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Tofuyo in Japan

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Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

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Tofuyo, fermented tofu (soybean curd) made by the complicated actions of Monascus, Aspergillus, and Bacillus, is a traditional fermented tofu in Okinawa, Japan. Fermented tofu has been widely consumed in East and Southeast Asian countries for a long time. Its origin has being considered to be red-sufu, which is a traditional fermented tofu of mainland China and Taiwan, and it was brought to Okinawa from Fujian, China, during the period of the Ryukyu dynasty in the eighteenth century. In Japan, fermented tofu, red-sufu, has been called nyufu (rufu) or funyu (furu) (Ohta, 1965a, b).

Chinese sufu is prepared by overgrowing with a mold of Actinomucor, Mucor, or Rhizopus on the surface of tofu, and it is further fermented in a mixture of salt brine and rice wine (Han, Rombouts, & Nout, 2001; Su, 1986; Wang & Hesseltine, 1970). Although there are several kinds of commercial products of sufu in Taiwan (Fig. 1), red-sufu is colored with red mold rice (red koji or beni koji), which is prepared...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of the Ryukyus, Senbaru 1, Nishihara-cho, Okinawa, 903-0213, Japan

    Masaaki Yasuda & Shinjiro Tachibana

  2. Okinawa Study Center, The Open University of Japan, Senbaru 1, Nishihara-sho, Okinawa, 903-0213, Japan

    Masaaki Yasuda

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  1. Masaaki Yasuda
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  2. Shinjiro Tachibana
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Correspondence to Masaaki Yasuda .

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  1. Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, USA

    Helaine Selin

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Yasuda, M., Tachibana, S. (2016). Tofuyo in Japan. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_10199

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