The Internationalization and the Industrialization of Chicken Husbandry in Japan in the 20th Century

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes how strategies for capitalist accumulation drove the industrialization of chicken husbandry and increased consumption of chicken products in Japan. By the start of the Showa era, leaders in the Japanese chicken industry sought to promote larger and more productive operations through the adoption of Western breeds. Following the upheaval of World War II, the US facilitated three major changes for Japanese chicken husbandry: expanded grain exports from the US in the 1950s; the importation of specialized breeds in the 1960s; and the Japanese industry’s emulation of American corporations in the 1970s. The connections between Mitsubishi and KFC-Japan illustrate how Japanese firms implemented new organizational structures that allowed them to profit from the chicken industry in multiple ways. I suggest that the increases in consumption of chicken meat and eggs in the Japanese diet indicate the advancement of capitalist strategies for overcoming the barriers to industrialization.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to Nakamura Shusaku, Araki Hitoshi, and Gotō Takuya. I would also like to thank Mary McDonald, Krisnawati Suryanata, Micah Fisher, Sayaka Sakuma, and an anonymous reviewer from Japanese Studies for providing feedback on earlier versions of this paper. The shortcomings are mine alone.

Notes

¹ Kosugi, Yōkei no jitchi kenkyū, 1–2.

² Mann and Dickinson, ‘Obstacles to the Development of a Capitalist Agriculture’, 465.

³ Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson, From Farming to Biotechnology, 6.

⁴ Boyd, ‘Making Meat’, 634.

⁵ Boyd and Watts, ‘Agro-Industrial Just-in-Time’, 139.

⁶ Tessari and Godley, ‘Made in Italy. Made in Britain’, 1057.

⁷ Ibid, 1072.

⁸ Mulgan, Japan’s Agricultural Policy Regime, 1.

⁹ Gotō, Aguribijinesu no chirigaku, 187; Nagasaka, Aguribijinesu no chiiki tenkai, 42.

¹⁰ Andreyeva, Long, and Brownell, ‘The Impact of Food Prices on Consumption’, 216.

¹¹ Weis, The Ecological Hoofprint.

¹² Best, ‘The Rise of Critical Animal Studies’.

¹³ Haraway, When Species Meet, Ch. 10; Lawler, Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?

¹⁴ Vialles, Animal to Edible, 5.

¹⁵ Poverty and the mistreatment of slaughterhouse workers are also significant issues that accompany the industrialization of chicken husbandry. See Striffler, Chicken, 33.

¹⁶ Pepper, Modern Environmentalism, 89.

¹⁷ Jackson, Anxious Appetites.

¹⁸ Kjærnes, Harvey, and Warde, Trust in Food.

¹⁹ For an overview of scholarship on Japanese food, see Cwiertka and Chen, ‘The Shadow of Shinoda Osamu’. For an analysis of banal nationalism in discourses of Japanese food, see Takeda, ‘Delicious Food in a Beautiful Country’.

²⁰ Rath, Japan’s Cuisines, 27.

²¹ Assmann, ‘The Remaking of a National Cuisine’, 166.

²² For a prominent example of a theory of the dietary transition that emphasizes economic factors, see ‘Drewnowski and Popkin, ‘The Nutrition Transition’.

²³ Hansen, ‘Hokkaido’s Frontiers’.

²⁴ Iriya, Nagoya kōchin sakushutsu monogatari, 40.

²⁵ Harootunian, ‘The Progress of Japan and the Samurai class, 1868–1882’, 257.

²⁶ Iriya, Nagoya kōchin sakushutsu monogatari, 66.

²⁷ Ibid., 68.

²⁸ Murai and Ozaki, Tamago ryōri toriniku ryōri nihyakushu oyobi katei yōkei hō.

²⁹ Kitamura, ‘Wagakuni ni okeru yōkeigyō no chiikiteki tenkai’, 150.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ MAFF, ‘Nōgyō nenkan’.

³² Nakamura, Fukugyō yōkei jikken, 11.

³³ Hosokawa, ‘Nihon yōkei sangyō hattatsu 50nenshi’, 38–39; Kitamura, ‘Wagakuni ni okeru yōkeigyō no chiikiteki tenkai’, 151.

³⁴ MAFF, ‘Nōgyō nenkan’.

³⁵ Saotome, ‘Nihon yōkeishi’, 871.

³⁶ Honma, Nihon shokuniku bunkashi, 355.

³⁷ Hosokawa, ‘Nihon yōkei sangyō hattatsu 50nenshi’, 110.

³⁸ Honma, Nihon shokuniku bunkashi, 355.

³⁹ MAFF, ‘Nōgyō nenkan’.

⁴⁰ Hosokawa, ‘Nihon yōkei sangyō hattatsu 50nenshi’, 58; 108.

⁴¹ Kitamura, ‘Wagakuni ni okeru yōkeigyō no chiikiteki tenkai’, 155.

⁴² Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine.

⁴³ Ibid., 74.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 50–51.

⁴⁵ Nagatomo, Yōkei no mukashibanashi to jinkō fuka no konjaku.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 42–43.

⁴⁷ Amano, ‘Otto wa sensen ni tsuma wa yōkei sensen ni!’.

⁴⁸ Niwatori no kenkyū, ‘Ken’nō rikugunki’.

⁴⁹ Young, Japan’s Total Empire, 175.

