Sept. 8, 2025
If Only - Ramen
In this third episode of If Only, we turn to the story of Momofuku Ando—an orphan from Taiwan who became the man who changed how the world eats.
As a boy, he learned survival in his grandparents' fabric shop, watching them stretch every resource and turn scraps into something useful.
As a young man, he chased opportunity across borders—from textiles in Taipei to projectors in Osaka, always moving, always hustling through war and hardship.
He built businesses that were swept away by forces beyond his control. He married, he led, he dreamed—and then he fell. In 1948, authorities charged him with fraud. The respected businessman became the accused, sentenced to two years in prison.
But from that rock bottom moment came an idea that would feed billions. In a humble shed in Ikeda, Japan, he invented instant noodles—not as a scientist or chef, but as a man chasing survival and fortune.
His creation went from luxury food in 1958 to the cheapest meal in grocery stores worldwide. If only we knew then what this simple invention would become. If only we understood how hunger and persistence could reshape the globe.
This is a story about reinvention after ruin—how the deepest failures can become the foundation for the most unexpected success. It asks the question: what if our greatest contributions come not from our triumphs, but from our willingness to start over?
🎙️ Host: Paul Johnson 🎧 Produced by: Get Some 🎵 Music and Sound Design: Epidemic Sound
📸 Show Notes, Photos & More: getsomepodcast.com ▶️ Watch on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@RealGetSome
✍️ Enjoying the series? Leave a review, subscribe, or share the episode—it helps others find these stories.
📬 Got a story to share? Reach out at getsomepodcast.com/contact
If Only - Ramen
===
[00:00:00]
Reporter: In the year 2000, the Fuji Research Institute conducted a poll asking people what they felt was Japan's greatest invention of the 20th century, and the people overwhelmingly answered instant noodles and nothing else even came close. So do ing Ka. Niche Sheen's. Many brands of Instant Ramen, including cup noodles and Top Ramen have kept many a broke college student fed.
But where did this time saving and wallet saving meal come from?
Paul Johnson: From Get some podcast studio. I'm Paul Johnson. One story every week. Stories that go where they want. We just follow. If you're here for great stories that connect, you're in the right place. Today we continue our series if only. Stories where [00:01:00] history pivots on a moment where you can't help but wonder.
What if this episode is called Ramen? It's about Momofuku Ando, an orphan from Taiwan, a restless entrepreneur in post-war Osaka, Japan, A man who failed fell, and went to prison. But came out with an idea that would change how the world eats from a shed. In Ikeda, Japan, he invented instant noodles, not as a scientist, not as a chef, but as a man chasing survival and chasing fortune and what he created.
Chicken Ramen went from luxury food in 1958 to the cheapest meal in the grocery store today. And let's be honest, you've probably had it [00:02:00] late night in college. End of the week, 30 cents a pack. It may not be glamorous, but it's everywhere. It's a story of hunger, persistence, and invention. Born out of necessity.
Okay, let's get into it.
Act one fall. Momofuku Ando's story doesn't begin with noodles. It begins in Taiwan in 1910 when he was born under Japanese colonial rule. His life changed almost immediately. His parents died while he was still an infant. A loss never explained in the records. He was sent to live with his maternal grandparents in the southern city of Tienan.
They weren't wealthy or powerful. They [00:03:00] ran a small kimono fabric shop on a narrow street surrounded by bolts of cloth and the smell of dyed silk. For Young Ando that shop became a kind of school. He watched his grandparents haggle with customers, stretch their modest inventory and survive by sheer persistence.
He saw the long hours, the constant risk of coming up short, the pride of making do with little. That was where he first learned what it meant to be self-reliant. Not book learning, but the daily math of survival. How to take scraps and turn them into something useful. How to recognize opportunity, how to hustle.
~At 22, he moved to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan under Japanese rule where he opened a small textiles in clothing business. The shop wasn't much bolts of fabric stacked against the walls, a sewing machine by the front. and a few racks of finished garments, but for Ando, it was a start. The streets around his shop buzzed with trade rickshaws rattled over stone roads.~
~Japanese merchants barked prices, customers haggled in Japanese, Mandarin, and Taiwanese dialect. Taiwan was modernizing.~
At 22, he moved to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan under Japanese rule. Where he opened a small textiles in clothing business, the shop wasn't [00:04:00] much bolts of fabric stacked against the walls, a sewing machine by the front, and a few racks of finished garments. ~But for Ando, it was a start. The streets around his shop buzzed with trade.~
~Rickshaws rattled over stone roads. Japanese merchants barked prices. Customers haggled in Japanese, Mandarin, and Taiwanese dialect. Taiwan was modernizing fast and cloth was always in demand. Uniforms work, short uniforms, work shirts, kimonos, western suits. Ando had grown up watching his grandparents in that fabric shop in Tenon.~
But for Ondo, it was a start. The streets around his shop buzzed with trade. Rickshaws rattled over stone roads. Japanese merchants barked prices, customers haggled in Japanese, Mandarin, and Taiwanese dialect. Taiwan was modernizing fast and cloth was always in demand. Uniforms, work shirts, kimonos, western suits.
