

Through Culture: A New Noodle in the Land of Soba

It was a land of soba and udon. Since the Edo period, Japan had a culture of eating soba and udon out, quickly and casually. Slurping noodles, dipping noodles into a sauce, and selling noodles from street stalls were all already there. It was because ramen arrived on top of this foundation, it is thought, that it quickly became a town food and that new ways of eating like tsukemen were accepted. Just as naruto was originally a soba topping, soba shop culture lives on in many corners of ramen (Chapter 5).

A culture of dashi and fermented seasonings. The idea of "dashi" (stock), the foundation of Japanese cuisine, and the fermented seasonings soy sauce and miso greatly widened ramen's range of flavors. Soy sauce ramen and miso ramen, which Chinese noodle soups never had, were born from Japan's culture of seasonings.

Craftsmen and noren-wake. Train for years at a master's shop, then go independent and open your own. The culture of "noren-wake," rooted in the world of Japanese craftsmen, gave rise to lineages such as iekei, Jiro-kei and Taishoken-kei and carried the flavor of a single shop across the country (Chapter 6). At the same time, a craftsman's spirit of honoring the master's flavor while aiming for a bowl of one's own keeps producing new flavors.

Love of local specialties and the joy of comparing. Taking pride in your own town's flavor, and wanting to eat "the local specialty" when you travel, are feelings deeply rooted in Japanese travel culture. Regional ramen, supported by these feelings, became the star of town revitalization (Chapter 4). Standing in lines, making the rounds of shop after shop, debating rankings: the people who enjoy ramen as a "hobby" have also pushed shops to take on new challenges.

With rice, alone, any time. Iekei and Tokushima ramen eaten with rice, Kitakata's "asa-ra" eaten from the morning, Takayama's chuka soba eaten to see in the new year. Shops built so you can walk in alone and sit at the counter. By working its way into many moments of Japanese life, ramen branched out into forms suited to each one.

And today, ramen that has crossed the sea is changing shape still further to fit local eating habits, as vegan, halal and gluten-free versions show (Chapter 8). The number of ramen types will surely keep growing.