I saw an interesting scene in “Little Women” (2022), a South Korean serial TV drama, showing a woman released from a detention house.

One of her younger sisters and a friend greet her and offer a tray of diced tofu. The older sister eats the cubes without sitting down.

Tofu also appears in “Lady Vengeance,” a 2005 South Korean movie with a similar scene but quite different reaction.

When the female protagonist is released from prison, a man who meets her offers her a block of tofu on a plate. But the woman drops the tofu on the ground and hurls angry expletives at him.

An acquaintance well-versed in South Korean pop culture explained that when tofu is offered to released prisoners in the country, it conveys a wish that the recipient will lead a life with an immaculate heart.

Just eating the tofu presented is a pledge for social rehabilitation. But a refusal to eat the tofu, like in “Lady Vengeance,” represents a charged story development, such as a false accusation, the acquaintance said.

I have been to detention houses many times in Japan (as a reporter), but I never once saw tofu served on a plate outside the exit. The symbolic meaning of tofu in South Korea was something that I had never imagined.

DEROGATORY ASSOCIATION

The Economist magazine in February cited an astonishing remark by a Cabinet member in the British House of Commons.

Suella Braverman, home secretary in the short-lived Conservative Party administration of Prime Minister Liz Truss, was quoted as blaming “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati” for a protest that closed a bridge.

Environmental activists had climbed on a bridge on the Thames, causing serious traffic disruptions three years ago.

Braverman was denouncing them by using the term “wokerati,” a derogatory word for “woke” people, and connecting them to The Guardian newspaper, which is eager to report on environmental issues.

But the tofu part left me baffled.

I wondered if there was an entrenched association in Britain implying that tofu eaters are radical activists.

Russel Thomas, an author based in Britain, answered my question.

He said tofu certainly symbolizes vegetarianism in his country. Since the 19th century, many dissidents among the thinkers and poets in Britain have advocated vegetarianism.

Thomas, 36, asserted that tofu haters overlap with right-wingers in our age.

He has just published a book titled “Tofu: A Culinary History” following meticulous research on regions that have tofu-eating cultures, including Japan.

In the culinary sensibilities of Britain, tofu is perceived simply as a meat alternative with foreign origins, he said. Some even call it “fake meat.”

Thomas, however, drastically changed his view of tofu 10 years ago, when he first ate tofu served cold on a remote island in Okinawa Prefecture in June during the rainy season.

He was impressed by how refreshing it tasted.

The tofu he ate there was a world apart from the British variety, which is harder and drier.

Thomas has also lived in Tokyo, where he was surprised to see how meat and tofu, which are nemeses to each other in Britain, were “happily” mixed together in a single cookpot.

He said he was also impressed by the lack of political overtones concerning tofu in Japan.

Britain is not alone in that regard.

UNTHINKABLE IN JAPAN

Tateo Shimizu, who is well-versed in tofu culture in Europe, said the food can heavily reflect political trends in Germany.

“Tofu may abruptly sell out and disappear from storefronts when, for example, there is broader public support for the Green Party or when public enthusiasm increases for animal welfare,” he said.

Shimizu, 77, was my senior by many years in The Asahi Shimbun’s City News Section.

After he left the company at retirement age, he moved to Barcelona with his wife and operated a tofu shop in the Spanish city.

“In Spain, tofu is a diet food, pure and simple, with no political connotations,” he said. “I was astounded to see the gaudy colorings of tofu products made by local businesses, which came in mango, curry and other flavors (unimaginable in Japan).”

Shimizu stuck to the Japanese style. He decorated his shop with a display model of tofu being served cold and used ingenuity in naming his products.

For example, silk-strained and fine-grained tofu was labeled “tofu suave” (soft tofu), while broiled tofu was named “tofu asado” (roasted tofu).

He found no entry in dictionaries for “okara” (tofu residue), so he decided to call it “fibra de soja” (soy fiber).

Shimizu’s recollections of his strenuous efforts over 12 long years appear in “Barcelona de Tofu-ya ni Natta” (I opened a tofu shop in Barcelona), his book that hit shelves in January.

Tofu has been tossed to the ground outside the exit of a detention house in one country, disparaged by a Cabinet member in the national Parliament of another, and even been tinted in gaudy colors elsewhere.

My research and interviews for this article led me to deeply appreciate the happiness that tofu enjoys in Japan, where it can exist without undergoing similar hardships seen elsewhere, in my opinion.