Ando had grown up watching his grandparents in that fabric shop in Tienan. Now he was the one keeping books, managing suppliers, reading customers, and he was good at it, confident, quick with numbers, ambitious to him. The shop was just the beginning, [00:05:00] but Taipei still felt small. The real opportunities, the industries, the universities, the capital were across the strait in Japan, Osaka was the commercial heart factories finance possibility.
So at 25, Ando made a decision. He sold what he could, left his business behind, and moved to Japan. There he enrolled at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto for a boy who had grown up in the back of a fabric shop. This was transformation from Colonial Orphan to university educated businessman at Ritsumeikan.
He studied economics, trade capital markets. It wasn't [00:06:00] just book knowledge, it was learning how systems worked. It gave him legitimacy in a Japan that looked down on those from the colonies. He could now present himself, not just as a shopkeeper, but as a man with education, credentials, ambition. Armed with that degree, Ando launched new ventures, clothing, charcoal, salt, even co-founding a small school.
He was restless, always moving, always chasing the next opportunity. He seemed unstoppable. After graduation, he turned to slide projectors. Then called magic lantern projectors. Small devices that projected still images on a wall or screen schools used them, [00:07:00] businesses used them, some families even used them for entertainment.
A kind of precursor to home movies. Ando saw potential education was expanding. Businesses were modernizing. So he began manufacturing and selling projectors. But as Japan shifted toward military expansion in the late 1930s, that business was swallowed up. Factories retooled for weapons. Civilian markets dried up Ando's projector.
Venture was gone in wartime Japan. Charcoal was life. It fueled cooking, heating, survival. So Ando turned to charcoal production in Osaka. It wasn't glamorous, but if there was wood, there was fuel. And if there was fuel, there were [00:08:00] buyers. But even charcoal was commandeered by the war effort. Supplies rationed, small producers squeezed out.
By the mid 1940s, Japan was unraveling. Cities bombed into rubble families. Homeless housing became a crisis. Ando pivoted again, producing barrack style houses, rough timber, tar paper, tin roofs crude, but lifelines in burned out neighborhoods. Once more. Ando was meeting basic needs. First clothing, then fuel, now shelter but once more.
His business was swept away by government control. By then, Ando was married. His wife Masako, [00:09:00] practical, composed, steady. She managed the home, stretched rations and tolerated his endless schemes. She didn't chase opportunity like he did. She made it possible for him to chase. Masako was the anchor. In 1946, Ando became managing director of Osaka Kagin, a small credit union serving the Chinese immigrant community, ~not just as an entrepreneur.~
Not just as an entrepreneur anymore, but a civic leader. ~Yet he never stopped experimenting. Two years later, in 1948, he founded a small company in Ikeda Osaka, Nissin food products and just to.~
Yet he never stopped experimenting. Two years later, in 1948, he founded a small company in Ikeda Osaka, Nissin food products. ~And just to clear this up. It's pronounced.~
And just to clear this up, it's pronounced Nissin rhymes with machine. Not Nissan, the car company. Nissan [00:10:00] makes sedans. Nissin makes ramen. One gets you to work the other gets you through college. Back then, Nissin was just a family run, salt business, Masako and a few helpers, grinding and packing, salt for sale. Salt meant survival, preserving fish, pickling vegetables, keeping food edible without refrigeration ~On paper, Ando looked like a man on the rise.~
On paper, Ando looked like a man on the rise, director of a credit union, founder of a food company, a husband and provider, but prestige can turn quickly. Osaka Kagin collapsed in Japan's chaotic post-war economy, and in 1948, authorities charged Ando with tax evasion. The courtroom in Osaka was [00:11:00] bare, stripped down like the city itself.
Walls still smelled of smoke and plaster, dust from bombings. Three years earlier, Ando 38 years old, sat at the defendant's bench in a worn suit. Months earlier, he had been a respected director. Now he was the accused. Prosecutors accused him of fraud. Missing records. Funds unaccounted for a credit union in collapse.
His lawyer argued the money had been used for scholarships, not profit. Ando himself insisted he had only tried to help, but this was the allied occupation era. Every case was a performance for the Americans. Japan had to prove it could rebuild cleanly. The verdict came swift [00:12:00] guilty. Ando was sentenced to two years in prison.
As guards let him away, their boots echoed across the wooden floor. For Ando, this was the end of everything. Businesses gone. Reputation ruined. Freedom stripped. This was rock bottom.
Paul Johnson: Act Two Hunger. In 1945, Japan was in ashes. The US Firebombing campaign reduced entire cities to cinders, Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe. Wooden houses went up like kindling factories, crumbled atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Left devastation beyond comprehension. By wars end, [00:13:00] more than 3 million Japanese were dead.
The country's infrastructure was broken. The surrender brought peace, not relief. Japan was now an occupied nation, stripped of empire industry, and dignity. Inflation soared. Families scoured black markets for scraps.
Japan's surrender wasn't only military defeat, it was psychological collapse. For more than a decade, the state preached a divine mission. The emperor as living God defeat as impossible. Boys were raised to die for the emperor families expected sacrifice, not survival. Then in a moment, the worldview [00:14:00] cracked cities, laying ruins.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized. The emperor himself came over the radio and told his people to endure the unendurable to accept surrender.
