Abstract
The scientific investigations of Mendelism in silkworms by Japanese scientist Toyama Kametarō during the early 1900s aired questions about biology beyond the genetic determinants of inheritance. As he sought to instill scientific thought in the craft of sericulture, Toyama gained insights into different kinds of hereditary phenomena, and he considered the serious implications of what we call environmental effects. Toyama explored various instances of non-Mendelian inheritance that did not seem obviously to reflect the predictive Mendelian ratios of dominant to recessive traits, and he communicated his experiment-based ideas to farmers and sericulturists in the years surrounding the formation of a set of national sericultural policies in 1911. Analysis of his efforts to convey new or unsettled scientific ideas to instill practical changes in silkworm improvement contributes to a fuller historical understanding of his biological investigations and what he thus left behind for other researchers to study. The changing knowledge of the silkworm’s sexual reproduction serves as an illustration of how basic scientific understanding of genetics grew in Japan.
Keywords
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- 1.
Citations of Japanese names in the main text appear as they do in Japan, with surname preceding given name. Citations in the reference list use English-language name order. All translations, in quotes, are mine except for those from documents published in English.
- 2.
Onaga (2010b).
- 3.
- 4.
Toyama (1906b). Toyama’s doctoral thesis was written completely in English and submitted in May 1905 before its publication in 1906. Additional citations in Toyama’s literature review were added in May 1906 before publication in October 1906. A 15-page abstracted version of his paper was published in English in the back of the trade publication Dainihon sanshikaihō (Bulletin of the Great Japan Silk Association), May 1906.
- 5.
The term hybrid vigor serves here as the translation for zasshu kyōsei, the phenomenon of heterosis in which the offspring of a crossbreed exceeds either parental strain in size, yield, or resistance to disease or abiotic stresses.
- 6.
- 7.
Toyama (1913, p. 353). A translated title of this text refers to maternal inheritance as bosei iden.
- 8.
Further discussion on this point is in Onaga, (2012).
- 9.
Takeuchi (1940).
- 10.
Sasaki came from a family that commanded considerable authority when it came to sericulture, especially with respect to the control of contagion. Onaga (2013).
- 11.
Ishikawa had studied at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy, in 1888, where he encountered Weismann. He later worked with him in Germany in 1889. Edward Sylvester Morse Collection, Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum; Ishikawa Chiyomatsu to Edward Sylvester Morse, 19 August 1889. For more on Ishikawa, see Godart (2009).
- 12.
Toyama (1894).
- 13.
Toyama (1895).
- 14.
Machida (1940).
- 15.
Toyama and Ishiwatari (1896).
- 16.
- 17.
Toyama (1900).
- 18.
Onaga (2010b).
- 19.
Ibid., Moriwaki (2010).
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
Toyama (1906b, p. 354).
- 23.
Ibid., pp. 353–358.
- 24.
Darwin (1868/1998, vol. 2, 70).
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
Toyama (1909b).
- 28.
Toyama (1913). Given name of Ishiwata was not provided.
- 29.
Toyama (1913, pp. 351–405).
- 30.
- 31.
Matsui (1967).
- 32.
- 33.
Sturtevant (1965, p. 122).
- 34.
Toyama (1913, pp. 376–377). Tetravoltine, meaning breeding four times a year.
- 35.
Toyama (1913, pp. 351–405).
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
Sapp (1987).
- 39.
Goldschmidt Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, 72/241z, Toyama to Goldschmidt, 12 November 1913.
- 40.
- 41.
Goldschmidt Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, 72/241z, Toyama to Goldschmidt, 12 November 1913.
- 42.
Toyama (1913).
- 43.
Ibid., pp. 351–405.
- 44.
Toyama (1906b).
- 45.
Ibid. He also considered voltinism, the number of generations the insect could cycle through before overwintering, as an example of maternal inheritance.
- 46.
Onaga (2012).
- 47.
Toyama (1909c).
- 48.
Ibid., p. 14.
- 49.
Ibid., pp. 15–16.
- 50.
Ibid., pp. 18–19.
- 51.
Ibid. pp. 19–20. Parenthetical translations are added to allow use of some Japanese terms.
- 52.
Ise monogatari is a collection of Japanese tanka poems and stories from the ninth century.
- 53.
Toyama (n.d.).
- 54.
Toyama (1909c, p. 20).
- 55.
Ibid., pp. 20–21.
- 56.
Nakamura and Odaka (2003, vol. 3).
- 57.
Toyama (1914).
- 58.
- 59.
Toyama (1914, pp. 16–20).
- 60.
Ibid., pp. 20–21.
- 61.
Ibid., p. 22.
- 62.
Ibid., pp.33–34; Toyama (1912).
- 63.
- 64.
Toyama (1909a).
- 65.
Toyama (1914, pp. 38–39).
- 66.
Ibid., pp. 1–4.
- 67.
Ibid., p. 39.
- 68.
Ibid., pp. 44–45.
- 69.
Ibid., pp. 52–56.
- 70.
Takeuchi (1940).
- 71.
Toyama (1912).
- 72.
Fukuda (1990, p. 11); Goldschmidt Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, 72/241z, Ishikawa Chiyomatsu to Goldschmidt, 26 February 1918.
- 73.
Goldschmidt Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, 72/241z, Toyama to Goldschmidt, 12 November 1913.
- 74.
Goldschmidt (1960, pp. 108–110).
- 75.
Katsuki (1917). See Goldschmidt Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, 72/241z, K. Katsuki to Goldschmidt, 12 November 1934.
- 76.
- 77.
Goldschmidt Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, 72/241z, Toyama to Goldschmidt, 12 November 1913; Ibid., Ishikawa to Goldschmidt, 26 February 1918. Discussion of Goldschmidt’s relationship to Japanese genetics is subject of a separate paper.
- 78.
- 79.
- 80.
Tanaka (1967).
- 81.
Tanaka (1916).
- 82.
- 83.
“Kenkyūshitsu no rekishi—Tōkyō daigaku—konchū idengaku kenkyūshitsu kōshiki uebusaito, Laboratory of Insect Genetics and Bioscience Official Website, http://papilio.ab.a.u-tokyo.ac.jp/igb/ja/profile2.html. See, e.g., Osanai-Futahashi et al. (2012).
- 84.
Kitamura and Nozaki (2004, p. 3).
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Onaga, L. (2015). More than Metamorphosis: The Silkworm Experiments of Toyama Kametarō and his Cultivation of Genetic Thought in Japan’s Sericultural Practices, 1894–1918. In: Phillips, D., Kingsland, S. (eds) New Perspectives on the History of Life Sciences and Agriculture. Archimedes, vol 40. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12185-7_20
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