Slurp! A Social and Culinary History of Ramen—Japan’s Favorite Noodle Soup by Barak Kushner (review)

Finally, a book about rāmen, the ubiquitous noodle soup in Japan, East and Southeast Asia, and much of the world beyond. The Japanese crew at Shōwa Base in Antarctica recreated it at the southernmost latitude, Japanese Alpinists ate instant versions to fortify themselves against cold and exhaustion on the Himalayas, and the science and engineering labs of U.S. universities keep humming away 24/7 on cup noodles, essential fuel for the graduate students keeping vigil over experiments. Every day over the Pacific Ocean, economy-class air travelers slurp away at 10,000 meters. Below, budget weekend dive resorts in Malaysia and Indonesia feed their guests cup after cup of instant noodles between dives. All the while, discarded Styrofoam noodle cups ride the waves to places as far apart as the beaches of Oregon on the U.S. West Coast and the mangrove swamps of Pulau Ubin, Singapore’s “outback.”

Rāmen is not just a popular choice of food but a sprawling sociocultural phenomenon. In Japan it feeds a thriving pop culture in the form of manga, anime, blogs, movies, and TV reality shows. There are museums, food halls, magazines, and guidebooks for it, and popular writers and scholars alike ruminate about its relation to Japanese culture and identity. Entrepreneurs, too, whether they own a franchise or a one-and-only noodle joint, promote their noodle philosophy alongside the mouth-watering and stomach-filling starch-and-liquid. The most famous and successful of them, the Taiwanese-Japanese inventor of instant noodles, Andō Momofuku, promulgated his culinary-cum-social philosophy of shokusoku sehei or “adequate food brings world peace” through his company website and charity foundation. Outside Japan, rāmen has changed eating habits, conquered markets, and spawned imitations and secondary inventions by the likes of Tongyi, Maggi, and Knorr, providing food for thought for scholars of culinary history, global-localization, and soft power. So the question was never if but when a scholar would write a book on rāmen, and whether it would satisfy the reader like a bowl of “artisanal” (shokunin) noodle soup.

Kushner’s ambition and enthusiasm for his book are palpable as well as admirable. He consulted Chinese sources and traveled to China to investigate the origin of noodle culture in East Asia. The beliefs and customs of ancient and medieval Japan are marshaled to shed light on the characteristics of modern Japanese foodways. Kushner discusses Tokugawa Japan’s cultural relations with China and the Chinese cuisine available in Nagasaki; examines food politics in the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa periods that contributed to the slow reception of Chinese food; notes the impact of food shortages during and after World War II; and tells the story of the creation of instant noodles in food-deprived postwar Japan. After this historical survey, Kushner shifts gears and approaches the topic as an ethnographer and journalist. He visited rāmen and food museums, interviewed experts and fans, and sampled rāmen from Kyushu to Hokkaido. He excerpts noodle scenes from movies and manga, quotes the lyrics of rāmen songs, and follows the mighty dish to Taiwan, Korea, and the United States. Knowledgeable of the secondary literature, inquisitive as a fieldworker, and dispensing with academic jargon and theories, Kushner has produced a study of rāmen that offers much background information, useful references to primary and secondary sources, and interesting firsthand observations.

There are probably as many ways to write about rāmen as there are recipes for making it, but Kushner’s version of this noodle soup follows a recipe that could use a few changes to achieve a deeper and more complex flavor. The first desirable change is to rebalance the ratio of history and ethnography in the book, for if today’s rāmen phenomenon can be bewildering, there is, alas, neither simplicity nor certainty to be found in...