For many, it was the first time they had ever heard his voice. The effect was shattering. Faith in government collapsed, national pride dissolved into shame. Soldiers returned, broken. Sometimes unrecognizable to their families. Civilians lived in humiliation, begging, bartering, standing in ration lines Under the watch of foreign soldiers.
~The occupation brought reforms, democracy, food relief, and a constant reminder. Japan had lost.~
The occupation brought reforms, democracy, food relief, and a constant reminder. Japan had lost [00:15:00] its people were no longer in charge of their destiny.
When the war ended in August, 1945, the Japanese people were starving. Farmland was ruined. Fertilizer was scarce. Irrigation canals were bombed out. Rice production collapsed. Empire supply lines vanished overnight. Rice from Korea and Taiwan wheat from Manchuria. Sugar from Southeast Asia
~in the cities. It was dire. Soldiers came home to nothing. Families crowded into barracks, cobbled from scrap heating rooms with charcoal brass.~
~In the cities, it was dire. So~
in the cities it was dire. Soldiers came home to nothing. Families crowded into barracks, cobbled from scrap heating rooms with charcoal braziers, calorie intake fell to about. 1400 a day, half of what an adult needs to survive. Children went days without proper meals. Bellies, aching, some collapsing from [00:16:00] hunger.
~Mothers sold heirlooms in black markets for a few bull~ mothers sold heirlooms in black markets for a few bowls of rice.
In 1948, Ando was convicted of tax evasion two year sentence prison. In post-war, Japan was as bleak as the city. Outside food was rationed to the bare minimum thin porridge. A few vegetables. Sometimes fish heads boiled into broth. Work details were grueling Ando labored in silence. Behind bars. Outside Masako managed the household and bore the shame.
She kept her composure with neighbors. Even as the family's reputation frayed, survival mattered most. She kept Nissin food products alive. The small salt business. Ando had started Masako. Oversaw accounts, trusted [00:17:00] helpers with grinding, drying Packaging orders were modest, but the company stayed alive for Masako, those years were endurance each bag of salt out the door, kept food on the table, kept the name alive, held space for her husband's return.
When Ando walked out of prison in 1950, he returned to a family that had bent but not broken. And to a company that, still bore his name.
He had named it Nissin. Two characters in Japanese, meaning a new day, pure and fresh. At the time, just a hopeful name. In hindsight, prophecy For Ando and for Japan what lay [00:18:00] ahead truly was a new day After two years inside Ando was slim and wiry. A body marked by scarcity. A long angular face, high cheekbones, strong jaw.
Skin a pale slightly, sallow hue, stress and hunger. Etched in dark hair, neatly parted, slicked back, narrow intent, eyes, mouth set in a firm line.
The occupation tried to answer the hunger. American wheat flour poured in bakeries, churned out bread. School lunches rebuilt around loaves and milk, but bread was foreign imposed for a people of rice and noodles. Bread was never comfort food on the streets. People voted with their stomachs. Makeshift noodle stalls spread across [00:19:00] Osaka, Tokyo, Yokohama, long queues down alleys, bowls in hand, waiting for wheat noodles in steaming broth, cheap filling, familiar noodles tasted like home.
Ando witnessed the spreading hunger. He and Masako lived in Ikeda, Northern edge of Osaka. Narrow streets, modest homes, a patchwork of barracks and rebuilt houses. It gave Ando a foothold. Salt was essential for food preservation trade. It was just enough to keep going. Life in Ikeda was modest, long days, thin meals, the smell of Masako's cooking, drifting into the small workshop where Ando, scribbled notes and tinkered with half-formed ideas.
Survival was the work. [00:20:00] Every yen counted every bag of rice stretched. He clawed his way back to ordinary life. Masako steadying the ground beneath him. Outside their home. Ando noticed more on Osaka streets lines at noodle stands grew longer. People waited for hours, bowls in hand. These weren't restaurants, just a pot and a bench, but in a Japan of scarcity, they offered warmth, comfort, survival.
The irony wasn't lost on Ando. Very American. Wheat meant for bread was being turned into noodles by the people. Bread was what the occupiers pushed Noodles were what the Japanese wanted.
Ando watched those lines and saw more than hunger. He saw [00:21:00] a need wide and urgent if only noodles could be cheap. Safe, easy to prepare fast food that could reach not dozens at a stall, but millions across a nation in the ruins of Osaka. In the hunger of post-war Japan, a new idea began to form. They say necessity is the mother of invention.
In a country of endless lines for noodles, necessity was everywhere. Ando took note and Ando began to plan.
Act three invention. When Momofuku Ando walked out of prison in 1950, he had little left, but his wife, a [00:22:00] fragile salt business, and his own stubborn will in Ikeda, a small suburb outside Osaka. He began again. He and his wife Masako, lived on the thinnest of margins, stretching every yen to cover rice, miso, and coal for the brazier.
Their home was modest. A simple wooden house with tatami rooms, a tiled roof, narrow halls that smelled of straw and smoke. Out front, a tiny garden patch grew green onions and vegetables. Nothing was wasted, ~but beyond.~ But behind the house stood the shed, a rough outbuilding with a tin roof that rattled in the wind.
