The Arts of the Microbial World

A rich literature documents the history of beer, whiskey, and sake brewing in Japan, while studies in the history of food examine consumption, production, policy, and preferences surrounding other comestibles. Histories of science spotlight medical breakthroughs in Japanese laboratories, and company histories (shashi) celebrate the contributions of individual corporations. Victoria Lee's The Arts of the Microbial World ingeniously brings these distinct literatures together in a pioneering work on the history of fermentation science in modern Japan. Centering the microbe as an object of investigation, the author demonstrates the inseparability of science, technology, business, and politics in the twentieth-century state.Moving forward in time, the chapters of the book highlight selected moments and topics in the history of fermentation science. Lee begins by exploring how traditional practices in making sake and soy sauce (shōyu) melded with the introduction of microbiological research to create a distinctive brewing culture. Brewers had long handled microorganisms in mold formations, most notably rice mold (kōji), a lucrative monopoly industry since the thirteenth century. At the end of the Meiji period (1868–1911), state-sponsored modernization campaigns promoted the “scientific” perspective of expert workers and faculty in universities, technical schools, and government research institutes. However, local traditions and understandings of nature retained influence, shaping the study and deployment of microbes not as pathogens (as they were constructed in Europe and the United States) but as living workers valued for what they could do.Interwar concerns about public health and food insecurity (dramatized by the 1918 rice riots), undergirded by Japan's expanding industrial and military ambitions, gave rise to new visions of microbes as nutritional resources and of fermentation science as national resource management. Scientists created a range of new synthetic and fermented products intended to supply adequate calories to a growing population, drawing on the imported Western vernaculars of Taylorism, eugenics, and biochemistry. Yet fermentation science also developed in ways that reinforced Japan's status as an Asian power, spotlighted in case studies of alcohol production in Japanese-occupied Taiwan and Korea. Lee offers a close reading of agricultural chemist Yamazaki Momoji's influential Tōa hakkō kagaku ronkō (A Study of East Asian Fermentation Chemistry), which both distinguished purportedly unique elements of Japanese manipulation of rice molds and situated these elements against a backdrop of Asian (particularly Chinese) achievements. In this way, Yamazaki sought to construct a quintessentially “Japanese” fermentation tradition. Published in March 1945, the study reflected the central paradox of Japanese imperialism, which simultaneously attempted to assimilate and to assert superiority over Asia.The final two chapters of The Arts of the Microbial World highlight major developments of fermentation science in the postwar period. In 1945, Japan depended on the United States for its penicillin supply; by 1948, it had become the third country in the world to become self-sufficient in the drug. Focusing on the Japan Penicillin Research Association, Lee uncovers the prewar organizational infrastructure and expertise that not only facilitated the swift domestication (kokusanka) of penicillin but also enabled Japan to become a leading nation in antibiotic research and production. Early twentieth-century precedents were similarly instrumental in the development of new biotechnological goods in the 1950s–70s, a “golden time” in the history of Japanese microbiology (203). Bringing together interwar views of microbial research as a form of national resource management with the wartime legacy of economic mobilization, postwar fermentation scientists transformed large-scale production and austerity techniques into efficient manufacturing for the burgeoning consumer market. As a case study, Lee offers the discovery of a process for large-scale fermentation of monosodium glutamate (MSG). Initially popular as a flavoring additive, and regarded as beneficial to brain health, MSG had by the 1970s prompted concerns about safety to be raised, in the context of a larger backlash against Japanese chemical companies amid unprecedentedly rapid industrial growth.Lee's productive choice to plumb selected depths in the history of fermentation science rather than to strive for comprehensiveness leaves ample scope for future research. In particular, one wonders if yeast production for the Japanese bread industry—during the years when the Western staple food was domesticated—conformed to or challenged the patterns she lays out for fermentation in other industries over a similar time frame. The allusion to “arts” in the title suggests that the author will attend to the visual culture surrounding microbes—an expectation largely unfulfilled despite the generous number of images in the book.While historians of science form the core audience for Lee's work, it also engages with debates in the larger historiography of modern Japan. Rather than centering World War II as a major turning point, the book highlights the enduring legacy of premodern engagement with microbes. The Arts of the Microbial World is thus a welcome addition both to transwar history—in which scholars emphasize continuities across the “zero hour” of 1945—and to the increasingly robust study of postwar history. Lee follows fermentation science through around 1980, when she deems that Japan “had emerged as a global technological and economic power” (7). As this nebulous condition was arguably achieved much earlier (perhaps even prior to 1945), the decision to end the story here appears somewhat arbitrary. Minor critiques aside, however, The Arts of the Microbial World is a thoroughly researched and gracefully written study, reflecting unusual creativity in its conception and erudition in its execution

Art · Biology · Fermentation · The arts · Visual arts · Chinese history and philosophy · Food Science · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Japanese History and Culture

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