Napolitan Period BOrigin theory CVerified

Napolitan took shape in Japan after the war, roughly between 1945 and the 1950s. That it emerged in the postwar years, under American influence during the occupation, is nearly certain.

Today's coffee-shop Napolitan is boiled spaghetti generously tossed with ketchup. Tomato ketchup itself had been made and sold in Japan since 1908, late in the Meiji era. In occupied Yokohama, American soldiers boiled the spaghetti brought in as military rations and ate it dressed with salt, pepper and tomato ketchup. The Hotel New Grand in Yokohama says that this sight gave it the idea for a dish of its own. Napolitan is said to have spread as a coffee-shop (kissaten) menu item.

Yet 'Napolitan' is really two styles that need to be told apart. One is the prototype the Hotel New Grand presents as its own: a refined version fit for a hotel, with a sauce made not from ketchup but from fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes and tomato paste. The other is the version that a Western-food restaurant in Yokohama's Noge district served after the war, which skipped fresh tomatoes and used plenty of ketchup, then easy to come by. The two differ in ingredients, and though they go by the same name, as dishes they are quite different.

The origins of Napolitan tangle two questions together: since when did the name exist, and where was today's taste born?

The name was no postwar invention. As a side dish introduced by Saly Weil, the first head chef of the Hotel New Grand in Yokohama, 'Spaghetti Napolitaine' already appears on the à la carte menu of 27 January 1934, and the 1935 menu of the Tokyo New Grand carries the name in katakana as well. On 22 December 1934 the comic actor Roppa Furukawa ate spaghetti in the special dining room of the Mitsukoshi department store's main branch and wrote in his diary: 'A plain, light taste (Napolitan); good. Feels as if the water wasn't quite drained off.' On 29 April 1936 he noted eating 'macaroni Napolitan' in the basement dining room of Dentsu, so the name was attached to pasta other than spaghetti too. By the end of 1934, then, a spaghetti called 'Napolitan' was being served in a Tokyo department-store dining room. Yet neither the menus nor the diary say what the sauce was, and no record has yet surfaced that ties the prewar dish directly to the ketchup-flavored plate of the occupation years. That the name came early does not pull the birth of today's taste back before the war.

So where was today's taste born? Here two shops stand side by side. By the Hotel New Grand's own account, its second head chef, Shigetada Irie, took his idea from the sight of American soldiers dressing boiled spaghetti with ketchup during the occupation, and devised a refined version with a sauce of fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes and tomato paste. The hotel believes the dish reached its menu in the 1950s, after the requisition ended in 1952, and presents itself as the dish's birthplace. Another account names a different birthplace: the Center Grill, a Western-food restaurant in Noge that opened in 1946. By this account, the restaurant skipped fresh tomatoes and served a version made with plenty of ketchup, which was easy to come by after the war, and the Napolitan familiar today was born there. The two shops were also linked through people. Toyokichi Ishibashi, who founded the Center Grill, had been a cook at the Center Hotel, which Saly Weil ran. There is also a story that Irie advised Ishibashi, but the Hotel New Grand's spokesperson says only that the hotel has heard so.

For all the ties between them, views still differ on which shop to call the 'birthplace.' The Hotel New Grand claims the refined prototype made with fresh tomatoes as its own, while the version made with plenty of ketchup is said to have been born at the Center Grill. The single word 'birthplace' points to different things depending on the style, and no single starting point has been settled.