Nankan-age is a fried tofu that has been made in this town since the Edo period. It is much larger than an ordinary abura-age, roughly twenty-five centimeters on a side. Tofu is sliced thin, pressed hard to drive the water out, and fried twice, starting at a low oil temperature and finishing at a high one.

Because so little moisture is left in it, kept somewhere dark and cool it holds at room temperature for two or three months.

The method arrived, it is said, after a war. Following the Shimabara rebellion, people from around Matsuyama in Iyo moved into a Shimabara emptied of its population, and the technique came north with them. Shikoku still makes something very similar, called Matsuyama-age, and in the Taisho years the Nankan version was improved again to keep even longer, arriving at what is sold today.

Using it in place of nori in a rolled sushi was thought of in the late 1960s. The sheet is boiled to draw off the oil, then simmered sweet and salty in dashi, soy sauce, and sugar, then squeezed out, opened flat on the rolling mat, spread with rice and filled and rolled. Rice does not grip it the way it grips seaweed, so the hands have to judge how hard to pull. It is made for celebrations and also turns up, quite ordinarily, in a lunchbox at a school sports day.