IKEDA, Japan — A shabby wooden shack takes center stage at the Instant Noodle Museum, where lopsided bags of flour, a giant wok and mounds of noodles on a makeshift counter tell a tale of anguish, dedication and ultimate victory.

        It's the recreation of the very spot where the instant noodle was invented 43 years ago in this central Japanese town, the fruit of feverish experimentation by a man driven by memory of devastation after World War II — hungry people huddling around bowls of steaming noodles at a black market.

        The man was Momofuku Ando, the “noodle king” and founder of Nissin Food Products Co. And what began as his backyard operation is now a global giant producing more than 4 billion packs and cups of instant noodles a year, controlling 40 percent of the Japanese market and 10 percent of the world market.

        Nissin, which means “purity by the day,” now runs 25 plants in eight nations using shrimp from India and cabbage from China, harboring ambitions to expand in the giant Chinese market and still relatively unexplored areas like Russia, Africa and the Middle East.

        Many Japanese believe the instant noodle is one of the top inventions of the 20th century, ranking with the Sony Walkman, Toyota cars and Nintendo video games as the nation's offerings to the world.

        But Nissin faces global challenges in the new century, battling tough competition both at home and the United States in an increasingly cluttered sector. Nissin has successfully adapted its product to the peculiarities of foreign markets over the years — offering shorter noodles that are better to slurp with forks than chopsticks. But a tangle of noodle rivals is depressing profits and forcing serious cost-cutting.

        The growing global fight doesn't seem to faze Mr. Ando, still spry at 90 despite failing eyesight. Mr. Ando is company chairman, having relinquished the presidency to his son.

        “Maybe I came up with the original Japanese fast food,” he said in a recent interview at the museum in Ikeda, 250 miles west of Tokyo, where Nissin's Chicken Ramen was born in 1958. “Instants, like instant coffee, have become a part of everyday life.”

        Mr. Ando is a folk hero here, Japan's Colonel Sanders of sorts, credited with changing the eating habits of a nation at time when more and more people were turning to household appliances and other modern-day conveniences.

        Above all, Nissin is proud that the Cup Noodle — which Mr. Ando invented in 1971 — sits on American supermarket shelves next to Campbell Soup, not cloistered away in the ethnic food section.

        In Japan, the noodle competition has grown so frenzied several hundred new instant noodle products hit stores every year, including flavors such as cheese-curry, spicy-hot and green tea.

        The pricing war is the biggest problem across the Pacific. Instant noodles sell for 50 cents to 75 cents a pack in Japan, where costs tend to be higher for almost anything.

        At home, Nissin is riding out the competition with marketing centered around its established brand. Recent TV ads played up the food-of-the-century theme using trick photography to show a popular Japanese actor eating Cup Noodles with Mikhail Gorbachev and John Lennon.

        Nissin's billboard in Times Square in New York — a giant Cup Noodle that wafts steam — has helped make millions of Americans familiar with the idea of a “meal in a cup.”

        For the fiscal year ending in March, Nissin expects profits to drop 10 percent, to the equivalent of $118 million, largely due to workers' pension payments. But sales are edging up to $2.6 billion.

        “With the market so saturated, Nissin can't be the only big winner,” said Yoko Fujii, analyst at Jardine Fleming in Tokyo.

        The history of the instant noodle, from its humble beginnings to its global success, can be seen at the Instant Noodle Museum, which opened in November 1999 in Ikeda and is run by Nissin's nonprofit foundation.

        Admission is free, and visitors can take in the displays of the product lineup over the years — a cup-noodle vending machine from the 1970s and a replica of the truck that served free noodles after a major 1995 earthquake in Japan.

        When he began work on the instant noodle, Mr. Ando was already 48. His lending business had failed and he was left with next to nothing — except the conviction that without food, people had only despair.

        Mr. Ando tried many formulas before hitting upon the answer by accident — watching his wife frying food for dinner. Deep-frying noodles left them porous so they turned soft and tasty easily.

        “I put it in a bowl, then I poured hot water from a pot,” Mr. Ando recalls, gesturing energetically with his frail, wrinkled hands. “And oh, what can I say, there was the noodle. I felt joy — I'd hit upon the idea.”

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