Microbes as an object of knowledge and the scientist as an institution of authority did not exist in Japan before the nineteenth century. This essay considers the formation of these two modern categories by looking at their boundaries in late Meiji Japan (1868–1912). Charting transformations in the landscape of brewing expertise, the processes that brewing technicians used to produce molds as commodities, and finally the critical reaction of the slime-mold naturalist Minakata Kumagusu who opposed the philosophical foundations of disciplinary science, it argues that the co-production of the microbe and the scientist as new categories reveals a convergence between imported European ideas and earlier Tokugawa-era (1603–1868) commercial developments. Their convergence in turn-of-the-century Japan is highly suggestive of the ways in which the modernity of scientific institutions is entangled with industrial capitalism.

中文翻译：

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日本明治专长的微生物生产

在 19 世纪之前，日本不存在作为知识对象的微生物和作为权威机构的科学家。本文通过观察明治日本后期（1868-1912 年）的边界来考虑这两个现代类别的形成。描绘了酿酒专业领域的变化、酿酒技术人员用来生产模具作为商品的过程，以及最后反对学科科学哲学基础的粘菌自然学家 Minakata Kumagusu 的批判性反应，它认为共同生产微生物和科学家作为新的类别，揭示了欧洲进口思想与早期德川时代（1603-1868）商业发展之间的融合。