Introduction. The formal involvement of Japanese women in the modern family planning and the birth control movement dates back to 1920 when Japanese activist Baroness Ishimoto (later Katō) Shizue(1897-2001) encountered Margaret Sanger in New York City and became an advocate of the cause. Sanger had already articulated the argument in modern feminist terms: women should control their own bodies and decide if they wished to become mothers. Back in Japan, Ishimoto was involved with like-minded men and women in founding the first birth control associations and clinics in 1930s. She was the first president of the Birth Control League of Japan, 1931, and opened a clinic in Tokyo in 1933. In addition, the Baroness invited Sanger to Japan in 1922 and for a return visit in 1936. Since abortion was a crime under Japan’s Penal Code, advocates of birth control stressed family planning and contraception rather than resorting to abortion or infanticide. A theme of eugenics or race improvement crept into population discourse as a means of preventing the birth of “inferior” babies, defined as mentally, genetically, or physically disabled.

1940 Eugenics Protection Law. The birth control movement ran into trouble in the militaristic 1930s and was put out of business by 1940 as unpatriotic. As often pointed out, Japanese militarists associated population growth with national development. They encouraged Japanese women to marry young and have large families—boys for the army and workplace and girls for the home. Another word for this policy is pro-natalism. At the same time, militarists complained to the rest of the world that Japan was overpopulated. They denounced immigration barriers in Europe, Australia, and North America and attempted to find new outlets in Latin America, the Pacific Islands, and the new and vast colony of Manchuria. Such thinking culminated in the Eugenics Protection Law of 1940 (effective in mid-1941). Induced abortion was still criminalized, and dissemination of birth control information was discouraged. However, sterilization to prevent the birth of “inferior” babies, those prone to genetic defects or hereditary diseases, was permissible. At that point, Japan’s home front population had grown from 56 million in 1920 (when, incidentally Ishimoto had become a birth control advocate) to over 73 million. The size in 1940 was apparently kept a military secret. The population density in 1940 was also very high: 199 persons to one square kilometer. The average number of household members was 5.1 (1935 statistics). As in other industrializing countries, families were smaller in the cities than in rural areas. The Welfare Ministry tried to bolster figures by rewarding families with ten or more children.

Postwar Baby Boom. At war‘s end, Japan’s population was close to 72 million, according to the English Language newspaper, Nippon Times, October 16, 1945. The number living in Tokyo had dramatically decreased from 8 million to 3 million owing to firebombing and evacuation. Elsewhere, urban populations had similarly dropped. Kyoto, which has escaped bombing, had 1,800,000. Approximately 7 million Japanese civilians and soldiers were still overseas awaiting repatriation.

In the next five years, 1945 to 1950, repatriation combined with a baby boom resulted in a rapid rise of the Japanese population to 82 million. This was accompanied by a decline in the death rate, owing to Japanese and Occupation cooperation in public health campaigns and the fight against infectious diseases. One scholar puts the baby count at 7,500,000 from 1947 to 1949. Nevertheless, many pregnancies were unwanted, sometimes because of rape or disease but more often because of worries over food, clothing, and housing. People flocked back to the cities, and new arrivals came from the countryside, making for overcrowded, dirty, and desperate conditions. Even as the birth rate climbed so did the rates for abortions and infanticide as Japanese women defied the law. In far too many cases, those who performed abortions were unqualified and endangered the health of the women. Since emigration was not a viable option, reformers backed various other solutions, such as revising the 1940 law to legalize abortion or circulating information on birth control and family planning. In addition, government and privately financed studies of Japanese population problems reached the conclusion by 1947-1948 that the economy could not sustain population increases at this pace. This in turn placed Japan’s transition from militarism to democracy at risk. As Japanese government policy shifted from wartime pro-natalism to postwar population control, smaller families were promoted as the ideal, especially in urban Japan.

General Douglas MacArthur and Occupation officials serving in the Natural Resources Section and Public Health and Welfare Section of GHQ privately favored population control but refrained from public statements which might anger opponents, especially the Vatican, the Catholic Church overseas, and Catholics in Japan. Technically, SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) remained neutral and let the Japanese decide the issues. Expert advisers to SCAP, however, would turn out to be much less inhibited and help generate passionate discussion.

