After the war, national policy called for building a great many poultry farms against the food shortage, and Nakatsu ended up with a lot of them. Chicken consumption in the town rose accordingly. Into that situation came people repatriated from Manchuria, reproducing a way of cooking chicken that they had learned over there, and the local karaage is said to begin at exactly that intersection.

Two separate things combined here. Preserving chicken by steeping it in salt or in soy sauce, and the technique of deep frying. Out of that the local flavor settled into its present form.

Specialist shops multiplied over the last thirty or forty years, and there are now more than forty of them within the city, close enough together that people here say there are more karaage shops than there are convenience stores.

Most of them sell by weight, and here is the detail that stayed with me: they weigh the meat before frying, not after. Almost everything sold is takeaway, in paper. By the time you open the paper at home it has cooled a little and the crust has softened, and the whole thing is built on the assumption that this is fine. It is fried food designed for the walk back.