Profile
安藤百福（あんどう ももふく）は、1910年3月5日に台湾・嘉義生まれの日本の実業家・発明家。1958年（昭和33年）に世界初のインスタントラーメン「チキンラーメン」を発明し、1971年には「カップヌードル」を開発。日清食品株式会社の創業者。2007年1月5日、96歳で逝去。
Momofuku Ando (March 5, 1910 – January 5, 2007) was a Japanese inventor and entrepreneur born in Chiayi, Taiwan (then under Japanese administration). He moved to Osaka in his early twenties and worked in textiles and food trading. Yet the turmoil of World War II and the economic chaos that followed brought him repeated setbacks. In 1948, he was arrested by the GHQ occupation authorities on charges of tax evasion and held in Sugamo Prison, before his release in 1950. Then, in 1957, Osaka Kagin, a credit union where he personally served as chairman, collapsed after he diverted its funds into futures speculation without the board’s authorization; Ando was indicted for breach of trust, received a suspended sentence, and lost his entire personal fortune — a double trial layered atop the first. Even so, he came to regard every one of these experiences as a “layered accumulation of wisdom,” and kept moving forward.
At age 48, in a small shed behind his home in Ikeda, Osaka, Ando conducted months of solitary research and on August 25, 1958, completed the world’s first instant noodle: Chikin Ramen (Chicken Ramen). Chuko Sosha, the company he had founded in 1948 and renamed Sanshi Shokusan Co., Ltd. in 1949, was itself renamed Nissin Food Products Co., Ltd. in December 1958 — the same year Chikin Ramen launched — opening a new era of industrialized food. In 1971, at age 61, he invented the Cup Noodle — a self-contained, portable meal in a polystyrene cup that redefined convenience food worldwide. The Cup Noodle was later selected as a space food for international missions, and Chicken Ramen was voted one of the greatest Japanese inventions of the 20th century in multiple polls.
Even past the age of 90, Ando remained energetically engaged in lectures and business, and continued to voice his life philosophy through two phrases: “Shoku tarite yo wa taira ka” (食足世平) — when there is enough to eat, the world becomes calm — and “Koronde mo tada de wa okiruna” — never get up from a fall empty-handed. The Instant Ramen Museum opened in Ikeda City in 2005 to honor his legacy. He passed away on January 5, 2007, at age 96 — leaving behind a world transformed by two small innovations and a reminder that a new beginning is possible at any age.