I answered a broader question about how Japan came to adopt yoshoku, here:
. . . where I discussed Worcestershire sauce. Japanese were avidly adopting all sorts of Western cooking in the Meiji era, which brings us new Japanese favorites like "roast beef" ( ローストビーフ ) and "beefsteak" ( ビーフステーキ) . . . and worcestershire sauce was the accompaniment which Japanese generalized to more uses than the Europeans they'd acquired it from. There were significant numbers of British and American households in Japan in the Meiji era; former employees set up restaurants and cafeterias serving a Japanese version of Western cooking, and Worcestershire sauce was one of the condiments that the Japanese particularly liked.
It functions a bit as a spiced up Euro- soy sauce, in the Japanese take on European cooking. As a fermented product, you might compare it a bit to a spicy natto miso-- for Japanese it was a foreign food which fit within their flavor profiles, the fermented anchovy actually more unusual for England than it was for Japan . . . you can also perhaps compare it to the Roman garum.
See my much longer comment in the link above for a yoshoku bibliography.
Please excuse my ignorance, but what time line composed the “Meiji era” and why does it end as an era that adapts to western influences?