Japan's Tofu & Soy Culture

About this book

Tofu in Japan is not a substitute. It is a thousand-year food culture of its own — cotton and silken blocks, curds scooped at dawn, freeze-dried mountain tofu, soy-milk skins, fried pockets for fox shrines, sweet zunda and kinako, beans scattered at Setsubun. This guide covers the whole culture in 200 entries: the forms of tofu, the towns and makers, fried and transformed soy foods, tofu at the table, soy milk and okara, edamame and sweet soy, festivals and ritual, and the modern plant-based table. Every entry follows the same four fields — the bean and its home ground, the craft, the taste and the table, and where you meet it with the one official check to make before you travel — so any two entries can be compared in seconds. No shops are ranked and no prices or hours are asserted; styles, districts and traditions are described as locals know them. Written and produced in Japan by a Japanese author and publisher.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.