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A story on Japanese blogs about potatoes being convicted in a Catholic religious trial. (I cannot find it in other languages.)

One of my favorite YouTube Channels is "Miscellaneous History Historica (歴史雑記ヒストリカ)" by Mondo (https://www.youtube.com/@mond_historica). It's a Japanese channel. There is a video about the history of potatoes.

https://youtu.be/qiJNxcjQBtk 【ゆっくり歴史解説】じゃがいもはどうやって食卓に浸透したのか？世界史の中のイモ史。 (Yukkuri-history explanation: How did potatoes make their way to our tables? The history of potatoes in world history.)

In this video, there were stories about Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI's attempts to introduce potatoes, and the relationship between the English royal family and potatoes. Potatoes are "unbiblical crop" and therefore they are evil. The fact that they grow from seed potatoes is "sexually impure" because "potatoes grow in a way other than the union between a male and a female ordained by God. The Roman Catholic Church accused them, and they were guilty. Then, potatoes were burned at the stake."  I thought this story was interesting because Roman Catholics in the Middle Ages had stories that are unbelievable by today's standards, which makes some stereotypes. This is one of those stories.

I would like to tell my friends about this story. However, I am currently living in Germany and most of my friend doesn't speck Japanese. I also have friends who know very well about the Bible. Therefore, I can't simply introduce them just because one YouTube channel says so.

So I looked it up in English, and this story does not show up in Google searches. For example, if you look up "potato excommunication (じゃがいも 破門)" in Japanese, you will get many hits. However, the content is almost the same. Perhaps they were copy-pasted from somewhere. Also, I could not find the reference.

Found many Japanese blog pages about guilty potatos


But in English, "potato excommunication" only talks about what excommunication means and the potato famine in Ireland. Other searches, such as "potato trial guilty", are about a person who committed fraud with potato insurance, or about corruption in the potato industry. I searched for a while but I could not find anything.



Search result example potato excommunication


Search example: potato trial guilty

I asked some friends to search for this. We could not find anything in German or Russian (also in English). However, we did find stories about Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, the English royal family, and so on. I also learned stories about how the potatoes were spread in Germany. However, there is no article of conviction or burning at the stake. They are all in Japanese.

So, I asked Mondo where this story came from in a comment, and he/she politely gave me a reference of this episode. It is

稲垣栄洋『世界史を大きく動かした植物』PHP 研究所

Hidehiro Inagaki, "The plants that changed the world history in a big way" PHP Kenkyusho. This is one of the best selling book in Japan in the category on amazon.

Hidehiro Inagaki is a professor of agriculture at Shizuoka University. https://tdb.shizuoka.ac.jp/rdb/public/Default2.aspx?id=11099&l=0

In chapter 5 of this book, I found the following (my translation):

’’In the West, plants not mentioned in the Bible are of the devil. Thus the potato has been labeled as the devil's plant.
Medieval Europe was a time of witch trials.
And finally, the potato, the devil's plant, was put on trial. All creatures in the world are procreate by male-female sex. The potato, however, reproduces by seed potatoes without male and female. This is considered sexually disordered, and the potato is condemned as guilty. The penalty is, surprisingly, burning at the stake.’’

There are a few references to the potato episode in the book. Unfortunately, I could not find any reference to support the story of burning at the stake.

I contacted Prof. Hidehiro Inagaki on 2023-3-21 through a researcher network, but unfortunately, he has not responded as of now (2023-05-29).

I have asked some of my friends to help me in my search, but I can't find this story in any language other than Japanese.

If anyone knows this story's reference, please let me know.


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