From Commoner’s Food to Healthy Light Fare: How Did Soba Become Japan’s “National Staple”?

In Japanese, the word for buckwheat, soba, sounds identical to soba ni, meaning “beside me”. So “one bowl of soba, please” carries the ring of “please stay by my side”. For this reason, a traditional Japanese housewarming gift for neighbours is almost always a pack of soba. And on Ōmisoka, the last day of the year, it is practically obligatory to eat toshikoshi soba — year-crossing noodles — much as Chinese families eat long noodles on birthdays, a wish for life stretched out long and lasting.

But how did buckwheat rise above rice and wheat to become Japan’s national staple? A chilled bowl, cold noodles, and some fried vegetables — it hardly seems remarkable. Only after a year living in Nagano, the heart of soba country, did I finally begin to appreciate soba’s quiet charm, revealed slowly, like water worn through stone.

I. From Buckwheat Dumplings and Porridge to Soba Noodles

However, before the Edo period (1603–1868), people did not eat buckwheat as thin noodles. Instead, much as one would cook rice, they boiled whole buckwheat grains into porridge. Only later did they learn to dehull the grains and grind them into flour, giving rise to sobagaki — soft, pillowy buckwheat cakes mashed with hot water. These could be served sweetened in red-bean soup, savoured with soy sauce and wasabi, or simply dropped straight into a bowl of soba broth to enjoy their plain, honest flavour.

In Nagano, oyaki are also a beloved snack: buckwheat dough wrapped around fillings such as pickled nozawana greens, miso-braised aubergine, or mashed pumpkin, then grilled over an open flame. Families gather around the irori hearth to roast these buckwheat parcels through the long winter snows.

The Togakushi district of Nagano is widely regarded as the birthplace of soba. Nagano is mountainous country, hard on the plough. Unlike rice, buckwheat tolerates cold and grows with stubborn tenacity, so it spread through the region’s hillside fields. Mixing buckwheat flour with wheat flour and cutting the dough into fine noodles — a craft known as soba-kiri — was served at the tea ceremonies of Togakushi temple and carried as sustenance by ascetic monks on their long pilgrimages.

In Nagano, soba has been called “food of the gods”, part of a monk’s vegetarian fare. In Edo, by contrast, soba’s convenience and low price won over the waves of migrant labourers, and from there it spread across the whole of Japan.

The foods now considered emblematic of Japanese cuisine — sushi, unagi-don, tempura, udon, soba — all became popular among Edo’s common folk. On an Edo evening, the sight and sound of a yatai peddler carrying his soba case on a pole, wind chimes tinkling as he walked, calling out “Soba-yā!” — a cry that also sounds like “I am right here beside you” — was an indispensable part of everyday life.

Draining the boiled noodles under cold running water, laying them on the bamboo sieve, and pairing them with a small plate of seasonal vegetable tempura — this is the truest way to taste the flavour of buckwheat.

Tenzaru — the combo of mori soba and a generous portion of tempura — is another perennial favourite on any soba shop menu. Cold noodles alongside piping-fresh tempura of seasonal wild vegetables: the perfect duo.

One of the most important concepts in Japanese food culture is shun — the belief that ingredients must be eaten at their peak season to be truly fresh and delicious. Soba is no different: each time of year brings its own seasonal soba.

Depending on the topping, there are also tsukimi soba (named for the whole egg perched atop the noodles like a full moon), aburaage soba (with deep-fried tofu pouches), sansai soba (with mountain vegetables), daikon-oroshi soba (with grated daikon), and many more.

In Nagano and Tokyo, soba divides into several schools depending on the buckwheat’s place of origin or the method of milling, and the way it is eaten naturally differs from region to region — so much so that there is a proverb: “Tell me how you eat your soba, and I will tell you where you are from.”

A hundred shops, a hundred styles of soba — surely part of the pleasure of the noodle.

III. From Commoner’s Food to Healthy Light Fare

The Shoku Nihongi records that during the Nara period a severe drought triggered famine, prompting commoners to plant buckwheat widely as a famine crop — while the aristocrats of the upper classes remained entirely unaware that buckwheat was even edible.

