During the Edo period, Toride was a prosperous town on the important route between Mito and the Tokugawa shogunate's government in Japan's capital city, Edo (now called Tokyo). In 1687, the Tokugawa authorities designated a Toride inn run by the prominent Someno family as the official resting place for feudal lords traveling between Mito and the capital. The name of the inn was Honjin. 

 (Photo: Honjin as it appears today.)

In 1862, a tofu maker named Hanjiro Katori married into the Someno family and, with his new bride Sen, built a tofu shop called Hanjiroshouten near the inn.

Thanks in part to the fertile lands and mineral-rich water systems of the nearby Tone River, Hanjiroshouten produced superior tofu that so impressed the Honjin inn's feudal guests, its reputation as a purveyor of the highest quality wares was firmly established.

 

Following the end of the Edo period, Hanjiro and Sen's only daughter Yasu continued to operate the Hanjiroshouten shop in the Meiji Era. The Someno family's secret recipes and tofu making techniques have been passed down from one generation to the next ever since.

In 1932, Yasu's son Shinosuke founded a tofu shop of his own at Hongo in Toride city. The name of that shop was Somenotofuten. Both Somenotofuten and the original Hanjiroshouten shop continued to prosper until they were merged in 2004 under the name Somenoya.

(Photo: The Hanjiro shop, circa 1945-1955.)