Table of Contents for Wombs of Empire
Introduction: Population: A Discursive Site of En-gendering Life
The Introduction provides a set of research questions concerning "population" (jinkō) as a conceptual foundation for rethinking Japanese modernity. The Introduction is largely divided into three parts. The first part charts the historical context in which the new buzzword "population problem" (jinkō mondai) gained currency and places the discussions and policies surrounding population governance within the interconnected web of the contesting visions of modernity, imperial nationalism, and governmentality. The second part revisits the existing literature regarding Japanese modernity and fascism and reconfigures Foucault's notions of biopolitics and governmentality in light of colonialism, imperialism, and intersectionality in the context of the Japanese empire. The Introduction concludes with the general structure of the book and a summary of each chapter.
1.The Population Problem and Utopian Remedies
Chapter 1 examines how Japanese neo-Malthusianists and leftists articulated the population problem differently in the interwar period. In response to salient symptoms of the crisis of modernity, Japanese social reformers and labor activists had a heated debate around the population problem. The term "population problem" remained undefined because there was no consensus on what ought to be problematized, let alone agreement on how to tackle it. Notwithstanding their disagreement, both sides advocated birth control as a biological tool to achieve their respective political goals. By tracing the history of the population debate in interwar Japan, this chapter illuminates different utopian visions channeled through population control and their reconfiguration of modernity as biological progress.
2.Voluntary Motherhood: The Feminist Politics of Birth Control
In Chapter 2, I trace the historical trajectory of prewar feminist discussions on voluntary motherhood. Since the early 1920s, the rise of the birth control movement and the introduction of contraceptives allowed feminist thinkers to envision alternatives for natural conception that they thought to be constraints on women's empowerment. The idea of artificial birth control created a new basis for thinking beyond the naturalness of women's maternity far before the emergence of the women's liberation movement in the postwar era. This chapter elucidates the historical link between feminists' rearticulation of motherhood and contraceptive technologies by focusing on the transpacific circulation of the "voluntary motherhood" slogan. A close investigation into their birth control activism allows us to understand heterogeneous feminist approaches to the fashioning of ideal motherhood and the underlying gender schemas applied to positioning women in the nexus of ethnic nation (minzoku), race, and class.
3.Scientific and Imperialist Solutions to Overpopulation
Chapter 3 turns to the roles of the think tank scholars in legitimizing the "scientific" governance of the Japanese population. Against the backdrop of worldwide economic depression and the rise in agrarian and industrial disputes across the nation, leading scholars in economics, statistics, public policy, and sociology took the initiative in developing population science and joined think tank groups, including Jinkō shokuryō mondai chōsakai (Population and Food Problems Investigation Committee), established in 1927 and dissolved in 1930, and Jinkō mondai kenkyūkai (Population Problem Research Society), established in 1933. The principles laid out by these scholars range from social scientific reconfigurations of the Japanese population to the necessity of a permanent national institution to regulate and manage the population.
4.Building a Biopolitical State: The Mobilization of Health for Total War
Chapter 4 traces the historical trajectory from the creation of Kōsei-shō (Ministry of Health and Welfare) to the establishment of Kenmin-kyoku (Healthy People Bureau) under Kōsei-sho in November 1943. In arguing that the wartime population policies materialized the interwar blueprints for the biopolitical state, this chapter offers a critical look at the conventional association of Japanese fascism with a deviation from universal modernity. It also illuminates how the fascist regime reified biopolitical rationalities to transform the population into mobilizable human resources for the war efforts. Ironically, the perpetual wartime mode of life under fascism created a murky zone where the lines between life and death, biopolitics and necropolitics, and welfare and warfare became indistinguishable.
5."Fertile Womb Battalion": The Gender and Racial Politics of Motherhood
Chapter 5 shifts the analytic focus to the government's increasing attention to the maternal body during wartime. The chapter situates the wartime pronatalist policy under the slogan of "give birth and multiply" (umeyo fuyaseyo) within the broader context of population discourse focusing on the government's "fertile womb battalion" (kodakara butai) commendations and "Ninsanpu techō" (Handbook for the Expectant Mother) of July 1942, which offer a revealing look at the instrumentality of motherhood and family in the governmentalization of the state. In addition to the gendered division of citizenship, this chapter further analyzes the differential effects of biopolitical rationalities along racial and class lines. So-called comfort women, or military sexual slaves, were mobilized across the Japanese colonial empire and were conceived for women unfit for motherhood. Their fertility was denied by the imperial total war regime that mobilized comfort women only as disposable sexual resources.
Epilogue: The Continued Politics of the "Population Problem"
In the Epilogue, I provide a brief insight into the impacts of interwar and wartime discourse of population on postwar Japanese society. After the defeat of Japan in World War II in 1945, Japan underwent a drastic change in its political, economic, and social structures: the deconstruction of the Japanese empire and the reconstruction of the nation-state. However, this post-imperial and postwar process of rebuilding Japan continued to involve the remaking of population discourse, particularly population control through the family planning campaign and eugenic policies to accelerate economic recovery. The continued politics to control the population and reorganize gender relations makes clear the necessity to reconsider the historical legacy of population discourse in Japan and beyond.