⁵⁰ Chikusan, ‘Chikusan no’

⁵¹ Yamanaka, ‘Sekai shinkiroku 363 tamago niwatori’, 60.

⁵² Hibino, ‘Nobiyuku tairiku yōkei!’, 71.

⁵³ Hibino, Manshū shinyōkei hō.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 5.

⁵⁵ Scherer, ‘Drawbacks to Controls on Food Distribution’, 108.

⁵⁶ Tsuchida, Yakitori to nihonjin, 73.

⁵⁷ Gisolfi, The Takeover.

⁵⁸ Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty, Ch. 6.

⁵⁹ MAFF, ‘Nōgyō nenkan’.

⁶⁰ Saito, ‘Yōkei keiei no kotsu’.

⁶¹ Oku, ‘Shiryō yunyū tozetsu to kokunai jikyū mondai’.

⁶² Yamanaka, ‘Tōmorokoshi o manshū ni makasete anshin shiteite yoi ka?’.

⁶³ Hosokawa, ‘Nihon yōkei sangyō hattatsu 50nenshi’, 45.

⁶⁴ Akagi, Shōkei.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 105.

⁶⁶ Taking the example of Chiba prefecture, Hatano recommended the following plants, which were often colloquial and spelled using katakana: ‘Suzumenohie, nobie, minogome, karasunoendō, tabumame, hamaendō’. A few of these grasses have English translations such as paspalum, barnyard grass (echinochloa), and vetch (vicia). Hatano, ‘Zassō shushi no yōkei shiryōka ni kansuru kenkyū’, 7.

⁶⁷ Hatano, ‘Zassō shushi no yōkei shiryōka ni kansuru kenkyū’, 4.

⁶⁸ Hatano, ‘Esa sae areba’.

⁶⁹ Hibino, ‘Yōkei saikō e no michi’.

⁷⁰ Hibino, ‘Zassō kyūwari katsuyō no kakumei yōkei’.

⁷¹ MAFF, ‘Nōgyō nenkan’.

⁷² Goodman and Redclift, Refashioning Nature, 108.

⁷³ McDonald, ‘Food Firms and Food Flows in Japan 1945–98’.

⁷⁴ Asami, ‘Yōkei shiryō no seisan to syūtsū’, 217.

⁷⁵ Ibid, 217.

⁷⁶ Fieldnotes from October 2016.

⁷⁷ Komai, ‘Nihon ni mo buroirā sangyō o!’, 32.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 153–54.

⁷⁹ Advertisements were counted and coded by the author. There were 72 unique hatchery advertisements in July 1965 and 13 in July 1975.

⁸⁰ Feed conversion is a statistic that measures the ratio between feed and commodity for animal products.

⁸¹ Takigawa, ‘Kigyōteki yōkei keiei no ari kata’.

⁸² Between 1955 and 1975, the overall number of farms in Japan declined by 18% while the number of farms raising chickens declined by an astonishing 88.7%. MAFF, ‘Nōgyō nenkan’.

⁸³ ALIC, ‘Nōchikusangyō shinkōkikō’.

⁸⁴ MAFF, ‘Nōgyō nenkan’.

⁸⁵ Gisolfi, The Takeover, 40.

⁸⁶ Gotō, Aguribijinesu no chirigaku; Nagasaka, Aguribijinesu no chiiki tenkai.

⁸⁷ MAFF, ‘Nōringyō sensasu’.

⁸⁸ Nagasaka, ‘A Geographical Study on the Production Area Formation of the Broiler Industry in Japan’, 175.

⁸⁹ The number of broiler households decreased by 65% from 1964 to 1984. Over the same time, the average flock size increased from 624 chickens to 19,500 chickens. MAFF, ‘Nōgyō nenkan’.

⁹⁰ Between 1965 and 1985, the average weight of chicken broilers in Japan doubled from 1.23 kg to 2.41 kg. Broilers were processed on average after 70 days in 1960, 60 days in 1975, and 55 days in 1990. Komai, ‘Toriniku no ryūtsū keitai no henka to shokkei torihiki kouri kikaku (1)’.

⁹¹ ALIC, ‘Nōchikusangyō shinkōkikō’.

⁹² Komai, ‘Toriniku no ryūtsū keitai no henka to shokkei torihiki kouri kikaku (1)’, 982.

⁹³ Gotō, Aguribijinesu no chirigaku; Nagasaka, Aguribijinesu no chiiki tenkai.

⁹⁴ Mitsubishi, A 50-Year History of Mitsubishi Corporation, 1954–2004, 148.

⁹⁵ KFC-Japan, We’re No.1, 7.

⁹⁶ Ōkawara, ‘Kakudai suru beikokushiki toriniku hanbai’.

⁹⁷ KFC-Japan, We’re No.1.

⁹⁸ Yamaguchi, Kentakkī furaido chikin no kiseki.

⁹⁹ ALIC, ‘Nōchikusangyō shinkōkikō’.

¹⁰⁰ Yoshida, ‘Colonel Stages a Comeback in Osaka’.

¹⁰¹ KFC-Japan, We’re No.1, 34–35.

¹⁰² See, for example, Sheraton, ‘For the Colonel, It Was Finger-Lickin’ Bad’.

¹⁰³ KFC-Japan, We’re No.1, 33.

¹⁰⁴ Assmann, ‘The Remaking of a National Cuisine’.

Additional information

Funding

Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship Fellowship [2015–17].