Oxen in the City and Beyond Moving Bovine Bodies and Knowledge Production in the Early Modern Period, 1653–1868

This article demonstrates how epistemic categories assigned to cattle in early modern Japan emerged and developed before the arrival of Westerners in the modern period. It traces how draft oxen in the city of Edo in Japan during the Tokugawa period moved within and beyond the city boundaries. It argues that the mobility of these cattle helped to define the fluid roles of oxen, which further contributed to the production of bovine knowledge in Tokugawa Japan. By tracing how the mobility of animals was constitutive in the development of the epistemological categories applied to cattle in the Tokugawa period, this article proposes new ways to discuss mobility without invoking the categories of modernity.