USSEC participated in the 2014 Japan Tofu Shop Summit held in Naha City in Okinawa Prefecture.  USSEC Country Director – Japan Mitsuyuki Nishimura and USSEC North Asia Regional Human Utilization Director Masako Tateishi represented USSEC at this event.  More than 60 tofu companies, soybean wholesalers and government representatives from all over Japan attended the seminar organized by Zentoren, the National Federation of Tofu Commerce and Industry Trade Association.  Mr. Nishimura delivered a presentation on U.S. soy, followed by speeches from a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the chairman of Zentoren.

The event offered younger leaders in Japan’s tofu industry the opportunity to interact with each other and learn about products and business plans in order to educate the next generation of leaders.  A main discussion at this summit focused on how to brand Okinawa’s tofu, called Shima-Tofu (English translation:  firm and large); the U.S. supplies over 90% of the soybeans utilized in this product.  The tofu tasting portion of the event featured 45 different types of tofu from various regions of Japan.
The upcoming Tofu & Soyfood Fair 2014 will be held at Tokyo Big Sight, Tokyo’s national exhibition center, on November 23 and 24 and is expected to draw 25,000 visitors over two days.  Zentoren also announced that the 5^th Tofu Shop Summit will be held in Kyoto.
Japan, a large consumer of tofu products, used 484,000 metric tons of non-GMO identity-preserved (IP) soybeans in 2013.  Over 40 percent of the soybeans used for tofu are of U.S. origin.  USSEC Japan will continue to support Japan’s tofu industry in order to maximize the sales of U.S. IP Soy.