The Day the White Block Came Down from Behind the Temple Wall

Tofu, when you think about it, is a truly strange thing to eat.

What began as a hard bean is ground, boiled, strained, struck with brine, and somehow ends up a white block that sits in the palm of your hand. Set your teeth to it and it crumbles away; lay it on your tongue and it is faint, with hardly any taste to speak of. And yet that very tastelessness is what lets it keep company with anything at all. Put it in soup and it drinks up the soup; grill it and it turns fragrant; chill it and nothing is left but the bean's faint sweetness.

These days tofu is an ordinary dish, so much a block, on sale at any shop front. But this white thing was not always there in the villages.

As far as I have seen, tofu was once something that lived quietly in the depths of temples. Monks who had given up meat and fish still had to keep their strength up, and so they worked beans into a food — the food of shōjin, of religious discipline, you might call it. Then it crossed the temple wall, came down to the gate, and in time found its way onto the supper trays of the village — and that turning, I watched with my own eyes, at the gate of one particular temple.

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It was the winter of Ōei 12 — the year 1405. I was living at the gate of a certain zen temple in Ōmi, running a small trade delivering firewood and greens to the monks.

The temple was by no means large. But the monks lived by a strict rule, and it was something to see. No meat, no fish, and they even avoided what they called kun — the strong-smelling things, the onion and the garlic chive and their kind. How anyone found the strength to stand on such meals was a thing I never stopped wondering at.

And on those trays, there was always one thing that was never missing. A white block, about the size of a palm.

The first time I laid eyes on it was when I had carried firewood round to the back of the kitchen quarters. The old monk who kept the temple kitchen was bent over a great stone quern, patiently grinding down beans that had soaked all night. A white milk-like liquid dripped thickly over the rim of the stone.

"Reverend sir, what on earth is that?"

When I asked, the old monk answered without stopping his hands.

"Beans. You grind them like this, boil them, strain them, set them. On the Buddha's path we may not eat the flesh of beasts. But a man's body craves something with strength in it all the same. This, you see, is meat made from beans — the poor man's meat."

I stayed at his elbow and watched the whole while, the way one watches a rare thing, as that white liquid slowly gathered itself into a block.

The ground bean liquid was boiled in a cauldron, then strained through cloth. What was left behind and what ran through — the milky part — were parted from one another. Into that liquid the old monk let fall a single drop of a bitter water he called nigari, a bitter brine. And then — well, it astonished me. The white liquid, which had run so thin, began at once to draw together like cloud, and turned into a soft, loose mass. This he poured into a box lined with cloth, laid a stone lightly on top, and let the water go for a while.

What came out of the box was square and white and glistening wet, as though it had been cut out of snow.

"Touch it."

I did as I was told and pressed it with a finger, and it trembled and kept the mark. That a thing so soft should be born out of a bean so hard. I could only stand there with my mouth open, staring.

That evening the old monk laid a broken piece of it in my palm. It had only been firmed up in cold well water; there was no seasoning on it. In the mouth it was faint, hardly any taste at all. But the more I chewed, the more a soft sweetness, hidden deep in the bean, came seeping through. There was none of the fat of an animal's flesh anywhere in it, and yet, strangely, it left a settled, contented feeling low in my belly.

"Well?"

"...It is a strange thing to eat, sir. There is a taste, and yet there isn't."

The old monk laughed out loud.

"It is good precisely because it has no taste. Having none, it suits the soup, it suits the dishes, and a man never tires of it however long he eats it. One who serves the Buddha must not drown in the pleasures of the tongue. But strength is needed. This faintness is just the thing."

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After that I took to going round to the back of the kitchen quarters again and again, stealing looks at the old monk's hands.

How long to soak the beans. How high to keep the fire. At what moment to add the nigari, and how much. Add too much and the block sets hard and tight; too little and it never sets at all, and falls apart. That judgment, the old monk said, was harder than anything.

"Why does it set?"

When I asked, the old monk only laughed and gave me this much.

"Who knows. The nigari calls out the spirit of the bean, I suppose. We only move our hands the way the reverend before us taught us — do it thus, and thus it will be."

— Why does it set. Not one soul in those days could put the reason into words. All that was passed down, from temple to temple, from monk to monk, by word of mouth, was the hands' own memory: do it thus and thus it will be. They did not know the reasoning, but the hands knew. And that, I think, was enough.

At the close of one year, I gathered my courage and made my plea to the old monk.

"Reverend sir. Would you not teach me that making of yours? I should like to make it outside the temple as well."

