In 1976, a young Tak Tokumine started selling Japanese books in London. At first, his customers were expats longing for a taste of home, which even he had struggled to find since emigrating to the UK to be with his then girlfriend.
He opened the first Japan Centre on Warwick Street, and by 1984 had moved to Soho and expanded to include an Asian supermarket and curry bar, offering ingredients and dishes to Londoners that had thus far been largely undiscovered. As the appetite for Japanese and Asian culture and cuisine in London was going, another move in 1994 to Piccadilly would see the opening of his first standalone restaurant Toku, a precursor to today’s popular Shoryu Ramen restaurants.
