Honor or Fear? Relationships Between Scientists and Experimental Animals in a Japanese Laboratory

Attachment and detachment, and honor and fear with which scientists and technicians treat their experimental animals are a paradoxical aspect of everyday practices of Animal Experimental Room in a medical Lab in Japan. The scientists kill, or tweak the genes of these animals for their research with the very same hands they used to caress and feed these animals under their custody. In Japan, some scientists even fear that the spirits of the sacrificed animals may come back to haunt them. Holding rituals to appease their spirits is a common practice.

 Gesa Lindemann has argued that neurobiologists’ attitude of experimental animals move from seeing them as “conscious organisms” to “technical artifacts”, or even to “organisms being merely alive” as their experiment progresses (Lindemann 2009). In addition to various kinds of attitude, this paper demonstrates how scientific practice and Shinto’s affective dimensions are entangled.

 Japanese way of honoring the animals killed for scientific research has been known for “offering a ceremony” for dead animals (Kuyoo). This paper pays attention to not only to the ceremony but also everyday caring practice in the laboratory.

 Thus, I discuss how scientists and technicians affectively commit to experimental animals. Inspired by Science Studies scholar Casper Bruun Jensen and the sociologist Anders Blok (Jensen and Blok 2013), who developed Actor Network Theory through Japanese techno-aminism, I explore new dimensions of contemporary Japanese techno science.