Inside clutter pots, pans, sieves. Burners, scrounged from scrap [00:23:00] shelves, sagging with jars of flour, salt, and oil. At night, smoke and scorched wheat filled the air. Neighbors muttered, Masako, endured it. Patient with her husband's obsession.
And here's the thing, Ando wasn't a chemist. No lab coat, no degree in food science. His only training was economics. What he had was curiosity, patience, and the stubbornness of a man with nothing left to lose the shed became his world. He worked until dawn, stirring, frying, scribbling, notes failing and failing again.
The house was where he and Masako lived. The shed was where he tried to [00:24:00] change the world. His idea noodles that could be made instantly.
He knew people wanted noodles. Noodles were comfort. Noodles were survival. If he could make them available to everyone. Everywhere he'd feed a nation and build a fortune.
Ando's genius was that he fused both drives, compassion and ambition the problem. Fresh noodles spoiled too quickly. Dried noodles took too long to cook. And no method made them shelf stable without losing taste. So he experimented wheat flour, salted alkaline water for chew Kneaded rested, rolled cut. He steamed the noodles instead of boiling to set their shape.[00:25:00]
Then brushed them with chicken broth flavor baked into the noodle itself. Radical.
But the failures piled up, sun drying too slow, mold oven drying, brittle edges, gummy centers, warmers, warped them. Every method. Left them ruined night after night. Masako endured. The smoke. Neighbors complained and still he kept trying. The breakthrough came from tempura watching shrimp or sweet potato sizzle in oil.
He saw the bubbles roar, smelled that nutty fried aroma, and realized oil doesn't just cook, it drives out water.
So he lowered [00:26:00] his seasoned noodles into hot oil and everything changed. Frying drove out the moisture, leaving a honeycomb of tiny air pockets like a sponge later, dropped them into boiling water. Those pores sucked it back in instantly. The noodles revived in minutes. It was simple, elegant, revolutionary.
He shaped the noodles into compact bricks, packed them in cellophane, printed simple instructions. Put in a bowl pour boiling water wait dinner, he unveiled his creation. Chicken Ramen. The name was Simple Chicken for Flavor Ramen for the noodle. Written in English style letters. Modern [00:27:00] Western, a little exotic packaged in a pouch.
Seasoned with powder that dissolved into broth. Cheap, safe, ready in minutes. A bowl of hot noodles for anyone, anywhere
when it debuted in 1958. One pack cost 35 yen. Six times more than a bowl from a street stall, which sold for six yen in US terms. 2 cents for fresh noodles, 10 cents for instant. It wasn't cheap food. It was a luxury convenience you paid for, but as Japan's economy surged in the 1960s, instant ramen shifted from luxury to everyday meal.
Hard to imagine now when Ramen sells for 30 cents in American grocery stores. [00:28:00] After Chicken Ramen's debut, everything changed what began in a backyard. Shed grew with Japan itself by the 1970s Ando launched cup noodles. Ramen moved from the stove to a styrofoam cup, a meal you could eat on a train.
~Masako never thought, Masako never sought the spotlight. She remained the steady partner, the anchor who had held the h.~
~Oaco~ Masako never sought the spotlight. She remained the steady partner, the anchor who had held the household upright in prison and now stood beside him as their salt business became an empire. When Ando died in 2007, he was the majority owner of a multi-billion dollar company. Nissin was worth $2 billion.
Ando's stake $800 million, 85 billion servings a year from Osaka to every corner [00:29:00] of the globe, and he never let go of the obsession. He ate ramen every day, right up to age 96. Doctors warned him, cholesterol, salt, longevity. He laughed them off to him. Ramen wasn't just food, it was invention, perseverance, proof that an idea born in hunger could feed the world.
Today, his legacy lives on in every grocery aisle, every vending machine, and in Ikeda itself. Where Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum lets visitors step into a replica of that backyard shed roll dough, cut noodles, flash fry your own. Ramen a shrine to invention. And to the stubborn, restless man who never stopped [00:30:00] tinkering.
For Ando Instant Ramen was more than a business. It was his legacy, the story of a man who turned necessity into invention.
That's it for our story. This episode belongs to a series we've called If Only. If only Momofuku Ando had given up after prison, if only he'd stopped when the noodles kept failing soggy or brittle, if only he hadn't thought to drop them in hot oil. But he didn't. And because of that college dorm rooms, late night kitchens and corner stores around the world have never been the same.
Ando's life was marked by persistence. The [00:31:00] same restless streak that pulled him through. Failure after failure also gave us a food that went from luxury to survival. Staple from Japan to space shuttles, from Ikeda to your pantry Shelf. Persistence can look like foolishness. It can also look like genius and Ando's story leaves us with this.
Sometimes the difference between the two is just a few more tries and a little hot oil. Thanks for spending time with us. We'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts in the comments below because the way we wrestle with these, if onlys. Is a story worth telling and if you've got a story you think we should tell, reach out and share a few [00:32:00] details.
It just might end up in a future episode. Next week we continue our series if only stories where history pivots on a moment where you can't help but wonder what if. Our next story is about Jeffrey Hinton. The man often called the godfather of ai. He spent decades chasing an idea. Almost no one believed in that machines could learn like the human brain.
