Asian America. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018. xv, 318 pp. (Illustrations.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-1-5036-0440-7.
Contraceptive Diplomacy, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci’s thought-provoking book on birth control and reproductive politics in Japan and the United States, succeeds in a way all historical works should seek to emulate. The book “examines the development of ideas about birth control, contraceptive technology, and reproductive politics in the midst of imperial struggles between the United States and Japan by following the activism of Margaret Sanger and her Japanese counterpart, Ishimoto Shizue” (1–2). In taking a relatively specific topic that is perhaps infrequently given the attention it deserves, Takeuchi-Demirci offers an intriguingly complex and compelling narrative examining birth control, eugenics, racism, imperial ambition, immigration policy, and war. In doing so, she offers the reader a wealth of often new and surprising information while providing a historical narrative on birth and exclusionary policies that reads as frighteningly germane in the contemporary.
Contraceptive Diplomacy is organized around six largely chronological chapters spanning from the early days of Japan’s imperial expansion at the beginning of the 1900s through to the postwar and economic ascendency of the 1960s. The epilogue moves the reader closer to the contemporary, emphasizing throughout the substantial influence and impact of Margaret Sanger and Ishimoto Shizue (who we learn later divorces and remarries, becoming Katō Shizue in the book’s final chapters) on prevailing and differing birth control practices in their respective nations. Considered in total, Contraceptive Diplomacy expertly offers a century of history that charts the interconnectedness of Japan and the United States around the promotion and regulation of population size, reproductive rights, and women’s bodies.
Chapters 1 and 2 discuss early movements and efforts by birth control advocates and government policy with obvious attention given to Japan and the United States. Both chapters hint as well at the growing issues and concerns on the horizon as the basis and motivation for promoting birth control shifts between different ideological groups. While socialist and other progressively aligned groups in both countries saw a movement towards labour solidarity and greater individual control over one’s reproductive choices, others saw a means to limiting population growth among certain occupational or racially classified groups. Margaret Sanger straddled a progressive desire to emancipate alongside persistent “Orientalism” (61) and often patronizing views of the Japanese as needing to be saved by “Occidental ideals of individualism and personal ambition” (66). Taken together these chapters serve as necessary background information for the frequently troubling connections to come.
Chapter 3 assertively outlines the disturbing link between birth control movements and eugenics agendas before and after WWII in Japan, the United States, and beyond. Far from a movement by women to gain greater sexual and reproductive freedom over their bodies, birth control policy in the years before and after the war was co-opted by rising eugenic movements. Chapter 3, in my view the book’s strongest, calls forth practices of “danger spots” and fears in the United States of a “yellow peril” mixing with already entrenched white racism towards Mexican Americans and African Americans. Disturbingly widespread and influential views that white populations need to spread birth control as a means of population control among genetically “inferior” groups is discussed in exceptional detail and clarity. As Takeuchi-Demirci succinctly notes, “eugenicists’ pronatalism for the fit (white women in general) and the restriction of birth for the unfit (those who were mentally challenged, the poor, immigrants, and the ‘colored’ races in general) were two sides of the same coin” (109).
Chapters 4 and 5 move the reader to the postwar era, particularly American-occupied Japan from 1945 to 1952, and then ever closer to the contemporary. While the often horrid elements of eugenics began to fade away during this time, they never fully disappeared, especially in Japan. Yūsei kekkon, or “eugenic marriages,” remained a widely discussed and followed practice after the end of the Allied occupation. “Unlike the United States and other Western countries, where eugenics became stigmatized—at least on the surface—by the Nazis’ genocide program, the Japanese in general continued to use the word yūsei with positive connotations” (152). Again, birth control was turned into a tool of control, refashioning women’s bodies and their reproductive capabilities as “National Bodies” that had to be harnessed and managed along lines of state interest, regardless of how flawed and dubious the science motivating such policies may have been. This section of the book is also my only area of major critique as the text can feel repetitive in places. Condensing or perhaps even combining these chapters could have potentially improved the overall flow of the narrative.
Finally, chapter 6 and the epilogue deposit the reader in the contemporary and examine the interesting and sometimes frustrating divergences in birth control practices and policies between Japan and the United States. Oral contraceptive pills began to foster a divide between the two nations as Japan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare remained largely skeptical and wary of “the pill” while in the United States its initially surprising approval by the Food and Drug Administration has paved a path to eventual widespread use. In an aside likely to have popular appeal for its absurdity and evidence of Japan’s enduring gender-based discrimination, Takeuchi-Demirci discusses the eventual Japanese approval of oral contraception in 1999. This approval came about after the anti-impotence drug Viagra was approved for sale and use in Japan following just six months of deliberation on its safely and effectiveness, while oral contraception’s approval had been delayed for decades due to what was officially framed as safety concerns. The gendered hypocrisy “indicated once again that social ideas and political forces, rather than technological development itself, affected the availability of contraceptives” (207).
Contraceptive Diplomacy is a lively and throughly researched volume offering a wealth of intriguing and likely unknown insights into the history and complexity of birth control movements in Japan and the United States. It would make an interesting addition to history courses on Japan, particularly those focussed on the interwar years, and should be a text familiar to all scholars of Japan.
Paul Christensen
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, USA