From Colonial Hoof to Metropolitan Table: The Imperial Biopolitics of Beef Provisioning in Colonial Korea

Abstract

Compared to research conducted into the development of transoceanic meatways between Europe, the Americas, and Australasia during the long nineteenth century, relatively little is known about how meatways internationalized in East Asia. This article fills this gap in the literature by investigating how Japan exploited the bovine resources of colonial Korea. As a “hoof-to-table history,” it explains how bureaucrats, agricultural scientists, veterinarians, and merchants constructed imperial technoscientific regimes that made it possible not only to improve and sanitize Korean bovine bodies into meat suitable for Japanese palates but also to transport them not dead but alive. It also shows how failures at breeding based on Western strains and models led to a policy reversal that upheld the “purity” of Korean cattle. Threatened by the possibility that Korean beef could be superior to Japanese beef, the article argues how imperial meatways functioned in suppressing the “Koreanness” of cattle to making beef softer and more “sophisticated” than the tougher textures Koreans were portrayed as liking.

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