Britain’s cuisine helped introduce curry to Japan during the Meiji era.
Curry originated in South Asia, but Japan encountered it primarily through British channels. British colonial connections in India helped popularize curry powder and curry-style dishes in Britain, and British or Anglo-Indian naval influence then helped carry those ideas to Japan as the country opened to the West.
Japanese cooks transformed the imported concept rather than preserving one Indian recipe. Curry became a yōshoku, or Western-style dish, and was adapted into a thick, relatively mild sauce often served with Japanese short-grain rice. On menus and in cookbooks from the 1870s, curry rice began appearing alongside other newly adopted Western foods.
China had long-standing culinary links with Japan, but it is not the country credited with introducing this curry tradition. France and Portugal influenced other parts of Japanese food culture, yet neither is the canonical answer for the arrival of curry in Meiji-era Japan. Later, the Japanese Army and Navy helped make curry a familiar everyday meal.