In the fall of 2004, as a media fellow with the Japan Society of New York, I traveled to Japan to report on the effects of globalization and Westernization on the Japanese diet and at the Japanese table. I traveled all over the country interviewing rice and wasabi farmers, fishmongers, housewives, historians, noodle makers, soy sauce and sake brewers, market vendors, chefs, tofu makers and many others about the food they grow, produce and cook and with whom they share it. Inspired by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's dictum, "Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are," I went to Japan in search of a tableside view of the Japanese today. I found it. The piece that airs here is about a tofu maker in Inuyama, Japan, a small city of 75,000 near Nagoya. I wanted to know how small-batch tofu makers were faring against competition from Western foods and supermarkets selling mass-produced tofu. My host in Inuyama, Anthony Bianchi, insisted that I talk with Takuji Yamato. Yamato-san, who is in his 60s but has the hairline and energy of a much younger man, is the character at the heart of this story. Forty years ago, when he decided to make tofu for a living, it was a sound career choice. Demand for small-batch tofu such as his was constant. About ten years ago, though, his sales started to slip. This is the story of how Yamato-san, by thinking like his Western competition, reversed that decline.

In the fall of 2004, as a media fellow with the Japan Society of New York, I traveled to Japan to report on the effects of globalization and Westernization on the Japanese diet and at the Japanese table. I traveled all over the country interviewing rice and wasabi farmers, fishmongers, housewives, historians, noodle makers, soy sauce and sake brewers, market vendors, chefs, tofu makers and many others about the food they grow, produce and cook and with whom they share it. Inspired by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's dictum, "Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are," I went to Japan in search of a tableside view of the Japanese today. I found it. The piece that airs here is about a tofu maker in Inuyama, Japan, a small city of 75,000 near Nagoya. I wanted to know how small-batch tofu makers were faring against competition from Western foods and supermarkets selling mass-produced tofu. My host in Inuyama, Anthony Bianchi, insisted that I talk with Takuji Yamato. Yamato-san, who is in his 60s but has the hairline and energy of a much younger man, is the character at the heart of this story. Forty years ago, when he decided to make tofu for a living, it was a sound career choice. Demand for small-batch tofu such as his was constant. About ten years ago, though, his sales started to slip. This is the story of how Yamato-san, by thinking like his Western competition, reversed that decline.