Birth control and the population problem in prewar and wartime Japan

Tipton, Elise K.

doi:10.1080/10371399408727567

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Population growth was the subject of policy debates in Japan from the 1920s (Lee 2017;Sugita 2010Sugita , 2013Fujime 1997, 245-281;Tipton 1994Tipton , 1997 until the outbreak of the Asia Pacific War, at which time the government began to endorse pronatalism (Fujino 2003). Policy debate on 'overpopulation' as a 'population problem' (jink o mondai) emerged as the populace expanded by eight million in the years following Japan's surrender in August 1945, through rising birth rates and an influx of repatriates (Ogino 2008a;Norgren 2001;Oakley 1978).…”

Section: The Discourse Of Overpopulation and Birth Control Policy Durmentioning

confidence: 99%

Birth control survey research, technical bureaucrats and the imagining of Japan’s population, 1945–60

Homei

2020

Japan Forum

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This article explores a birth control survey conducted by the Japanese government between 1945-1960, and analyses how this research, both as scientific practice and knowledge, resonated with government efforts to manage the population during postwar reconstruction. Focusing on Shinozaki Nobuo, a Ministry of Health and Welfare 'technical bureaucrat' (gijutsu kanry o or gikan) specializing in population issues, this article depicts how human agency participated in the at times precarious relationship between policy and practice. It also explores how the epistemological framework inscribed in the resulting scientific knowledge harmonized with the economic and political rationale supporting postwar reconstruction. This article contributes to the study of modern Japan by highlighting the critical, yet thus far underexamined role that population science and technical bureaucrats played in Japanese statecraft. At the same time, it demonstrates that the interaction between state governance of population and the creation of scientific knowledge about the populace was fundamentally complex.

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Section: The Discourse Of Overpopulation and Birth Control Policy Durmentioning

confidence: 99%

Birth control survey research, technical bureaucrats and the imagining of Japan’s population, 1945–60

Homei

2020

Japan Forum

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“…In Japan, birth control re-entered the policy debate immediately after the Second World War. Before then, birth control had become popular in cities in the 1920s, but due to its association with socialism, the government suppressed the birth control movement (Ogino 2008a: 2-109, Fujime 2005: 245-81, Ishizaki 2005, Callahan 2004, Früstück 2003: 116-51, Norgren 2001, Tipton 1997, 1994). However, in the immediate postwar period, birth control gained currency partly due to the changing political climate under the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-52) (Tama 2014, 2006, Ogino 2008a, 2008b, 2003, 2001, Obayashi 2006, Takeda 2005, Gordon 2005, Fujime 2005 [1997]: 343-77, Norgren 2001, Obayashi 1997: 208-209, Oakley 1978).…”

Section: International Cooperation In Family Planning In Cold War Asiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Between the West and Asia: “Humanistic” Japanese Family Planning in the Cold War

Homei

2016

East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Jo

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This paper studies the formation of Japanese ventures in family planning deployed in various villages in Asia from the 1960s onward in the name of development aid. By critically examining how Asia became the priority area for Japan's international cooperation in family planning and by analyzing how the adjective "humanistic" was used to underscore the originality of Japan's family planning program overseas, the paper shows that visions of Japanese actors were directly informed by Japan's delicate position in Cold War geopolitics, between the imagined West represented by the United States and "underdeveloped" Asia, at a time when Japan was striving to (re-)establish its position in world politics and economics. Additionally, by highlighting subjectivities and intra-Asian networks centered on Japanese actors, the paper also aims to destabilize the current historiography on population control which has hitherto focused either on Western actors in the transnational population control movement or on non-Western "acceptors" subjected to the population control programs.

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“…Birth control in Japan's modern history – taken in a broad sense, and therefore including abortion – has attracted substantial academic attention over the past few decades ( Callahan, 2004 , Coleman, 1991 , Drixler, 2013 , Fujime, 1997 , Gordon, 2005 , Hopper, 1996 , Kato, 2009 , Norgren, 2001 , Obayashi, 2006 , Ogino, 2008b , Ōta, 1976 , Sawada, 2014 , Suzuki, 2002 , Tama, 2001 , Tama, 2006 , Tama, 2014 , Tama, 2016 , Tipton, 1994 , Tsukamoto, 2014 ). This paper builds on this body of work in three significant ways.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why did the Japanese Government take so long to approve the intrauterine contraceptive device?

Homei¹

2018

Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online

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While the majority of East Asian countries embraced the modern intrauterine device (IUD) during the 1960s, the sale and distribution of the IUD in Japan was not authorized until 1974. In this paper, I address why the Japanese Government took so long to permit the use of the IUD. Firstly, I examine scientific debates in Japan during the early 1950s on the efficacy of the IUD and associated health risks, to illustrate how the Government's conservative attitude was fostered by a co-constitutive relationship between health officials and leading obstetrician-gynaecologists who believed that the IUD was dangerous and likely to induce abortion. I also trace the Japanese Government's rapidly changing attitude through the 1960s, and analyse the influential interaction between national policy making and the enthusiastic response of a small number of Japanese doctors to the transnational movement to curb population growth in developing countries. I argue that the specific ways in which biomedical discourse was shaped by the sociopolitical position of doctors in relation to the Government's health administration explains the Japanese Government's resistance to use of the IUD. However, I also note that the Government's dramatic change in attitude was influenced directly by transnational reproductive politics. This paper will enhance the history of reproductive politics in post-war Japan, which has tended to focus on the politics surrounding abortion and the contraceptive pill.

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Birth control and the population problem in prewar and wartime Japan

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

Birth control survey research, technical bureaucrats and the imagining of Japan’s population, 1945–60

Birth control survey research, technical bureaucrats and the imagining of Japan’s population, 1945–60

Between the West and Asia: “Humanistic” Japanese Family Planning in the Cold War

Why did the Japanese Government take so long to approve the intrauterine contraceptive device?

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