Extracting Humanity: Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and the Buddhist Techno-Consumerist Solution to Animal Exploitation in Republican China

• In Event: Extraction and Its Discontents: Biotic Exchange, Resource Consumption, and Social Imagination in the Modern Pacific World

Abstract

Since its isolation by Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda (1864-1936) in 1908 from seaweed, monosodium glutamate (MSG) has steadily gained popularity in East Asia as a food additive. Along with its popularity, MSG became a symbol of Japanese industrial prowess and was thus entangled in the complex nationalistic politics in the region. When Shanghai entrepreneur Wu Yunchu (1851-1953) commercialized the extraction of MSG from soybeans in 1923, he sought to market his product to the Buddhist community as a healthy and ethical ingredient. The strategy turned out to be a success, as Wu’s product fascinated Buddhist leaders like Yinguang (1862-1940). To his millions of devoted followers, Yinguang promoted MSG as a salvational product that could make any bland vegetarian diet more palatable to non-Buddhists, thereby reducing meat consumption. MSG, in this imagination, was a powerful tool in a broader crusade against the relentless extraction of animal lives. The Buddhist embrace of MSG as a technological fix endured well into the late 1940s, and the industrial-religious coalition born out of this techno-consumerism offers lessons for today’s environmental crisis.

Author

• Guangshuo Yang, Northwestern University