Through the Liminal: An Early Journey of Genome-Edited Tomato in Japan—Seedling– Table–Earth

This study offers an anthropological analysis of the early societal journey in Japan of the world’s first commercially released genome-edited tomato, the SRHGABA, conceptualizing it as a societal and planetary rite of “passage.” Treating the tomato as a hybrid actor embedded in ecologies and social infrastructures, the study first explores how its cultivation and circulation has generated apprehension and elusiveness exceeding standard risk metrics. This is partly due to the crop’s undetectability—it contains no foreign genes—rendering it less radical than conventional GMOs. Next, the study advances a theory of dynamis and dynamist rites, viewing the current transitional stage of adoption as a contradictory and suspended spatiotemporal journey. It draws on liminality and liminoid formations to highlight this limbo-like phase, which nonetheless harbors an undercurrent of potent possibility. The research foregrounds pre-reflective, magico-religious attunements (e.g. awe-like receptivity), arguing that they lie deeper than ethical stances or anticipatory care. Amid current preparations to export genome editing to Asian countries, this study’s use of an ethnographic case from the region illuminates the potential and concerns of genome editing adoption that are likely to emerge across Asia and the world in the near future. Keywords: genome-edited, rites of passage, dynamis, multispecies, liminalit