I wasn't disputing that as to the recent past.
I searched up some Japanese-language videos on youtube as a followup, and I can report:
A noticeable "f" is present before "u" in many cases. (I found it in the words "tofu" and "daifuku", plus the obvious English loanwords "soft", "firm", and "waffuru". My best guess as to the vowel following "f" is "u" for "soft" and "a" for "firm".)
But, not consistently. You don't have to pronounce the syllable that way. (Observed also in "tofu" and "daifuku".)
The nature of my low-effort search precludes any statements about dialectal variation. I wouldn't want to claim that the syllable onsets are "clearly different" to modern speakers today. But (1) the option to have an "f" is still present in -u syllables, and (2) the existence of common loanwords where the foreign sound is recognized is, if anything, going to serve to strengthen awareness of the hypothetical difference.