Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023. xii, 298 pp. (Graphs, figures, B&W photos.) US$115.00, cloth; free ebook. ISBN 9781009186834.
Contemporary Japanese media and society widely discuss Japan’s rapidly aging and shrinking population as a serious “population problem.” In this context, it is fascinating to delve into a deeply interdisciplinary and highly readable study of how the modern Japanese state came to develop the ability to compile national population statistics and what influenced how it understood the first trends revealed through early surveys. Aya Homei’s interdisciplinary study should be of interest to a range of scholars and practitioners spanning fields of demography, history of science, sociology, political science, and history, among others, with the added benefit of open access publishing and clear language and organization encouraging readers to browse the contents to pursue specific areas of interest.
Homei’s grand narrative concerns both the technical questions of how technocrats garnered the support and developed the capabilities to conduct national population surveys in the 1860s as well as the intellectual and moral challenges involved in conducting them and interpreting the results over a century of unprecedented political change and challenges, including Japan’s early nation-building, colonialism, war mobilization, and postwar reconstruction after devastating defeat and loss of empire. Especially within the current context of deep concern over Japan’s demographic future, it is useful to be reminded of moral shortfalls of the past related to the lead-up to the National Eugenics Law of 1940 and the racialized political agenda of much of the twentieth century in Japan and elsewhere.
The book begins with a reference to Japan’s present demographic challenges, quoting a 2017 bestseller that predicts a future where there is a shortage of crematories and half of Japan’s local authorities are gone. Overall, though, despite a stated goal of examining “the relationship between population science and modern governance” (8), Homei does not engage much with how the government has sought to handle this latest challenge, apart from noting a number of plans implemented since the 1980s that have so far unsuccessfully generated a higher birth rate.
Much of the book’s narrative unfolds at a time when the scientific discipline of “demography” did not exist in Japan (11). As Homei notes, Japan conducted its first national census only in 1920, though she discusses at some length an earlier experience with conducting an island-wide census in colonized Taiwan in 1905. Chapter 1 focuses on the fledgling new central government’s efforts to employ what was described by one Japanese at the time as a “new technology of the civilized world” (31). Creating a centralized method to count the national population, Homei notes, involved creating a unified definition of what was a Japanese citizen, including the northern island of modern-day Hokkaido and southern islands of modern-day Okinawa for the first time.
Chapter 2 also covers this early period in Japan’s attempts at counting its population but through the lens of reproductive surveillance, with a particular focus on the role of medical midwives to examine the politicization of infant death from abortion and infanticide and other forms of birth control. Homei notes that as early as the 1870s the government began to collect centralized statistics on causes of death and burials that allowed for patterns to be discerned. Intriguing historical tables are presented (though only in Japanese) that show the much higher childhood death rate in Japan compared to the Western powers (85–86), which Homei argues contributed to policy changes in Japan.
Chapters 3 and 4 examine a period where the “population problem” began to be conceptualized through a wartime and expansionist lens, beginning in the 1910s. Concerns about the population growing too quickly for Japan’s limited resources as well as the eugenics-informed focus of building a “high-quality population” became national topics of discussion in this period (122). The pressures of a growing population, especially in the countryside in the 1920s, contributed to discourses on the utility of the mass colonization of Manchuria, Homei notes. She also discusses the fascist-era “General Plan for the Population” set in 1941 that included a goal of a “population of Japan proper” of 100 million (137). In these chapters Homei additionally chronicles early concerns about use of artificial birth control contributing to so-called “reverse selection” (118), which she then later interestingly contrasts with differing social views that emerge related to birth control in the postwar period in chapters 5 and 6.
Concern about “overpopulation” reemerged in the immediate postwar period with the size of Japan’s territory reduced and millions of Japanese “returning” to the home islands. This concern, Homei argues, contributed to a new approach over birth control—in particular seeing it as an aspect of social policy. Abortion was effectively legalized in this context in 1949, she notes. In this period, Homei writes, those tasked with counting the “Japanese” population once again struggled with whom to include, leading to another “reimagining” of Japan (191–194).
One notable theme emphasized throughout the book is the global aspect of population studies on Japan’s conceptions of its own population “problems.” Although Japanese are known for emphasizing their uniqueness rooted in their islander status, Homei convincingly shows how Western actors especially influenced how Japan conceptualized its population, including through the very tools used. In this way, despite the historical and niche focus of the book, the broader messages have continued relevance to challenges facing contemporary Japan.
The book’s concluding chapter drives this point home, though Homei only briefly and selectively covers the period from 1960 through the 2010s, when the contemporary concern with a declining birthrate and rapidly aging population emerges. Homei criticizes the “housewifization” of women in the later postwar period as one contributor to lower fertility (253) but generally offers little analysis that links the broader narrative of the book to Japan’s contemporary population concerns. The book ends with an excellent question: “How does science adequately represent the population of Japan for policymaking without essentializing the category of ‘the Japanese population,’ especially in today’s politics, which are increasingly exposed to globalization and multiculturalism?” While Homei does not directly answer this question, the impressively condensed and framed summary of Japan’s past attempts at population management offers a number of useful cautions and insights to consider.
Andrew L. Oros
Washington College, Chestertown