As a famine food for impoverished farmers and a travelling meal for ascetic monks on long pilgrimages, buckwheat seems born with a rustic, earthy simplicity. Compared with sushi restaurants that can easily cost tens of thousands of yen per seat and are all but impossible to book — the kind made famous by a documentary like Jiro Dreams of Sushi — or shōjin ryōri, the temple cuisine that likewise took shape among monastic communities, soba has been commoner’s food since time immemorial. Even today, at the finest soba shops, a serving of zaru soba costs barely a thousand yen (around fifty yuan).

Thanks to their low prices and quick service, standing soba bars aimed at urban office workers have also become widespread. For just 400 to 600 yen, a customer can swiftly receive a bowl of soba. Men in suits stand at cramped counters, finish their noodles, and hurry back to their desks.

Japan Railways (JR) platforms, too, often house an eki-soba shop, so that in the few minutes before a train, there is just enough time to finish a hot bowl of soba, fill your stomach, and dash off to your destination.

The Japanese writer Yoshii Shinobu, too, paints a picture of the standing soba bar in her new book Tokyo 8 Square Metres.

“On a Tokyo lunchtime, when you duck into a standing soba bar to fill your stomach, every customer inside is a salaried worker, men mostly. I find myself among them, slurping a hot broth soba. Whether they have come alone or with a colleague, they share a common air — a little formulaic, yet carrying a seasoned, self-possessed way of speaking and moving.” (Tokyo 8 Square Metres)

Normally, the only sound in a standing soba bar is the rush of hurried slurping; pressed for time, people rarely talk. And yet the standing soba bar, a gathering place for ordinary folk, is a gathering place for stories.

NHK’s documentary series 72 Hours once filmed a soba vending machine near Akita Port Station. After forty years in operation and more than 400,000 servings sold, the ageing machine had finally broken down and was set to shut down for good. In the bitter midwinter, amid blizzards, people came one after another to bid it farewell.

A seventy-eight-year-old man, widowed thirteen years, came alone to eat a birthday bowl of noodles, hoping for a little chat with the strangers around him. A designated driver who had finished his night shift at four in the morning came for a bowl, savouring the deep quiet of the sea breeze and the stars overhead. A fifty-three-year-old pastry chef, recently diagnosed with cancer, said he never felt lonely here, even when he came alone… The moment the machine was switched off, tears fell.

This farewell to a soba vending machine became the highest-rated episode in the history of NHK’s 72 Hours series.

Today, alongside traditional old shops and convenient chains, stylish soba bars aimed at younger diners have also caught on.

Compared with rice, buckwheat is richer in protein and dietary fibre, produces amino acids beneficial to the body, and carries fewer calories. Nutritional research has further suggested that the combination of vitamin C and rutin found in buckwheat helps capillaries function effectively, and may even help suppress hypertension and prevent cerebral arteriosclerosis. Buckwheat has thus become a poster child for healthy light eating, especially among the younger generation.

Buckwheat and sake have gone together since ancient times. Nagano grows fine buckwheat and produces exceptional sake. No wonder soba bars pairing the two have found a devoted following — they typically call themselves So Bar, a portmanteau of the Japanese word for soba (soba) and “bar”.

Today, the “Zenmen-kyō” (national noodle association) in Japan stages all manner of events around the country to promote soba culture — Soba University lectures, soba fairs, children’s hands-on buckwheat workshops, a dan-ranking certification system for soba artisans, and more. It also travels the world sharing food culture centred on buckwheat, hoping this tradition will be both preserved and carried forward.

But which day, in the end, is truly a day for soba?

Some hold that, because of the custom of eating toshikoshi soba on Ōmisoka, the last day of every month is a Soba Day. The eighth of February, too, is seen as a day celebrating nihachi soba, since 2/8 echoes the beloved 8:2 ratio. The Noodles Association, meanwhile, marks the 8th of October as Soba Day, because the Japanese pronunciation of the numbers 10 and 8 sounds like “soba”.

But for ordinary people, any day you feel like stepping out for a bowl of soba is Soba Day, really.

Foodthink contributor

Li Yindou

Born in Jiangxi province, she has studied and worked in Beijing, Shanghai and Nagano, and now lives in Tokyo. Between painting sessions, she works part-time shifts in cafés and restaurants.

 

 

 

Editor: Zeen