Ando Momofuku: The Inventor of Instant Ramen

The Ramen Museum in Yokohama is a great way to spend an afternoon, and I have visited a couple times in recent years. I even bought the manga biography about Ando Momofuku (安藤 百福, 1910 – 2007), the creator of “instant ramen”:¹

I’ve had a long fascination with instant ramen, and with Ando Momofuku. As a poor kid with a single mom, we ate a lot of “Top Ramen” when times were tough. To be honest, I loved it. I would cook my ramen with an egg, and some frozen peas. In college, my roommate would cook with spam (salty, but tasty).

The story of Ando Momofuku and of instant ramen is pretty interesting. Momofuku was born in Taiwan, at a time when it was still part of the Empire of Japan (1895 – 1945), and thus while he is Taiwanese Chinese, he was also a Japanese citizen. He was born into a merchant family, and from an early age showed an aptitude for business. He took part in knitted textiles (meriyasu in Japanese, メリヤス), and in time was able to expand his business into Osaka since it all belonged to the same empire. From Osaka, the business grew, but then WWII came and many resources were increasingly rationed. His factory was destroyed in the air raids.

Rice production was carefully rationed as the war turned against Japan, and after the war, food supplies were still very limited. During the postwar period, people ate a lot soba noodles and ramen, since they are not made from rice. Ando Momofuku started a partnership business, but this collapsed due to some sketchy financial schemes, and he was jailed for a couple years due to tax evasion (supposedly helping provide scholarships for local students). Bankrupt, but inspired by the idea of making ramen noodles more accessible, he learned how to make ramen, and how to make it more portable and easier cook.

After considerable trial and error, he determined that flash-frying ramen noodles dries them out in a way that’s easy to rehydrate later with hot water. Thus, by August 25th 1958, the first instant ramen was made. Momofuku’s new company, Nissin Foods (Nisshin Shokuhin in Japanese, 日清食品) quickly sold the instant ramen to great success.

The “cup style” ramen came later in the 1970’s after Nissin realized that people outside of Asia didn’t eat ramen the traditional way (ramen bowls, chopsticks, etc). After some research, a styrofoam cup was invented, and carefully engineered to keep the brittle noodles safe from crumbling, and also keep the sauce and seasoning together. This allowed people to simply add water, and eat from a fork.

One of the things, in my opinion, that makes Ando Momofuku more than just a clever businessman is that as the instant ramen business succeeded, and copycat products flooded the market, Momofuku didn’t punish other companies, but instead started a industry-wide standard for instant ramen, and sold licenses to others companies to ensure consistent quality. For Momofuku, the most important thing was that instant ramen help contribute to food availability, and not just pure profit.

Starting with the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, Nissin was responsible for distributing food aid to many sites around the world, and Momofuku often famously said the phrase 食足世界 (shoku tarite yo wa taira ka) which means something like “if there’s enough food, the world will be at peace”.

Speaking as a poor white kid in the 80’s and 90’s, I am grateful to Ando Momofuku for his innovation, and for his commitment to humanity. 🍜

¹ I am using Asian-style naming convention, so family name then given name. Thus, Ando Momofuku’s family name is Ando, which he adopted from his Japanese wife, and his personal name is Momofuku. This is a Japanese name, not his family birth name. In his native Taiwanese-Chinese (aka Hokkien), his name was Go Pek-Hok (吳百福). Taiwanese Pek-Hok (百福) is read as “Momofuku” in Japanese. I want to do a side-post about Hokkien language sometime because I realize lately that it’s pretty underrated but influential, but research will take time.