For years, he was ignored, even ridiculed, but persistence kept him going. And today his invention. Neural networks sits at the heart of artificial intelligence. What if Hinton had given up? What if he hadn't trusted the vision? Everyone else dismissed. And what [00:33:00] happens when the very thing you create grows beyond your control?
That's next week on Get some. Get some is written, produced, and hosted by me, Paul Johnson. ~Find photos, show notes and past episodes at getsomepodcast.com or on our YouTube channel. If you're enjoying this series, leave a review or share it with a friend. It helps others find these stories. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.~
Find photos, show notes and past episodes at getsomepodcast.com or on our YouTube channel. If you're enjoying this series, leave a review or share it with a friend. It helps others find these stories. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, apple Podcasts or Spotify, so you never miss an episode. Thanks for listening, and remember, today is the best day of your life.
Now go get some.
===
[00:00:00]
Reporter: In the year 2000, the Fuji Research Institute conducted a poll asking people what they felt was Japan's greatest invention of the 20th century, and the people overwhelmingly answered instant noodles and nothing else even came close. So do ing Ka. Niche Sheen's. Many brands of Instant Ramen, including cup noodles and Top Ramen have kept many a broke college student fed.
But where did this time saving and wallet saving meal come from?
Paul Johnson: From Get some podcast studio. I'm Paul Johnson. One story every week. Stories that go where they want. We just follow. If you're here for great stories that connect, you're in the right place. Today we continue our series if only. Stories where [00:01:00] history pivots on a moment where you can't help but wonder.
What if this episode is called Ramen? It's about Momofuku Ando, an orphan from Taiwan, a restless entrepreneur in post-war Osaka, Japan, A man who failed fell, and went to prison. But came out with an idea that would change how the world eats from a shed. In Ikeda, Japan, he invented instant noodles, not as a scientist, not as a chef, but as a man chasing survival and chasing fortune and what he created.
Chicken Ramen went from luxury food in 1958 to the cheapest meal in the grocery store today. And let's be honest, you've probably had it [00:02:00] late night in college. End of the week, 30 cents a pack. It may not be glamorous, but it's everywhere. It's a story of hunger, persistence, and invention. Born out of necessity.
Okay, let's get into it.
Act one fall. Momofuku Ando's story doesn't begin with noodles. It begins in Taiwan in 1910 when he was born under Japanese colonial rule. His life changed almost immediately. His parents died while he was still an infant. A loss never explained in the records. He was sent to live with his maternal grandparents in the southern city of Tienan.
They weren't wealthy or powerful. They [00:03:00] ran a small kimono fabric shop on a narrow street surrounded by bolts of cloth and the smell of dyed silk. For Young Ando that shop became a kind of school. He watched his grandparents haggle with customers, stretch their modest inventory and survive by sheer persistence.
He saw the long hours, the constant risk of coming up short, the pride of making do with little. That was where he first learned what it meant to be self-reliant. Not book learning, but the daily math of survival. How to take scraps and turn them into something useful. How to recognize opportunity, how to hustle.
~At 22, he moved to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan under Japanese rule where he opened a small textiles in clothing business. The shop wasn't much bolts of fabric stacked against the walls, a sewing machine by the front. and a few racks of finished garments, but for Ando, it was a start. The streets around his shop buzzed with trade rickshaws rattled over stone roads.~
~Japanese merchants barked prices, customers haggled in Japanese, Mandarin, and Taiwanese dialect. Taiwan was modernizing.~
At 22, he moved to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan under Japanese rule. Where he opened a small textiles in clothing business, the shop wasn't [00:04:00] much bolts of fabric stacked against the walls, a sewing machine by the front, and a few racks of finished garments. ~But for Ando, it was a start. The streets around his shop buzzed with trade.~
~Rickshaws rattled over stone roads. Japanese merchants barked prices. Customers haggled in Japanese, Mandarin, and Taiwanese dialect. Taiwan was modernizing fast and cloth was always in demand. Uniforms work, short uniforms, work shirts, kimonos, western suits. Ando had grown up watching his grandparents in that fabric shop in Tenon.~
But for Ondo, it was a start. The streets around his shop buzzed with trade. Rickshaws rattled over stone roads. Japanese merchants barked prices, customers haggled in Japanese, Mandarin, and Taiwanese dialect. Taiwan was modernizing fast and cloth was always in demand. Uniforms, work shirts, kimonos, western suits.
Ando had grown up watching his grandparents in that fabric shop in Tienan. Now he was the one keeping books, managing suppliers, reading customers, and he was good at it, confident, quick with numbers, ambitious to him. The shop was just the beginning, [00:05:00] but Taipei still felt small. The real opportunities, the industries, the universities, the capital were across the strait in Japan, Osaka was the commercial heart factories finance possibility.
So at 25, Ando made a decision. He sold what he could, left his business behind, and moved to Japan. There he enrolled at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto for a boy who had grown up in the back of a fabric shop. This was transformation from Colonial Orphan to university educated businessman at Ritsumeikan.
He studied economics, trade capital markets. It wasn't [00:06:00] just book knowledge, it was learning how systems worked. It gave him legitimacy in a Japan that looked down on those from the colonies. He could now present himself, not just as a shopkeeper, but as a man with education, credentials, ambition. Armed with that degree, Ando launched new ventures, clothing, charcoal, salt, even co-founding a small school.
