Victoria Lee - The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan (Synthesis)

A series in the history of chemistry, broadly construed, edited by Carin Berkowitz, Angela N. H. Creager, John E. Lesch, Lawrence M. Principe, Alan Rocke, and E.C. Spary, in partnership with the Science History Institute

VICTORIA LEE

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2021 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-81274-8 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-81288-5 (e-book)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226812885.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lee, Victoria (Science historian), author.

Title: The arts of the microbial world : fermentation science in twentieth-century Japan / Victoria Lee.

Other titles: Synthesis (University of Chicago Press)

Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2021. | Series: Synthesis | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021027282 | ISBN 9780226812748 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226812885 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Fermentation. | MicrobiologyJapan.

Classification: LCC QR151 .L35 2021 | DDC 572/.49dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027282

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

I merely borrowed the power of microbes.

mura Satoshi

press conference, October 5, 2015

Remaking Mold Cultures

No Longer a Land of Plenty

Asias Microbial Gardens and Japanese Knowledge

Empire in Practice

Domesticating Penicillin

To Screen for Gifts

In twentieth-century Japan, scientists and skilled workers sought to use microbes natural processes to create new products, from soy sauce mold starters to monosodium glutamate (MSG), from vitamins to statins. They emphasized their ability to deal with the enormous sensitivity and variety of the microbial world: to distinguish between the microbes, refine their qualities, and propagate them according to which was best for making the end products in mind. In the early twentieth century, in cities such as Kyoto and Osaka, small-scale, family-run moyashimakers, who made microbial starter in the form of dried mold spores for the brewing industries, relied mainly on sensory means to identify good spores. In color, yellow or yellow-green spores tended to darken to brown with time. From the smell, the maker could tell how dry the spores were and the method of production, with especially well-known regional differences between makers in Kyoto and Osaka. The makers could preserve and improve the chosen spores by cultivating them on special ash, or by new scientific techniques of pure culture to cultivate only one strain. They sold the best spores under their brand names to thousands of specialist kji(the rice mold used in Japanese brewing) makers, or to sake, soy sauce, and shch(distilled liquor) houses.

Half a century later in the 1960s, scientists in the central laboratory of a large pharmaceutical company in Osaka deliberated whether to use gram-positive or gram-negative, Actinomycetesor