Yawatahama has long been called the western gateway of Shikoku. Sea trade with Kyushu and with Kansai built it into a commercial town, and from the middle of the Meiji period ferries ran from here to Beppu and Usuki in Oita. Champon is understood to have crossed over to Shikoku along that route, brought by the same traffic that brought everything else.

The oldest shop still serving it opened in 1948, so the dish has been here at least that long.

What Nagasaki makes is built on pork bone and comes out white and clouded, and that is the version most people picture when they hear the word. This is not that at all.

The stock here is drawn from chicken frame with katsuobushi and kombu, and it stays clear, a transparent gold, and it tastes light rather than rich. What goes into it is thick Chinese noodles, a great deal of vegetable, pork, and then the things this particular town actually produces: kamaboko and jakoten, the fish cakes it has always been known for. The result looks nothing like what it is descended from. A fishing port took a dish that had arrived by boat and, instead of copying it, kept the name and refused the cloudiness entirely.