He was restless, always moving, always chasing the next opportunity. He seemed unstoppable. After graduation, he turned to slide projectors. Then called magic lantern projectors. Small devices that projected still images on a wall or screen schools used them, [00:07:00] businesses used them, some families even used them for entertainment.
A kind of precursor to home movies. Ando saw potential education was expanding. Businesses were modernizing. So he began manufacturing and selling projectors. But as Japan shifted toward military expansion in the late 1930s, that business was swallowed up. Factories retooled for weapons. Civilian markets dried up Ando's projector.
Venture was gone in wartime Japan. Charcoal was life. It fueled cooking, heating, survival. So Ando turned to charcoal production in Osaka. It wasn't glamorous, but if there was wood, there was fuel. And if there was fuel, there were [00:08:00] buyers. But even charcoal was commandeered by the war effort. Supplies rationed, small producers squeezed out.
By the mid 1940s, Japan was unraveling. Cities bombed into rubble families. Homeless housing became a crisis. Ando pivoted again, producing barrack style houses, rough timber, tar paper, tin roofs crude, but lifelines in burned out neighborhoods. Once more. Ando was meeting basic needs. First clothing, then fuel, now shelter but once more.
His business was swept away by government control. By then, Ando was married. His wife Masako, [00:09:00] practical, composed, steady. She managed the home, stretched rations and tolerated his endless schemes. She didn't chase opportunity like he did. She made it possible for him to chase. Masako was the anchor. In 1946, Ando became managing director of Osaka Kagin, a small credit union serving the Chinese immigrant community, ~not just as an entrepreneur.~
Not just as an entrepreneur anymore, but a civic leader. ~Yet he never stopped experimenting. Two years later, in 1948, he founded a small company in Ikeda Osaka, Nissin food products and just to.~
Yet he never stopped experimenting. Two years later, in 1948, he founded a small company in Ikeda Osaka, Nissin food products. ~And just to clear this up. It's pronounced.~
And just to clear this up, it's pronounced Nissin rhymes with machine. Not Nissan, the car company. Nissan [00:10:00] makes sedans. Nissin makes ramen. One gets you to work the other gets you through college. Back then, Nissin was just a family run, salt business, Masako and a few helpers, grinding and packing, salt for sale. Salt meant survival, preserving fish, pickling vegetables, keeping food edible without refrigeration ~On paper, Ando looked like a man on the rise.~
On paper, Ando looked like a man on the rise, director of a credit union, founder of a food company, a husband and provider, but prestige can turn quickly. Osaka Kagin collapsed in Japan's chaotic post-war economy, and in 1948, authorities charged Ando with tax evasion. The courtroom in Osaka was [00:11:00] bare, stripped down like the city itself.
Walls still smelled of smoke and plaster, dust from bombings. Three years earlier, Ando 38 years old, sat at the defendant's bench in a worn suit. Months earlier, he had been a respected director. Now he was the accused. Prosecutors accused him of fraud. Missing records. Funds unaccounted for a credit union in collapse.
His lawyer argued the money had been used for scholarships, not profit. Ando himself insisted he had only tried to help, but this was the allied occupation era. Every case was a performance for the Americans. Japan had to prove it could rebuild cleanly. The verdict came swift [00:12:00] guilty. Ando was sentenced to two years in prison.
As guards let him away, their boots echoed across the wooden floor. For Ando, this was the end of everything. Businesses gone. Reputation ruined. Freedom stripped. This was rock bottom.
Paul Johnson: Act Two Hunger. In 1945, Japan was in ashes. The US Firebombing campaign reduced entire cities to cinders, Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe. Wooden houses went up like kindling factories, crumbled atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Left devastation beyond comprehension. By wars end, [00:13:00] more than 3 million Japanese were dead.
The country's infrastructure was broken. The surrender brought peace, not relief. Japan was now an occupied nation, stripped of empire industry, and dignity. Inflation soared. Families scoured black markets for scraps.
Japan's surrender wasn't only military defeat, it was psychological collapse. For more than a decade, the state preached a divine mission. The emperor as living God defeat as impossible. Boys were raised to die for the emperor families expected sacrifice, not survival. Then in a moment, the worldview [00:14:00] cracked cities, laying ruins.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized. The emperor himself came over the radio and told his people to endure the unendurable to accept surrender.
For many, it was the first time they had ever heard his voice. The effect was shattering. Faith in government collapsed, national pride dissolved into shame. Soldiers returned, broken. Sometimes unrecognizable to their families. Civilians lived in humiliation, begging, bartering, standing in ration lines Under the watch of foreign soldiers.
~The occupation brought reforms, democracy, food relief, and a constant reminder. Japan had lost.~
The occupation brought reforms, democracy, food relief, and a constant reminder. Japan had lost [00:15:00] its people were no longer in charge of their destiny.
