![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In 1960, the trajectory of aflatoxin as one of the earliest and best studied cases of a naturally occurring carcinogen in food intersected with the trajectory of an industrial microbe known in the Japanese vernacular as kōji, used for centuries in Japan to make sake, soy sauce, and miso. Over about two decades, the aflatoxin crisis spurred the emergence of a new evolutionary narrative of kōji, Aspergillus oryzae, as a domesticated, non-toxigenic species unique to the Japanese brewery that was clearly distinguishable from its wild, commonly found in nature, and aflatoxin-producing close relative, Aspergillus flavus. It was a shift that came hand-in-hand with the reconstruction of kōji classification. This essay examines the challenges of microbial classification after 1960. By asking how mycologists made a scientific narrative that originated in the interests of Japanese national industries convincing internationally, it explores the knowledge infrastructure that underlay both manufacturing issues and knowledge in microbiology.
Acknowledgements
For their valuable feedback on this paper, I thank the organizers and participants of the workshops on Risk on the Table: Food, Health, and Environmental Exposure, Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies and Program in History of Science, Princeton University, March 10-11, 2017, and Edible Feminisms: On Discard, Waste, and Metabolism, Center for the Study of Women, University of California, Los Angeles, February 1-2, 2018, as well as the panel on ‘Making and Knowing in the Life Sciences’ at the History of Science Society meeting in November 9-12, 2017. I am especially grateful to Karen Rader and Tiago Saraiva for their suggestions, Karen-Beth Scholthof for her careful comments on a draft, and Jordan Sand who suggested that the politics of kōji classification could make a worthwhile essay topic.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Kōji was designated the national fungus (kokkin) of Japan by the Brewing Society of Japan on 12 October 2006. A copy of the “Declaration” by the Scientific Conference of the Brewing Society of Japan may be found at: http://www.jozo.or.jp/koujikinnituite2.pdf (2006, revised 2013). It is important to note that although Aspergillus oryzae is the species that most commonly exemplifies kōji, the term kōji is in fact broader in meaning and includes species other than A. oryzae. Kōji is used by brewing specialists in a vernacular way to refer to Japanese brewing microbes of the Aspergillus genus, especially the A. oryzae species (which is used for making sake) but also including, for example, A. sojae species (for making soy sauce) which belong to the A. oryzae group, as well as species of the A. luchuensis group such as A. luchuensis var. awamori and A. luchuensis mut. kawachii (for making awamori). Moreover, the term kōji is used for the brewing mold preparation as a whole, in addition to particular species or varieties.
2. In current taxonomy, by contrast, A. oryzae and A. flavus are separate groups, neither of which are equivalent to the older groups. The A. oryzae species belongs in the A. oryzae group, and the A. flavus species belongs in the A. flavus group. This is the important taxonomic shift that is discussed below in the article.
3. Lee, “Mold Cultures.”
4. On coevolutionary history, see Russell, Evolutionary History; and Schrepfer and Scranton, Industrializing Organisms. For a perspective from the life sciences, see Rader, Making Mice; and Berry, “Plants are Technologies.”
5. For other examples of technologies of taxonomy, see Müller-Wille, “Hybrids”; and Bonneuil, “Manufacture of Species.”
6. Compare examples from the historiography of the physical sciences, in which standards express the specific agendas of a distinct set of social and economic interests; in Wise, The Values of Precision; Schaffer, “Manufactory of Ohms”; Alder, “Revolution to Measure”; and Slaton, Reinforced Concrete. Here I deal with an epistemic object, kōji, that scientists and industry specialists have frequently discussed in explicitly “techno-nationalist” terms; as defined by Edgerton, Shock of the Old. Similarly, historical studies have shown how scientists and engineers have created things – including living organisms – to materialize national goals and national ideologies; especially Camprubí, Engineers; and Saraiva, Fascist Pigs. On food, see Ceccarelli, Grandi, and Magagnoli, Typicality in History.
7. I borrow the phrase from Haraway, “Situated Knowledges.”
8. Landecker, Culturing Life; Rheinberger, Epistemology of the Concrete; and Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things. The classic study of infrastructure in the history of technology is Hughes, Networks of Power.
9. Mueller, “Cancer in the Tropics”; Jiang, “Global Epidemiology, Local Message”; and Creager, “EAT. DIE.”
10. “Machinery of life”: thanks to Karen Rader for the turn of phrase. On the inseparability of knowledge and institutions, see Johnson, Hitting the Brakes; and Mody, Instrumental Community. In this sense, kōji classification systems served as a“ boundary object” between scientific and industrial knowledge, and between national and international systems; compare Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology.”
11. Jordan and Lynch, “‘Plasmid Prep.’” For a parallel from the historiography of technology, in which the uses of a technology are not fully determined in its production, see Cowan, “Consumption Junction.”
12. Goldblatt, “Introduction”; Phillips, “Reducing Human Exposure”; Richard, “Discovery of Aflatoxins”; and Blount, “Turkey ‘X’ Disease.” For a historical account of human disease caused by Aspergillus fungi, especially aspergillosis, see Homei and Worboys, Fungal Disease, Chap. 5.
13. Creager, “EAT. DIE”. On the history of scientific research linking food with environmental exposure, see also Gaudillière, “DES”; and Landecker, “Food as Exposure.”
