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Kanten’s ancestor is tokoroten noodle (seaweed noodle) which is originally comes from China. Records shows that tokoroten was introduced into Japan during Nara era (around 1300 years ago). And, during heian era (around 1100 years ago), tokoroten was sold in Kyoto.
As mentioned, tokoroten comes from China. However, kanten itself is original Japanese food. During 17th century, it was said that kanten was discovered by Minoya Tarou Saemon at Fushimi Kyoto. One day, he forgot to leave tokoroten at outside in winter and the tokoroten was frozen during the night and then water was vaporized during daytime. This was repeated for sometime. After that, he found out tokoroten became freeze-dried and thus was named as kanten, 寒天 (ie. freezed tokoroten) soon after.
The type of kanten Minoya originally formed was bar kanten. During the 18th century, Hanbei Miyata, who trained at Minoya created string kanten and they were exported from Nagasaki to China. At that time, string kanten was primarily for exporting product and bar kanten was used mainly inside Japan. The following pictures show both bar and string kanten manufacture.
Kanten manufacturing became active during the 19th century especially in the Nagano area. It is because Nagano has the best climate location to create kanten. Furthermore, exporting kanten abroad was accelerated since a bacteriologist, Koch, recommended the use of kanten as the medium of bacillus. Soon after, scientists all over the world started to use kanten for their experiments. Eventually, kanten became a primary seafood export of Japan.
However, when World War 2 started, the Japanese government decided to ban exports to prevent other countries using kanten bacillus for military purposes. After that, other countries started to create powder kanten to continue their bacillus research. Therefore, powder kanten was initially created for research purpose and not for food. After the war, powder kanten manufacture was started in Japan as well, and created various different manufacturing techniques for many purposes, such as food, medical, bio technology, and cosmetics etc. As for the food, it was found that kanten had the potential to prevent cancer and other diseases. Now, creating new uses for kanten is a large area of study.
