Midwife and Public Health Nurse Tatsuyo Amari and a State-Endorsed Birth Control Campaign in 1950s Japan

Abstract

Mrs. Tatsuyo Amari, a qualified midwife and nurse, served Japan's state-endorsed birth control campaign as a "birth control field instructor" in rural Minamoto Village of Yamanashi Prefecture just west of Tokyo. Her work sheds light on the role of female health care workers in health and population governance in 1950s Japan. Amari not only facilitated the "top-down" transfer of the state-sanctioned idea of birth control and contraceptives, as did other birth control field instructors, but also enabled the "bottom-up" flow of knowledge about people's reproductive lives through her participation of in the policy-oriented birth control research called the "three model-village study." Contextualizing Amari's engagement with the study elucidates how the state relied on the established role of female health care workers as intermediaries between state and people. Finally, Amari's contribution to the scientific aspect of the campaign may motivate historians to recognize the politics around female health care workers' participation in the science of birth control.

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

“…This position was ratified at a meeting held on 26 October 1951, and in 1952, the Eugenic Protection Law of 1948 was amended to permit existing eugenic marriage consultation clinics to promote birth control. The Government also ordered local authorities to provide community-based ‘birth control field instructors’ (‘jutai chōsetsu jicchi shidōin’) to teach the public about birth control and distribute contraceptives at wholesale prices ( Homei, 2016b , Obayashi, 1989 ).…”

“…Despite a boom in production, the IUD was marginalized within the state-endorsed birth control campaign for two main reasons. First, this method had already been excluded from the campaign's pilot studies, organized by Yoshio Koya throughout the 1950s to test the efficacy of a state-endorsed birth control programme ( Homei, 2016b ). Koya did not provide a clear reason for the exclusion of the IUD, but evidence suggests that it was because the contraceptive did not satisfy any of the three criteria he used, namely public popularity (e.g.…”