14. Goldblatt, “Introduction,” 8–9.
15. Diener and Davis, “Aflatoxin Formation,” 19.
16. Dollear, “Detoxification of Aflatoxins,” 360.
17. Kraybill and Shapiro, “Implications of Fungal Toxicity,” 421.
18. Kraybill and Shapiro, “Implications of Fungal Toxicity,” 419. It was only later that epidemiological studies on the environmental causes of cancer were able to demonstrate conclusively that infection with the Hepatitis B virus and dietary aflatoxin exposure worked together to cause liver cancer. These studies were carried out in China, the United States, East Africa, and elsewhere from the 1970s onward; see Mueller, “Cancer in the Tropics”; and Jiang, “Global Epidemiology, Local Message.”
19. See note 17 above.
20. Kraybill and Shapiro, “Implications of Fungal Toxicity,” 402–3.
21. Diener and Davis, “Aflatoxin Formation,” 14.
22. Fuell, “Types of Mycotoxins,” 195.
23. See e.g. Miller et al., Naturally Occurring Carcinogens, 169–76; 195–210. On the Ames test, see Creager, “Political Life of Mutagens.”
24. Ui, Industrial Pollution in Japan.
25. Sand, “Short History of MSG,” 45–46. MSG was in fact produced by microbes cultured on a nutrient medium that was not derived from petroleum.
26. George, Minamata; Walker, Toxic Archipelago; and Upham, “Movements for Place.”
27. Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine, 167–74.
28. Sakaguchi, “Opening Lecture,” 8.
29. Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine, 167.
30. See note 3 above.
31. For reviews of more recent genomic research on A. flavus, see Amaike and Keller, “Aspergillus flavus”; and Payne et al., “Whole Genome Comparison.” On the Aspergillus genus, see de Vries et al., “Fungal Genus Aspergillus.”
32. Hesseltine et al., “Aflatoxin Formation.”
33. Ibid., 802–3.
34. “‘Kabi’ kara hatsugan busshitsu – komugi, azukifun nado – wazuka daga eikyō shinpai” [Carcinogens from “Mold” – Wheat and Azuki Flour and So On – Minute Amounts But Fear of Effects] (Yomiuri shinbun, 29 March 1967); “Yūgai kokomai o yushutsu – Tōnan Ajia e 26man ton mo – hatsugan, kabi hookaburi” [Harmful Long-Storage Rice – 260,000 Tons Exported to Southeast Asia Even – Playing Dumb about Carcinogenicity and Mold] (Yomiuri shinbun, 8 May 1970); “Jikasei miso ni doku kabi – Kokuritsu eishi to Chibadai hakken – hatsugan busshitsu ga deru” [Poisonous Mold in Homemade Miso – Discovered by National Institute of Hygienic Health Sciences and Chiba University Institute of Food Microbiology – Carcinogens Emerged] (Yomiuri shinbun, 20 May 1970); “Shokuniku ni ‘kiken na kabi’ – toritsu eishiken de kenshutsu – teion hozon de fusegeru” [“Dangerous Mold” in Consumer Pork – Found by Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health – Can Be Prevented by Low-Temperature Preservation] (Yomiuri shinbun, 7 July 1973).
35. O’Malley, Philosophy of Microbiology, Chap. 3; Murakami, “Kinkabu,” 58.
36. Murakami, “Kinkabu,” 58. The term kōji-kin first appeared in a publication in 1895, written by agricultural chemists Kozai Yoshinao and Yagi Hisatarō.
37. Murakami, “Kinkabu,” 48.
38. Hasegawa, “Japanese Culture Collections.”
39. The NRRL played an important role in penicillin research during World War II; see Bud, “Innovators, Deep Fermentation.”
40. Hasegawa, “Japanese Culture Collections,” 141.
41. Ibid., 141–43.
42. Amsterdamska, “Medical and Biological Constraints”; and Lee, “Mold Cultures.”
43. Murakami, “Kinkabu,” 59.
44. Murakami, “Classification of Kōji Mold.”
45. Saitō, Hakkō biseibukki, 182–86.
46. Following Murakami’s work, Thom No. 113 and Thom No. 108 are now both classified as the species A. oryzae (Ahlburg) Cohn.
47. The following account draws from Murakami, “Kinkabu,” 57–60.
48. Murakami, “Classification of Kōji Mold,” 291–93.
49. The strains came from 12 different collections both in Japan and abroad, including the ATCC, NRRL, and London Tropical Products Institute. Many strains were requested from Hesseltine and Fennell at the USDA laboratory in Peoria, and from Raper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Murakami drew especially on the kōji collections held by the RIB, where he was based, and which consisted of more than 1200 strains gathered from inside and outside the country. The number of strains he selected for the study totaled 406 after eliminating redundancies. Murakami, “Kinkabu,” 64–65.
50. Murakami, “Classification of Kōji Mold,” 299.
51. Murakami, “Kinkabu,” 71; 61.
52. Ibid., 71.
53. Ibid., 65–71.
54. Ibid., 70.
55. Wicklow, “Adaptation.”
56. For a consideration of historical approaches to risk in industrialized societies since the late nineteenth century, see Boudia and Jas, “Risk and ‘Risk Society.’”