In 1937 a shop called Nankin Senryo opened in Kurume. Miyamoto Tokio built it out of two things he had seen: the shina soba of Yokohama and the pork-bone broth of Nagasaki champon. What he arrived at was a pork broth, but one that still had clarity to it rather than the opacity people now associate with the word.

The white, clouded version arrived ten years later, and it arrived by mistake. Sugino Katsumi opened a shop called Sanku in 1947, also serving a clear broth. One day he left his mother to mind the preparation and went out. When he came back, the pot had been boiled far harder than intended and the soup had gone opaque.

That accident is the ramen of Kurume.

There is also a method here called yobimodoshi, calling back. As the pot goes down, new stock boiled in a separate kettle is added to it rather than the whole thing being started again, so a shop's broth is continuous across years. The savory compounds in it are reported at 2.8 times those of an ordinary method. The noodle is slightly thicker than Hakata's and the soup is heavier. The oldest shops keep it going in earthenware pots that have been in use for decades. Something that began as an error has been topped up ever since, without ever being started over.