A GRAND corporate swindle, a company collapse and the potential demise of a national icon have created a bitter rift and split a country down the middle. The battleground: Japanese Worcestershire sauce.

Local loyalties and ancient jealousies have been stirred as never before as the cities of Osaka, in the west, and Tokyo, in the east, square up via the supermarket aisles. At stake is not just the survival of a thick, tangy household name, but the centuries-old culinary pride of two arch-rivals.

The furore centres on the recently bankrupted Ikari Sauce, the company that, 109 years ago, brought uustaa sohsu to Japanese palates ravenous for new foreign tastes.

Since then, competing versions of the sauce — there are about 130 makers in Japan — have been sloshed over all manner of dishes, from tonkatsu pork cutlets in Tokyo to tacoyaki fried octopus in Osaka.

Over the years it has become such a favourite condiment that many Japanese are unaware of its British origins. Keishichiro Yasui, who had studied medicine in Britain, brought Worcestershire Sauce to Japan in 1887, marketing it as “very nutritious”.

Each household consumes nearly two litres of the stuff a year, but will touch only the brand that it knows and loves. The basic ingredients of tomatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, apples, prunes and vinegar are the same, but there are two distinct recipes. Ikari, with a slightly sweet flavour, dominates in the Kansai (Osaka) region — it consumes the most sauce, at nearly three litres a household — and Bull-Dog holds the Kanto plains with a more spicy element.

For the gourmands of Osaka, who believe that their tastes are more refined and diverse than those in Tokyo, Ikari sauce is the gold standard by which lesser brands must be judged. The Osaka faithful were forced to watch in horror as Satoshi Kimura, the company’s former chairman and a member of the founding family, and several other executives were arrested for an alleged role in a £4 million fraud.

The scam is believed to have nothing to do with the food business, involving large pieces of fraudulently priced industrial equipment, but it did reveal the dire state of Ikari’s finances and, four days ago, it declared bankruptcy under a debt mountain of £25 million.

Just as the Osaka region was absorbing the nightmare of a possible future without Ikari sauce, a more terrible insult emerged from Tokyo: Bull-Dog offered financial assistance. Market experts believe that Bull-Dog is “almost certain” to buy its old foe, gaining a foothold in the west.

The predatory swoop underlines the economic differences between the wealthy metropolis of Tokyo and Osaka, the heart of industrial Japan that bore the brunt of the country’s years of slump in the 1990s.

Ikari tried yesterday to assure customers that they would keep their beloved tang. “It has always been a philosophy of ours to make a sauce that suits the Osaka palette,” a spokesman said. “We are confident that the taste of Ikari sauce will not change.”

Michiko Kakinoki, the owner of the Kuidaore, Osaka’s most famous restaurant, explained the importance of the Kansai icon. “Historically and culturally, the Osaka food culture is much more advanced than that of Kanto,” she said.

“Osaka has always been known as a merchant’s city and these merchants have always demanded lovely food and good value.

“Expensive food is easy to make; in Osaka, it is both delicious and cheap.”

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