When the war ended in August, 1945, the Japanese people were starving. Farmland was ruined. Fertilizer was scarce. Irrigation canals were bombed out. Rice production collapsed. Empire supply lines vanished overnight. Rice from Korea and Taiwan wheat from Manchuria. Sugar from Southeast Asia
~in the cities. It was dire. Soldiers came home to nothing. Families crowded into barracks, cobbled from scrap heating rooms with charcoal brass.~
~In the cities, it was dire. So~
in the cities it was dire. Soldiers came home to nothing. Families crowded into barracks, cobbled from scrap heating rooms with charcoal braziers, calorie intake fell to about. 1400 a day, half of what an adult needs to survive. Children went days without proper meals. Bellies, aching, some collapsing from [00:16:00] hunger.
~Mothers sold heirlooms in black markets for a few bull~ mothers sold heirlooms in black markets for a few bowls of rice.
In 1948, Ando was convicted of tax evasion two year sentence prison. In post-war, Japan was as bleak as the city. Outside food was rationed to the bare minimum thin porridge. A few vegetables. Sometimes fish heads boiled into broth. Work details were grueling Ando labored in silence. Behind bars. Outside Masako managed the household and bore the shame.
She kept her composure with neighbors. Even as the family's reputation frayed, survival mattered most. She kept Nissin food products alive. The small salt business. Ando had started Masako. Oversaw accounts, trusted [00:17:00] helpers with grinding, drying Packaging orders were modest, but the company stayed alive for Masako, those years were endurance each bag of salt out the door, kept food on the table, kept the name alive, held space for her husband's return.
When Ando walked out of prison in 1950, he returned to a family that had bent but not broken. And to a company that, still bore his name.
He had named it Nissin. Two characters in Japanese, meaning a new day, pure and fresh. At the time, just a hopeful name. In hindsight, prophecy For Ando and for Japan what lay [00:18:00] ahead truly was a new day After two years inside Ando was slim and wiry. A body marked by scarcity. A long angular face, high cheekbones, strong jaw.
Skin a pale slightly, sallow hue, stress and hunger. Etched in dark hair, neatly parted, slicked back, narrow intent, eyes, mouth set in a firm line.
The occupation tried to answer the hunger. American wheat flour poured in bakeries, churned out bread. School lunches rebuilt around loaves and milk, but bread was foreign imposed for a people of rice and noodles. Bread was never comfort food on the streets. People voted with their stomachs. Makeshift noodle stalls spread across [00:19:00] Osaka, Tokyo, Yokohama, long queues down alleys, bowls in hand, waiting for wheat noodles in steaming broth, cheap filling, familiar noodles tasted like home.
Ando witnessed the spreading hunger. He and Masako lived in Ikeda, Northern edge of Osaka. Narrow streets, modest homes, a patchwork of barracks and rebuilt houses. It gave Ando a foothold. Salt was essential for food preservation trade. It was just enough to keep going. Life in Ikeda was modest, long days, thin meals, the smell of Masako's cooking, drifting into the small workshop where Ando, scribbled notes and tinkered with half-formed ideas.
Survival was the work. [00:20:00] Every yen counted every bag of rice stretched. He clawed his way back to ordinary life. Masako steadying the ground beneath him. Outside their home. Ando noticed more on Osaka streets lines at noodle stands grew longer. People waited for hours, bowls in hand. These weren't restaurants, just a pot and a bench, but in a Japan of scarcity, they offered warmth, comfort, survival.
The irony wasn't lost on Ando. Very American. Wheat meant for bread was being turned into noodles by the people. Bread was what the occupiers pushed Noodles were what the Japanese wanted.
Ando watched those lines and saw more than hunger. He saw [00:21:00] a need wide and urgent if only noodles could be cheap. Safe, easy to prepare fast food that could reach not dozens at a stall, but millions across a nation in the ruins of Osaka. In the hunger of post-war Japan, a new idea began to form. They say necessity is the mother of invention.
In a country of endless lines for noodles, necessity was everywhere. Ando took note and Ando began to plan.
Act three invention. When Momofuku Ando walked out of prison in 1950, he had little left, but his wife, a [00:22:00] fragile salt business, and his own stubborn will in Ikeda, a small suburb outside Osaka. He began again. He and his wife Masako, lived on the thinnest of margins, stretching every yen to cover rice, miso, and coal for the brazier.
Their home was modest. A simple wooden house with tatami rooms, a tiled roof, narrow halls that smelled of straw and smoke. Out front, a tiny garden patch grew green onions and vegetables. Nothing was wasted, ~but beyond.~ But behind the house stood the shed, a rough outbuilding with a tin roof that rattled in the wind.
Inside clutter pots, pans, sieves. Burners, scrounged from scrap [00:23:00] shelves, sagging with jars of flour, salt, and oil. At night, smoke and scorched wheat filled the air. Neighbors muttered, Masako, endured it. Patient with her husband's obsession.
And here's the thing, Ando wasn't a chemist. No lab coat, no degree in food science. His only training was economics. What he had was curiosity, patience, and the stubbornness of a man with nothing left to lose the shed became his world. He worked until dawn, stirring, frying, scribbling, notes failing and failing again.
The house was where he and Masako lived. The shed was where he tried to [00:24:00] change the world. His idea noodles that could be made instantly.
He knew people wanted noodles. Noodles were comfort. Noodles were survival. If he could make them available to everyone. Everywhere he'd feed a nation and build a fortune.