Eugenics Protection Law, 1948. Japanese women joined the population debate. It was intertwined with their lives and possible deaths. Baroness Ishimoto, remarried in 1944 as Katō Shizue and a new mother at age forty-six of a baby daughter, returned to the political scene. She (and her husband) had won election as a Social Democrat to the Lower House of the Diet in the first postwar elections, April 1946. As a member of the Budget Committee, she has been quoted as saying to Diet colleagues in February 1947 that many Japanese women did not want children at that time. “We want to have our beloved children in a little while, once the problems of housing, fuel, and food have eased up.” Katō and like-minded women were acutely aware of the resort to illegal abortions and its dangers for women; also the abandonment of unwanted children. She preferred popularization of birth control methods as the alternative to abortion, and the following summer she founded the Japan Family Planning Dessemination Organzation. Polls had already indicated that Japanese women (and many men too), especially the poor, knew little about modern methods of contraception.

In the fall of 1947, Katō was one of eight backers, including a male medical doctor, of a private bill in the Lower House—a new Eugenics Protection Law. Another women supporter was Akamatsu Tsuneko in the Upper House. Katō’s husband was Labor Minister. This bill failed when no one at the Welfare Committee level would back it for House debate. In November, Katō tried but was unsuccessful in prodding Prime Minister Katayama, a Christian and a fellow Social Democrat, to make birth control a key policy of his administration. Was the problem sexual politics? As the political process unfolded in the next year, women advocates increasingly gave way not only to male law makers as leaders on this issue but to males in a particular profession: obstetrician gynecologists (ob-gyns). When Katayama was replaced as Prime Minister in March 1948 by the Ashida Cabinet, Katō too had yielded the Diet floor to men, though she did what she could behind the scenes. The leading backer of the revised Eugenics Law, June 1948, was Dr. Taniguchi Yasaburo, an Upper House counselor and an ob-gyn. By then, the law had government backing as well. The population was hovering around 80 million. Tokyo had grown back to 5 ½ million. The average household was 4.4 in urban areas; and 5.34 in rural (Nippon Times, 10 September 1948). The population was growing but not the economy.

The new law overturned the previous one and in effect legalized abortion. It retained, however, the philosophy of eugenics. Article 1 stated that the “purpose of this law is to prevent the birth of eugenically inferior offspring, and to protect maternal health and life.” Inferior progeny were defined as products of mental deficiency, hereditary physical ailment, and leprosy. In addition to eugenic operations, pregnant women whose life or health was endangered were eligible for abortions. According to Article Five, only certified medical doctors (ob-gyns) could perform abortions. In summary, abortion was legal for eugenic reasons, rape, or endangerment to the life and health of the mother. The law did not, to Kato’s disgust, encourage birth control information and family planning as a solution. Behind the law was perhaps greater concern for the health of the overall economy than for the health of the mother. And for the health of the doctor’s personal income. Scholars have pointed out that eight of the ten Diet members who introduced the bill were physicians.

Public Opinion. Although the 1948 Law was important, there was little publicity or open discussion in the newspapers. The only items in the Nippon Times were small ones on the size of population. There were no editorials and no articles explaining the law. The Japanese newspapers were limited to double sheets and had little to say. Perhaps this was deliberate policy on the part of the Japanese officials and SCAP. Father Edmund A. Walsh, a Jesuit and Dean of Georgetown University, was visiting Japan while the bill was under discussion. Also, Francis Cardinal Spellman (Archbishop of New York City) arrived with a party of fourteen Catholic clergy in early June. Intricate plans were underway to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Jesuit priest to Japan, Francis Xavier, 1549-1949. Catholic opposition to abortion, contraception, and sex education was known. Shintō and Buddhist priests said little openly. Cynics have suggested that Buddhist priests made money by selling small stone statues of the Bodhisattva jizo (a popular Buddhist deity of enlightenment and healing), to women grieving over miscarried, aborted, or lost babies or by performing special mourning ceremonies for the souls of the dead children, mizuko kuyō (temple services for aborted babies). Kato’s position in this domestic debate was that the government should establish marriage and birth control clinics and help to educate women and men, both rural and urban, about various methods of contraception. She apparently was not a vociferous critic of eugenics on moral or ethical grounds.

