The Origins and History of Tsukemen
Take a dip.
Kazuo Yamagishi, Taishoken’s “God of Ramen”, is often credited with inventing tsukemen in 1961.
But the story of Japan’s dipping noodles begins more than a decade earlier, with a family of soba makers, a postwar flour shortage and some leftover noodles.
Born from soba
Tsukemen is essentially deconstructed ramen. The noodles are served separately from the broth, which functions as a tsuyu or dipping sauce.
Its origins can be traced back to 1948, when Nagano native Katsugi Aoki and a small circle of his cousins and friends migrated to Tokyo’s Ogikubo neighbourhood to set up shop.
Aoki came from a family of soba makers. But due to the food shortages following World War II, he opted to make ramen instead as wheat flour was one of the few ingredients that was cheap and plentiful.
Marucho Chuka Soba was born, and it quickly became a popular ramen spot in the capital. His cousins and friends followed suit, opening Chuka Soba Marushin, Eiryuken, Eiraku and Nakano Taishoken in short order.
These five establishments formed a noren-kai or umbrella group that shared recipes and helped each other when needed.
Get Yow Hong Chieh’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
At the time, noodles were cooked in large batches, with a strainer used to gather them up for portioning. Strands would invariably get stuck in the strainer, and since food was scarce, these stray noodles would be collected and set aside for the staff meal.
Due to Aoki’s soba background, he would serve these noodles to his staff with broth on the side for dipping, similar to mori soba. The shops under the noren-kai borrowed this concept and the makeshift dish became the standard staff meal.
One day, a customer saw a staff member eating these dipping noodles and asked to be served the same, and tsukemen was born.
The dish evolves
So how does Yamagishi fit into the picture? He was a disciple first at Marucho and then at Nakano Taishoken, where he first encountered tsukemen as a staff meal.
From there, he developed the dish before opening his own shop, Higashi-Ikebukuro Taishoken, where tsukemen became part of the regular menu for the first time.
While Aoki had named the dish tsuke soba, Yamagishi called his version mori soba, after the soba dish that had inspired it. The term tsukemen (literally, “dipping noodles”) didn’t enter the picture until 1973, when a shop now called Chuka Tsukemen Daiou christened it as such.
From there, other tsukemen spots opened, each serving their own take on the dish. The modern noko (thick) form emerged in 1996, when Aoba innovated a “W” or double broth version that was viscous and punchy.
Where to try it
Nowadays, tsukemen can be easily found on the menus of most ramen establishments. There are also shops that specialise in dipping noodles, such as Ramen Tomita and Fuunji — standard bearers for the now-mainstream noko style.
Marucho Chuka Soba has closed, but for that old-school taste, make your way to Marushin or Nakano Taishoken. Here, the dish is still referred to as tsuke soba and is accompanied by a less concentrated broth that more closely resembles the ramen broth that birthed it.
Of course, there’s Higashi-Ikebukuro Taishoken, where Yamagishi helped to popularise tsukemen. There are also other, unaffiliated Taishoken shops set up by Yamagishi’s former disciples that have sprung up elsewhere as far as Southeast Asia and the US.
