Thammasat University students interested in Japan, demography, sociology, anthropology, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 2 May Zoom book talk on Population Sciences and Discourses in Modern Japan.
The event, on Thursday, 2 May 2024 at 1pm Bangkok time, is presented by the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Hong Kong University (HKU).
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of demography and Japan.
Students are invited to attend at this link (no registration is necessary):
https://hku.zoom.us/j/96714738137?pwd=SlBPUlpscFN4VUhUdWcwTStFdGNrQT09
For further information or with any questions, please write to
mchlee@hku.hk
The event webpage notes:
In Science for Governing Japan’s Population, Aya Homei examines the evolution of population-related disciplines in Japan from the 1860s to the 1960s, highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the development of population sciences, the emergence of the term ‘population’ (jinkō), and Japan’s modernization. Through this historical lens, Homei uncovers the intricate connections between population, sovereignty, and scientific discourse, offering fresh insights into Japan’s demographic governance.
In Wombs of Empire: Population Discourses and Biopolitics in Modern Japan, Sujin Lee navigates the discourse surrounding population during interwar and wartime Japan, highlighting these periods as pivotal arenas where conflicting visions of modernity clashed. Lee challenges entrenched views of motherhood and population by examining the influence of gender norms, contemporary knowledge, and governmental strategies. Lee exposes how demographic concerns fueled ethnonationalism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, and gender disparities throughout Japan’s modern era.
Speaker: Dr. Aya Homei
Reader, Japanese Studies, The University of Manchester
Speaker: Prof. Sujin Lee
Pacific and Asian Studies, Assistant Professor, University of Victoria
Discussant: Dr. Mina Marković
PhD Student, Japanese Studies, University of Cambridge
Moderator: Prof. Edwin Michielsen
Japanese Studies, Assistant Professor, The University of Hong Kong
The books by Dr. Homei and Professor Lee are available to TU students through the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.
In a chapter, The Science of Population and Birth Control in Post-War Japan, published in a 2016 book, Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire, Dr. Homei observed:
After World War II, the Japanese government adopted a different method of tackling population growth. Whereas the pre-war government was comfortable with relieving Japan’s surplus population by emigration and territorial expansion, the post-war government relied on birth control to slow the population growth.1 Despite the change in population management technique, one theme remained consistent: population scientists acted as policy advisors.
This essay examines the entanglement between population science and population governance immediately after World War II. It analyzes debates on population and birth control research that contributed to the state-endorsed birth control campaign. Drawing on the existing works on the campaign as well as coproduction theory proposed in science and technology studies (STS), this essay depicts how the Japanese state’s post-war birth control policy was coproduced with a particular kind of population science that insisted on the necessity of birth control for Japan’s post-war reconstruction.
While focusing on the science of population that developed within the Japanese state, my central argument is that transnational exchanges among population and birth control experts also shaped the nexus between state population governance and the making of population science in post-war Japan. I argue that the perspectives adopted so far implicitly privilege the nation-state as a primary category for analysis and undervalue the interaction among various nodes of population governance, including scientists who existed not just within but also beyond a given national border. Twentieth-century population governance was more than just a story of nation building precisely because the problem of population was seen as dovetailing with spatial issues such as food, land and environment, which contemporaries claimed required inter- and transnational cooperation. This discourse of population engaged international and non-governmental institutions to participate in population governance exercises at national and local levels. In post-war Japan, the Allied Occupation (1945–52), in which the US exercised preponderant power over Japan, facilitated the transnational dialogue between American and Japanese population advocates and experts. This transnational element affected the trajectory of the state-endorsed birth control campaign and indicates that the campaign—which has been presented as a quintessentially Japanese and national project—was interlocked with global history.
To highlight these points, I first analyze how the debate on population, predicated on the Malthusian argument, shaped perceptions of population growth and provided foundations for the state birth control campaign after 1945.5 I focus on Edward A. Ackerman and Warren S. Thompson, American scientists who participated in the disputes over Japanese population issues as scientific consultants to the occupation’s general headquarters (GHQ). I describe how the occupation gave non-Japanese scientists an opportunity to participate in state population governance through their science. Consequently, Ackerman’s and Thompson’s transnational perspective, which regarded Japanese demography as inherently tied to global politics and highlighted Japan’s critical position within world population, became a foundational narrative for understanding the population of Japan.
The second part of the essay studies how the theoretical debate on population was translated into concrete medical research on birth control in Japan, and indicates that the transnational element was even integrated into the applied scientific project that allegedly accounted for state population policy. I analyze birth control research organized by Koya Yoshio (1890–1974), director of the National Institute of Public Health. Koya defined his research within the framework of the state’s birth control policy yet simultaneously sought financial help from sympathizers of population control from the United States, namely Clarence J. Gamble and the Rockefeller Foundation. Koya’s arrangement eventually permitted non-Japanese, non-governmental actors to contribute to running the Japanese state apparatus addressing population policy. By clarifying agency in Koya’s birth control research, I demonstrate that inter- and transnational vectors affected not only the theoretical debate over the state’s participation in population control but also the medical practice sustaining state efforts to discipline and manage its population. These case studies therefore challenge the assumption of the state monopoly over population control.
The theme of empire acted as a critical backdrop to transnational exchanges on population, prevailing in the disputes over Japan’s population management. Specifically, discussions of the population problem in post-war Japan built on the transnational dialogue were predicated on the narrative of Japan’s lost empire as well as an imperialistic perspective engrained in the burgeoning discourse of transnational population control that labelled parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America as “underdeveloped.” This international context conferred a special status to post-war Japan: its demographic trend and sociopolitical state made Japan an archetype for “underdeveloped areas.”6 According to Ackerman, 1940s Japan had become a hungry, poor, overcrowded, and “under-developed” country because it had lost colonies after the collapse of its empire. Ackerman and Thompson suggested Japan should no longer resort to the familiar trope of territorial expansion or emigration precisely because these measures were associated with Japan’s aggressive imperial past. Under these circumstances, they understood birth control to be one appropriate policy for post-war Japan. They proposed birth control to replace pre-war methods to support a growing population that hinged on the notion of lebensraum. 7 Thus, the image of Japan’s lost empire, coupled with a perspective rendering Japan “underdeveloped,” acted as a critical backdrop to the promotion of birth control, creating an intersection between the domestic scientific discourse of population, the geopolitical narrative of colony and empire, and the post-war world that shaped population governance in post-war Japan. […]
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)