Every PlateTales food history story tagged Japanese, newest first.
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GIs brought the cans, but martial law kept Hawaii's Japanese fishermen ashore in 1941, and a plantation habit of rice with salty canned meat gave Spam somewhere to stay.
KFC Japan ran its first Christmas campaign in December 1974. The manager who claims the idea admits a white lie, and NHK was teaching Christmas roast chicken in 1959.
The fortune cookie began as a Japanese cracker with a paper slip in its fold. Japanese bakers made it American, and internment in 1942 handed it to Chinese restaurants.
Ramen began as Chinese noodle soup in Japan's treaty ports, then took off in the hungry years after 1945. Here is what the records show, and what is only legend.
Sushi began as fish packed in rice to keep it for months, and the rice was thrown away. Vinegar and Edo street stalls turned it into the nigiri we know.
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