The Japanese Stew Inspired By British Cuisine

When you think of Japanese cuisine, a few different dishes come to mind. There's sushi – that quintessential meal consisting of raw fish and vinegared rice in various permutations. Then there are desserts like Japanese cheesecake, snacks like pocky, and noodle soups like ramen. Beef stew, on the other hand, may not be the first dish (or even the tenth) that springs to mind. And yet, it is one of the most beloved comfort foods in Japan.

Nikujaga consists of thin slices of beef (or pork in Eastern Japan), as well as potatoes, onions, and vegetables. Some include carrots, others include noodles. The ingredients are stewed in soy sauce, mirin, and dashi until the liquid is significantly reduced. The stew is then served over rice. Although beef stew existed in Japan before nikujaga, the most commonly cited story for its origin involves Tōgō Heihachirō, a high-ranking admiral whose naval fleet won a decisive victory during the Russo-Japanese War. 

Tōgō had studied in Britain for seven years in the 1870s and, according to legend, acquired a taste for beef stew while he was there. Allegedly, during the 1890s, he tasked the chefs at the Maizuru Navel Station to make a version of British beef stew, and the result was nikujaga. While it is a plausible story, that doesn't mean it's necessarily true — and there's some controversy over this humble dish's beginnings.

It turns out that the group who pushed the claim behind the first Tōgō story was the tourist board of Maizuru, the city that once served as the base for the Imperial Japanese Navy where Tōgō Heihachirō was stationed. For a while after World War II, there was a stigma against cities that hosted the Imperial Navy, but that's turned around in recent years, due to tourists' growing interest in naval history. Having heard an anecdote that nikujaga originated in naval galleys, Maizuru tourist board member Takao Shimizu decided that, hey, Tōgō probably ate beef stew at least once when he was in the United Kingdom, so they played up the idea that he ordered nikujaga's creation, effectively blending two cultural cuisines.

Although this version of events is the most common origin story for nikujaga, it's not the only one. Another city that hosted the Imperial Navy, Kure, claimed that Tōgō ordered the dish's creation in 1891, while he was stationed in Kure, to improve nutrition and boost levels of vitamin B among Japanese naval officers. A sort-of-friendly rivalry has ensued between Maizuru and Kure, and both their tourist boards are probably quite happy about the attention that the dish has garnered.