Shoyu Ramen

Shoyu ramen is the oldest style in Japan. The first bowl was served at Rairaiken restaurant in Asakusa, Tokyo in 1910 — founded by Kanichi Ozaki and staffed by 12 cooks recruited from Yokohama's Chinatown. On its busiest days, Rairaiken drew 2,500 to 3,000 customers. The menu: a soy-flavored soup with thin noodles, roasted pork, bamboo shoots, fish cake, and a soft egg. Soy sauce (shoyu) was already Japan's foundational seasoning, which explains why this particular combination spread faster and more durably than any style that followed.

The broth is built on chicken or pork bones simmered gently, never at a full rolling boil. The restrained heat keeps the liquid clear and amber rather than cloudy. Flavor comes from a separate tare — a concentrated shoyu seasoning mixture added to each bowl individually so every serving can be adjusted. The standard home ratio is 4 parts soy sauce to 2 parts mirin to 1 part sake, with optional niboshi (dried baby anchovies) and kombu steeped in for umami stacking. Kombu releases glutamates; niboshi adds inosinates; together they push umami well past what either achieves alone. This two-component system — neutral stock plus concentrated tare — is the structural logic of all ramen construction. Shoyu is where most cooks learn it.

Regional variants illustrate how far the style has traveled from its Tokyo origin. Asahikawa style, from northern Hokkaido, blends pork and seafood dashi and floats a thin layer of lard on the surface to hold heat against -30°C winters. Kitakata style, from Fukushima Prefecture, uses flat wavy noodles and an unusually high noodle-to-broth ratio — the noodles are the focus, not the soup. Wakayama style intensifies the soy with dark, pork-bone-reinforced tare, served alongside mackerel sushi. A clear amber broth has nowhere to hide weak stock or imprecise seasoning, which is why each regional version functions as a test of local ingredients and technique.