Karaage itself can trace its roots to a Chinese restaurant named Rairaiken in Nakatsu City"s next-door neighbour, Usa City. It was here in the late 1950s that the establishment began serving deep-fried chicken karaage as part of a set menu. From there, it jumped across the street to a small izakaya (tavern) named Shosuke, which learned the frying methods from Rairaiken. The owner of Shosuke was originally buying chickens from local farmers and selling them to butchers while his wife served karaage and sake to eager customers. But he had a problem: his karaage customers were primarily rice farmers who could only pay for his food and drinks when the rice harvest came in, so he was constantly scrambling for money and barely surviving as a business. At the same time, bigger farms started industrialising broiler chickens and his chicken-peddling business was becoming less profitable.