ABSTRACT
Once soy had become a capital-intensive mechanical-industry, the mass-production structure required continuous mass-sale of soy products. Soy oil, especially, had no market in Japan to begin with, and the fertilizer market was turning to chemical inputs over soy meal. The companies desperately needed to create markets for new soy products in order to survive, propelling a wave of research and development. The colonial institution of the South Manchuria Railway (SMR) also needed the soy-industry in Manchuria to support its mission as an agent of Imperial Japan. Old and new zaibatsu formed Konzern, which invested in new oleochemical and military sectors. This chapter explores the efforts of SMR and these Japanese companies to develop versatile usages of soy and to expand soy’s markets in the interval between the two world wars. They transformed soy (bean, oil, and meal) into raw materials for non-food manufacturing and military supplies, including lubricants, biofuel, glycerin, glue, plastic, and paint. A few soy-food products were invented, and edible soy oil went on sale in the 1920s. These efforts were supported by advances in oleochemical technologies and protein engineering, and by the political economy of the 1930s, as Japan pursued further military conquests in Asia and the Pacific.
