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Sorting sex, controlling sex: Masui Kiyoshi’s chicken research and experimental system, 1915–1950

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Abstract

Masui Kiyoshi (1887–1981), a prominent Japanese geneticist, is best known for inventing the sex-sorting method of chicks and his contributions to experimental genetics in Japan. Masui drew inspiration from Goldschmidt’s sex determination theory and used chickens, transplantation techniques, and his own “chick sexing” methods in his scientific work. This paper examines the intersection of genetics and industrial breeding by tracing the evolution of Masui’s experimental systems. During the early 20th century, poultry farming emerged as a significant industry in Japan, resulting in the development of standardized organisms and techniques for chicken farming. Masui, a professor at Tokyo Imperial University, collaborated with the Imperial Zootechnical Experimental Station to use these organisms as models for sex determination theory while exploring their further industrial possibilities. First, the paper show how Masui viewed chickens as epistemological objects and transformed his anatomical discoveries into standardized industrial practices. Next, it describes how Masui’s collaboration with German geneticist Richard Goldschmidt led to new academic questions about sex determination mechanisms and how he integrated his knowledge of chicken physiology into his research on “experimental gynandromorphs” to elaborate the theories. Lastly, the paper discusses the biotechnological ideals that Masui aimed to achieve and how they were co-constructed with his mass-production method of intersex chickens from the early 1930s. The trajectory of Masui’s experimental systems highlights the dynamic relationship between agroindustry and genetics in the early twentieth century and demonstrates the ‘biology of history’ in which the biological processes of organisms intertwine with their epistemological history.

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Notes

  1. Historians in Asian studies have focused on the chick sexing has created employment and transnational networks among the Asian diaspora (Azuma, 2009; Itoh, 2001). Meanwhile, animal rights activists have criticized the industrial practice as a brutal art of culling that turns early-age male chicks into feed. According to them, it is “completely standard and acceptable within the commercial egg industry,” to drop the males into a grinder and to relegate females to “a life of cruelty and confinement” (Mercy for Animals, 2012). However, these discussions are slightly outside the scope of this paper.

  2. In Roman notation, Chikusan Shikenjō, the English name “Imperial Zootechnical Experimental Station” is a name used by its own bulletin.

  3. There are some historical studies that extend the concept of experimental systems to discuss the multiplicity of experimental organisms (Creager, 2002; Yi, 2015). For linking this concept to the exploration of sex determination mechanisms, see Dietrich’s work (Dietrich, 2016).

  4. There are not many studies on the relationship between life science and agriculture in post-war East Asia. Recent studies have revealed the impact of changes in genetics and embryology on each country’s biological industry over the second half of the 20th century (Onaga, 2021; Jiang, 2018).

  5. In 1923, before Masui published these results in a paper, an army major of Japan named Iwata Iwao had already reported similar sex differentiation through cloaca for “carrier-pigeons.“ In the case of pigeons, the difference in shape inside the cloaca between males and females was much more pronounced than in chickens (Iwata, 1923). Masui’s speculation might come from this anatomical knowledge.

  6. In colonial Korea, this technique was accepted as a prerequisite for scaling up the poultry industry. Especially, only a few wealthy poultry farmers in Korea were able to leave for Nagoya to learn chick sexing and obtain certificates, which were rare enough to be featured in newspapers. They promoted the hatchery business in their hometown and led the introduction of technologies such as the large-scale incubator (Chosun Ilbo, 1936; 1937).

  7. The first supporters of the society were university researchers and professors. Suzuki Kozo was supported by his teacher Suzuki Umetaro, the expert on beriberi, and Masui was supported by Tokyo’s senior professors Iwasumi Ryoji and Shimamura Torai. Many of their college alumni and station colleagues who worked at the other two imperial universities devoted to agricultural research, Hokkaido and Kyushu, also helped the network expand. All of the students at the Army Veterinary School joined the society because a colleague of Masui named Hatano Tadashi wanted to continue academic exchanges even after moving to the Army Veterinary School. Before the Japanese Society of Animal Science, there were the Society of Agricultural Chemistry and the Society of Veterinary Medicine as the academic societies for agricultural sciences (Masui et al., 1974).

  8. There were several other foreign-learned Japanese biologists who tried to move their research program more experimental fashion. Kjell Ericson showed the figure such as Yatsu Naohide, who became the third director of Misaki station in 1922, taught his students to discover physiological mechanisms instead of collecting and observing. He obtained Ph.D. in Columbia under the direction of Edmund Wilson and Thomas Morgan (Ericson, 2020, pp. 101–102).

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  1. Department of Science Studies, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea

    Kyoryen Hwang

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Hwang, K. Sorting sex, controlling sex: Masui Kiyoshi’s chicken research and experimental system, 1915–1950. HPLS 45, 24 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-023-00579-2

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