The old monk was silent for a while. Then he said, quietly:

"This was, at bottom, a food for those who serve the Buddha, to see them through the way of discipline. But then — to keep a good thing hidden inside the temple wall would be greed of a sort, would it not. If the village folk gain nourishment by it, perhaps that too is a merit."

And so the old monk took my hands in his and taught me, one thing at a time, from the grinding of the beans to the striking of the nigari.

The work was far harder than I had imagined. First the beans had to soak from the evening before. In the cold season, a good long while; in the hot, a shorter one — the measure shifted with the year. Grinding the swollen beans on the stone quern was labor enough to numb your arms. Hurry it and grind it coarse, and it will not set; do it properly, and the quern has you for the better part of an hour. The ground liquid goes into the cauldron and must be stirred without pause, so it neither scorches nor boils over. And when the boiled stuff is strained through cloth, the hot liquid catches your fingers, and I leapt up more times than I can count.

The hardest passage was, as ever, the nigari.

"Too soon will not do, and too late will not do. Watch how the steam rises, watch the color on the face of the liquid, and strike at the very moment. And once you have struck, never stir in haste. Softly — wait."

I failed again and again. It would not set and fell apart; or it turned bitter; or it went far too hard. Once my hand was so quick with the nigari that it came out a crumbling waste. But as I did it over and over, that instant when the face of the liquid shifts, all at once, in color — little by little my eye learned to read it. It was not reasoning. The hands and the eyes learned the moment. And in time that snow-like block began to be born from my hands too. When I lifted the first piece that had set without crumbling out of its box, I cried out before I knew I had.

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I began making tofu in my own hut by the temple gate.

At first the neighbors only came round to gawk at the oddity. That strange white thing the reverends eat — that was what they took it for. But one after another, people began, timidly, to put it in their mouths.

Put it in soup, and the faint block drinks up the soup and crumbles away on the tongue. Salt it and grill it, and it turns plump and fragrant. Old folk with failing teeth were grateful — this, at least, I can chew. A woman whose milk would not come ate it and got her strength. For village people who could buy neither meat nor fish, this block, made from a handful of beans, must have been nourishment beyond price.

"The temple food's come down to the village, has it."

Somebody said it and laughed. The words made me oddly glad. The white block that had been inside the wall was coming down, one piece at a time, onto the supper trays of the village. And to think that the hands doing the carrying over were mine, and nobody else's.

Word spread, little by little, to the villages round about. When I shouldered my load and went out on market days, the white blocks would be gone before the day was out. In time there were men who came from the next village wanting to learn my way of making it. And I took their hands in mine, as the old monk had once taken mine, and taught them without holding back — from the soaking of the beans to the moment for the nigari.

"This, now — this was the reverends' food to begin with. But there's no sense hoarding a good thing. Learn it, and make it in your own village too."

And as I said it, I found myself remembering the voice of the old monk behind the kitchen quarters, saying the very same. To keep it hidden inside the wall would be greed. From hand to hand, from village to village. One way of striking the nigari, traveling like this from person to person. What I passed on, someone else would pass on again, to some other village I would never see. And thinking so, a mere block of bean began to seem a very great thing.

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It was around this time — an age when the world fell into disorder and settled again, over and over — that the white block, which had been nothing but the temple's food of discipline, came down to the gate and became a daily dish of the village. I watched that turning from one temple gate.

At first it belonged to the monks alone. The poor man's meat, standing in for the flesh they had renounced. But as it crossed over into the villages, it came to have nothing to do with discipline or merit, and became simply a dish that was good, and cheap, and nourishing. Grind the bean, boil it, strain it, strike it with nigari. That patient handwork spread from the temple to the gate, and from the gate to the village, passed along by human hands.

Now tofu is an ordinary dish, so much a block, on sale at any shop front. And why it should set when you strike it with nigari — there is a proper account of the reasoning now. But those who take up their chopsticks thinking, this was once a temple food of discipline — there are not so many of them anymore.

Even so, I find myself thinking.

When you lift a piece of chilled tofu with your chopsticks, if you could remember, just a little, on the far side of that white block, the back of an old monk turning a stone quern, and the hands of a man at a temple gate who failed and set it again and again — that would be enough. Faint, without taste, crumbling away. And yet, inside that tastelessness, a long, long road is soaked — the road down from over the wall and into the village.

Tofu just sits there on the plate, white and glistening, quivering. And still, in that one piece, are the many hands of those who patiently ground a hard bean and turned it into a faint white block. That is the sort of thing I love.

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