A food staple in east Asia since its discovery some 2,000 years ago, tofu has become a trendy ingredient in recent years, with demand skyrocketing during the pandemic.
Today, the art of traditional tofu-making is well preserved in Kyoto, where restaurants dedicated to temple food and traditional cuisine are still aplenty.
"Mukashi-tofu is made entirely by hand. You cannot make the tofu, even if you have learnt the process. You need to accumulate a wealth of experience and cultivate your senses by seeing tofu with your eyes and touching it with your hands," says Ogura. Benjamin Franklin, one of the United States' founding fathers, wrote a letter while he was in London -- with some soy beans attached -- raving about a"Chinese cheese" in 1770. It was one of the earliest documents on record mentioning tofu in the West.
His professional interest in tofu didn't begin until 1989 when he was program director at the National Cancer Institute's Diet and Cancer Branch. "As I learned more about soy, I became interested in its potential benefits beyond cancer. Consequently, I left the NCI in 1992 to devote all of my time to studying soy. I didn't have a job when I left, so in retrospect that is one foolish decision that worked out," says Messina.