Ando's genius was that he fused both drives, compassion and ambition the problem. Fresh noodles spoiled too quickly. Dried noodles took too long to cook. And no method made them shelf stable without losing taste. So he experimented wheat flour, salted alkaline water for chew Kneaded rested, rolled cut. He steamed the noodles instead of boiling to set their shape.[00:25:00]
Then brushed them with chicken broth flavor baked into the noodle itself. Radical.
But the failures piled up, sun drying too slow, mold oven drying, brittle edges, gummy centers, warmers, warped them. Every method. Left them ruined night after night. Masako endured. The smoke. Neighbors complained and still he kept trying. The breakthrough came from tempura watching shrimp or sweet potato sizzle in oil.
He saw the bubbles roar, smelled that nutty fried aroma, and realized oil doesn't just cook, it drives out water.
So he lowered [00:26:00] his seasoned noodles into hot oil and everything changed. Frying drove out the moisture, leaving a honeycomb of tiny air pockets like a sponge later, dropped them into boiling water. Those pores sucked it back in instantly. The noodles revived in minutes. It was simple, elegant, revolutionary.
He shaped the noodles into compact bricks, packed them in cellophane, printed simple instructions. Put in a bowl pour boiling water wait dinner, he unveiled his creation. Chicken Ramen. The name was Simple Chicken for Flavor Ramen for the noodle. Written in English style letters. Modern [00:27:00] Western, a little exotic packaged in a pouch.
Seasoned with powder that dissolved into broth. Cheap, safe, ready in minutes. A bowl of hot noodles for anyone, anywhere
when it debuted in 1958. One pack cost 35 yen. Six times more than a bowl from a street stall, which sold for six yen in US terms. 2 cents for fresh noodles, 10 cents for instant. It wasn't cheap food. It was a luxury convenience you paid for, but as Japan's economy surged in the 1960s, instant ramen shifted from luxury to everyday meal.
Hard to imagine now when Ramen sells for 30 cents in American grocery stores. [00:28:00] After Chicken Ramen's debut, everything changed what began in a backyard. Shed grew with Japan itself by the 1970s Ando launched cup noodles. Ramen moved from the stove to a styrofoam cup, a meal you could eat on a train.
~Masako never thought, Masako never sought the spotlight. She remained the steady partner, the anchor who had held the h.~
~Oaco~ Masako never sought the spotlight. She remained the steady partner, the anchor who had held the household upright in prison and now stood beside him as their salt business became an empire. When Ando died in 2007, he was the majority owner of a multi-billion dollar company. Nissin was worth $2 billion.
Ando's stake $800 million, 85 billion servings a year from Osaka to every corner [00:29:00] of the globe, and he never let go of the obsession. He ate ramen every day, right up to age 96. Doctors warned him, cholesterol, salt, longevity. He laughed them off to him. Ramen wasn't just food, it was invention, perseverance, proof that an idea born in hunger could feed the world.
Today, his legacy lives on in every grocery aisle, every vending machine, and in Ikeda itself. Where Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum lets visitors step into a replica of that backyard shed roll dough, cut noodles, flash fry your own. Ramen a shrine to invention. And to the stubborn, restless man who never stopped [00:30:00] tinkering.
For Ando Instant Ramen was more than a business. It was his legacy, the story of a man who turned necessity into invention.
That's it for our story. This episode belongs to a series we've called If Only. If only Momofuku Ando had given up after prison, if only he'd stopped when the noodles kept failing soggy or brittle, if only he hadn't thought to drop them in hot oil. But he didn't. And because of that college dorm rooms, late night kitchens and corner stores around the world have never been the same.
Ando's life was marked by persistence. The [00:31:00] same restless streak that pulled him through. Failure after failure also gave us a food that went from luxury to survival. Staple from Japan to space shuttles, from Ikeda to your pantry Shelf. Persistence can look like foolishness. It can also look like genius and Ando's story leaves us with this.
Sometimes the difference between the two is just a few more tries and a little hot oil. Thanks for spending time with us. We'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts in the comments below because the way we wrestle with these, if onlys. Is a story worth telling and if you've got a story you think we should tell, reach out and share a few [00:32:00] details.
It just might end up in a future episode. Next week we continue our series if only stories where history pivots on a moment where you can't help but wonder what if. Our next story is about Jeffrey Hinton. The man often called the godfather of ai. He spent decades chasing an idea. Almost no one believed in that machines could learn like the human brain.
For years, he was ignored, even ridiculed, but persistence kept him going. And today his invention. Neural networks sits at the heart of artificial intelligence. What if Hinton had given up? What if he hadn't trusted the vision? Everyone else dismissed. And what [00:33:00] happens when the very thing you create grows beyond your control?
That's next week on Get some. Get some is written, produced, and hosted by me, Paul Johnson. ~Find photos, show notes and past episodes at getsomepodcast.com or on our YouTube channel. If you're enjoying this series, leave a review or share it with a friend. It helps others find these stories. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.~
Find photos, show notes and past episodes at getsomepodcast.com or on our YouTube channel. If you're enjoying this series, leave a review or share it with a friend. It helps others find these stories. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, apple Podcasts or Spotify, so you never miss an episode. Thanks for listening, and remember, today is the best day of your life.
Now go get some.
