拍摄美国最古老的豆腐店之一

拍摄美国最古老的豆腐店之一

Growing up in Portland, Ore., in the '90s, tofu could be hard to find. It would be a long time before ramen joints spread across the city, before national chains like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods had their own store-brand tofu.

上世纪90年代，我在俄勒冈州波特兰长大，豆腐可能很难找到。在拉面店遍布全城之前，像乔的店和全食超市这样的全国性连锁店还没有自己的自有品牌豆腐，这样的日子还很长。

But like soba noodles, nori, rice and fish, tofu is a staple of Japanese home cooking. So my parents regularly made a 15-minute drive west, across the Willamette River, to stock up at Ota Tofu.

但和荞麦面、紫菜、米饭和鱼一样，豆腐是日本家庭烹饪的主食。因此，我的父母经常驱车15分钟，穿过威拉米特河，到太田豆腐商店买东西。

The old-school company still makes its tofu by hand in small batches, navigating a growing demand for plant-based foods. But what I didn't realize then is that it's also a cultural institution — the oldest tofu producer still operating in the country, Ota Tofu has fed Portland's Japanese American community for more than 100 years. Eileen Ota, a former owner of Ota Tofu, notes that other tofu producers existed earlier in the United States, but many ceased operations because of one event: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

这家老派公司仍然小批量手工制作豆腐，以满足人们对植物性食品日益增长的需求。但我当时没有意识到的是，它也是一个文化机构——美国历史最悠久的豆腐生产商，太田豆腐在波特兰的日裔美国人社区已经有100多年的历史了。曾是太田豆腐公司老板的艾琳·太田指出，美国早前就有其他豆腐生产商，但很多都因为一件事而停业:二战期间日裔美国人遭到拘禁。

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order gave an estimated 120.000 Japanese Americans only a few days to pack up their belongings for indefinite incarceration. That forced many small-business owners to liquidate their inventory and equipment, and farmers had to sell their land for fractions of its worth. The economic losses at the time were between $1 billion and $3 billion ($16 billion to $47 billion in today's dollars), according to Densho, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the history of the internment.

富兰克林·D·罗斯福总统的行政命令要求大约12万名日裔美国人在几天内收拾行李，接受无限期监禁。这迫使许多小企业主变卖他们的存货和设备，农民不得不以其价值的一小部分出售他们的土地。根据致力于保存拘留历史的非营利组织Densho的数据，当时的经济损失在10亿到30亿美元之间(相当于今天的160亿到470亿美元)。

Shina and Saizo Ohta, the co-owners of Ota Tofu at the time (Ohta is the original English spelling of the family name), were forced to leave Portland for the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho. They left their shop without any guarantee they would be able reopen it.

矢那和齐三·太田是当时太田豆腐(Ohta是奥塔家族名字的英文拼写)的共同所有者，他们被迫离开波特兰前往爱达荷州的Minidoka搬迁中心。他们在没有任何保证的情况下离开了他们的商店，他们将能够重新开张。

Saizo Ohta, who was 61 when they left, died at Minidoka, according to Eileen Ota, who brought a thick binder of historical documents and printed emails when we met for coffee.

据艾琳·太田说，他们离开时61岁的齐三·太田在米尼多卡去世。我们见面喝咖啡时，她带来了厚厚的历史文件活页夹，并打印了电子邮件。

When the landlord of the shop heard about Saizo's death, she decided to keep their equipment and property for Shina, Saizo's wife. When she returned, she reopened the shop on her own, and it stayed in the family until Eileen Ota sold it in February. I've probably eaten more tofu than any other protein, but I didn't know anything about how tofu was made. So on a predictably rainy morning in October, I came in to photograph the manufacturing process.

商店的老板听说了齐三的死讯，她决定把他们的设备和财产留给齐三的妻子矢那。当她回来后，她自己重新开了这家店，它一直留在家里，直到艾琳·太田在2月份卖掉它。我吃的豆腐可能比其他任何蛋白质都多，但我对豆腐是怎么做的一无所知。因此，在10月一个预报的雨天早晨，我进来拍摄了生产过程。

Steam wafted through the production room, and it smelled like soy milk and oil from making agedashi tofu, which is sliced thin and fried in-house.

蒸汽从生产车间飘过，闻起来像豆浆和油，这是制作日式炸豆腐的味道。日式炸豆腐被切成薄片，在室内炸。

Regulars lined up at a cluttered counter near the front door to pick up a block or two of fresh tofu wrapped in plastic bags. One customer brought his own Tupperware.

常客们在前门附近一个杂乱的柜台前排起长队，拿起一两块用塑料袋包裹的新鲜豆腐。一位顾客带来了自己的特百惠。

Ko Ota, the only direct descendant of Shina and Saizo Ohta at the shop, comes in at 3 a.m. every day to oversee the cooking process. Ota Tofu's handmade product has become something of a rarity as demand for tofu has increased in the past decade — higher demand requires more output, so many manufacturers have switched to a fully automated process. "Our competitors essentially just push buttons," said Jason Ogata, the new owner of the company.

幸子太田是矢那和齐三太田在商店里唯一的直系后裔，凌晨3点进来。幸子太田每天监督烹饪过程。太田豆腐的手工产品在过去十年里已经成为一种罕见的产品，因为对豆腐的需求有所增加-更高的需求需要更多的产量，因此许多制造商已经转向完全自动化的工艺。“我们的竞争对手基本上只是按下按钮，”该公司的新老板詹森奥加塔说。