Nagasaki’s Chinatown Showcases Japanese and Chinese Cultural and Culinary Ties

A Chinese Connection with Deep Roots

The exchanges between Nagasaki and China go back centuries. Even during Japan’s sakoku period when the country largely shut its borders, some 10,000 Chinese immigrants lived in an international settlement, the tōjin yashiki, overlooking Nagasaki. When the settlement was dissolved near the end of the Edo period (1603–1868), Chinese residents moved to a section of reclaimed land that had formerly been a warehouse district, establishing what today is Nagasaki’s Chinatown.

Nagasaki’s Chinatown is packed with restaurants and variety shops. (© Nippon.com)

The major highlight of Chinatown is its food culture, born of the blending of Japanese and Chinese cuisine, with the city’s famed chanpon noodles a must-eat.

Chanpon’s firm, chewy wheat noodles and broth made by simmering chicken and pork bones shows a clear link to ramen. But the dish stands apart for its toppings of vegetables stir fried with such seafood delights as shrimp and fishcake.

Fuzhou Noodles Done Nagasaki Style

The birthplace of chanpon is the Chinese restaurant Shikairō. Now located in the Matsugae district, near Glover Garden, it first opened in 1899 on the site of the old Chinese settlement to the southeast of Chinatown.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, it was the favored haunt of Saitō Mokichi, a poet and professor at the Nagasaki Specialized School of Medicine who frequently invited fellow literati like Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Kikuchi Kan to dine there. The shop has attracted countless other dignitaries with its authentic chanpon, including the current Japanese emperor Naruhito, who paid a visit while crown prince.

The original Shikairō doubled as a hotel. (Courtesy Shikairō)

The current shop is marked by crimson pillars standing out against the plain stone frontage. (© Nippon.com)

The shop moved to its current location in 1973, with the current five-story building dating from 2000. Boasting the title of Nagasaki’s oldest Chinese restaurant, it is a popular tourist spot. Along with the dining area, there is a souvenir shop and the Chanpon Museum, which displays photographs and materials from the time of the restaurant’s founding that tell the story of the dish’s birth.

Shikairō’s mouthwatering chanpon. (Picture courtesy of Shikairō)

The interior of the shop features historical items like bowls and pictures of famous guests. (© Nippon.com)

Shikairō’s founder, Chen Ping Shun, came to Nagasaki in 1892 from Fuzhou in Fujian in southeastern China. Chen served as a guarantor for visiting students coming from his homeland, and he was inspired to create chanpon out of a desire to provide those young newcomers a familiar and nourishing dish.

Combining a Fujian noodle dish with local Nagasaki ingredients, he created a food that reflected both Japanese and Chinese culinary cultures.

Chen Ping Shun (center row, third from left) and his family. (Courtesy Shikairō)

Chen also created another famed Nagasaki dish, saraudon, which is based on another Fujian dish of noodles fried with shredded meat. The dish started with thick, udon-like noodles boiled in broth then stir fried and topped with essentially the same ingredients as chanpon. Because there’s no soup, it is served on a plate rather than a bowl, hence the name saraudon, meaning “plated udon.” A later variation with thinner noodles deep fried into a crispy base has become the modern standard.

Shikairō’s saraudon comes with soft, thick noodles (top) or thin, crispy fried noodle. (Courtesy Shikairō)

A Change in Meaning

The source of the name chanpon is still unclear. Shikairō maintains that it comes from a word in the Fujian dialect meaning “to eat.” However, some linguists say it reflects an earlier term meaning “to mix,” as in the Okinawa stir-fried dish chanpurū.

The interior of Taiwanese eatery Lao Lee (above) in Chinatown and the exterior of the Chinatown branch of chain restaurant Nagasaki Chanpon. (© Nippon.com)

Since chanpon allows for all kinds of ingredients to be mixed, there is no limit on the variations.

The star dish at Lao Lee, a Taiwanese cuisine shop in Nagasaki’s Chinatown, is an original take on chanpon featuring a local specialty of karasumi, or salt-cured and sun-dried mullet roe, which gives the dish an umami punch.

Chefs finish off the shop’s karasumi chanpon by stir frying the ingredients for a few minutes on high heat. (© Nippon.com)

City Streets with International Flavor

The same mix of Japanese and Chinese culture born from Chinese immigration to Nagasaki has also given rise to unique Nagasaki scenery, festivals, and more.

The history of Chinese immigrants putting their roots down in Nagasaki is clear to see with a walk down the streets of Chinatown. The crimson gates that guard its entrances north, south, east, and west were all built by artisans from Fuzhou. The south gate opens onto Minato Park, which has an ornate stone Chinese gate and square gazebo, and its scenes of people playing go and shōgi under the open sky is like a scene from old China itself.

The South Gate as seen from Minato Park. (© Nippon.com)

Minato Park is the main venue for the annual Lantern Festival. (© Nippon.com)

Running in front of Minato Park is Fukken-dōri, which uses the Japanese pronunciation of the characters for Fujian. A short distance to the southeast, the street becomes Tōjin-yashiki-dōri with its historic buildings and walls that bring to mind the tōjin yashiki settlement.

There are also Chinese Buddhist temples with roots going back to the Edo period. One such temple is Sōfukuji. Standing on a rise to the east on Shianbashi-dōri, it was founded in 1629 by Chinese monks to serve the religious needs of immigrants from Fujian.

The Nagasaki Confucius Shrine Kōshibyō and Historical Museum of China in Nagasaki’s Ōuramachi district was built in 1893 by local immigrants with support from the Qing government to venerate the philosopher and teacher and to enshrine some of his possessions. Now, it hosts exhibitions related to Confucius and puts on events highlighting Chinse culture, including occasional shows of traditional lightning fast mask-changing performing art.

Exploring how Japanese and Chinese influences have mixed in the food and the scenery of Chinatown is a highlight of any trip to Nagasaki.

Sōfukuji temple has buildings that are treasures of two different nations. (© Nippon.com)

The 72 stone statues outside Kōshibyō represent Confucius’s 72 followers. (© Nippon.com)

(Originally published in Japanese. Reporting and text by Nippon.com. Banner photo: The original karasumi chanpon and saraudon at Lao Lee’s Chinatown main branch. © Nippon.com.)