ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the social and spatial history of the Kyoto Collection, a collection of embryonic material established in 1961 by Dr Hideo Nishimura at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan. It also aims to illustrate variation across embryos deemed to be normal as well as the presence of developmental "anomalies". Inspired by Morgan's work, the chapter asks why and how the Kyoto Collection began actively collecting specimens-and continued to collect them-long after many other embryological collections in the US and Europe had ceased collecting embryos. The collection has a digital presence through the Kyoto Human Embryo Visualisation Project and is the subject of studies to develop 3D and 4D reconstructions of embryo development. The ethical and relational dimensions of collecting bodily materials are the subject of extensive work in sociological and anthropological literatures. Tissue collections were one of the means by which reproductive bodies could reveal their innermost secrets.