The silence ended in 1949 as birth control became a hot topic. Visitors to Japan included Warren S. Thompson, Director of the Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems and a vocal advocate of birth control. He arrived in January and by March had talked to Japanese officials, physicians, citizens, and the press. This time, there were editorials and discussion, pro and con, in the press. Interested students would be well advised to check the contents of Japanese women’s and general magazines in this period. Once again, there was a change in the cabinet. Yoshida Shigeru, back in power as prime minister, gave his support to population control. In May, the law was revised to include economic hardship as a legitimate reason for abortion. It also provided for local screening committees to investigate abortion applications. Opposition to the law, especially by Catholics, was so intense at home and abroad that General MacArthur was forced to spend considerable time answering questions and complaints. In July, he made public a letter he had written to the American Catholic Women’s Club of Tokyo declaring (misleadingly) that SCAP was not involved in population studies; such matters were strictly in the hands of the Japanese.

The ostensibly neutral position of SCAP was compromised in early 1950 when a technical adviser to the National Resources Section, American geography professor Edward Ackerman, warned that Japan was facing a population crisis. Japan, he indicated, would have to develop its resources, expand its trade, and do something about slowing the birth rate. Although criticism on moral and ethical grounds continued, there was wide-spread acceptance of abortion at the popular level in Japan but not without grief, guilt, and pain. In 1952, the Eugenics Law was further amended to do away with local screening committees and give ob-gyns still more control over the operations. The number of abortions rose dramatically over the next five years. The statistics are not known precisely, since physicians avoided giving correct figures in order to avoid taxes. Moreover, the medical community was not eager to publicize contraceptive methods and devices as an alternative.

Family Planning. In the meantime, Katō (and her husband) had lost their Lower House seats in the election of 1949. This was an unexpected blow and discouraging, but she continued to support family planning and contraception instead of abortion. This was difficult since the general population tended to associate contraception with prostitution even while accepting abortion as a solution. Over the years this would change, due largely to the efforts of Katō and other birth control advocates in providing sex education through clinics, books and pamphlets, and visual aids. Katō was successful in gaining a seat in the Upper House as a Social Democrat in the 1950 election, but her attempt to invite Sanger once again to Japan was blocked when SCAP refused to grant a visa. Though Sanger would have to wait until the Occupation had ended, she nevertheless arrived quickly—October, 1952, just six months after the peace and security treaties went into effect. By this time, Katō had become involved with the Moral Rearmament Movement and was permitted to participate in its World Assembly at Mackinac Island, Michigan, in 1951.

In the first years of post-Occupation Japan, several small associations carried on the cause of family planning through education. Katō’s group was the Japan Family Federation of Japan, founded in 1954. Another was the Japan Birth Control Institute, the creation of a wife and husband medical team: Dr. Amano Fumiko and Dr. Amano Kaseyasu. The woman, Fumiko, had been educated in the United States and was an obstetrician and gynecologist. Women volunteers and welfare officials spread information about condoms and rhythm control, with housewives as their special targets. The Rockefeller Foundation was also involved in financing contraception education. However, the birth control pill, once it was perfected as a contraceptive device, was banned with ob-gyn blessing until 1999, and even then was not widely used, since it was perceived by many women to be chemically unsafe.

In 1955, the Fifth International Family Planning Conference was held in Tokyo, which helped Japanese birth control advocates to promote family planning as something positive. The date was fortuitous. 1955 was also the year of the first Five Year Economic Plan. Before long, Japan would enjoy double digit economic growth. At the same time, although the population continued to grow, it would do so at a declining rate and the baby boom would wind down faster than in the United States. Japan became known as a high abortion country; critics called it abortion on demand. In 1996, when the Eugenics Law of 1948 was replaced, the Japanese, by then a highly affluent people, were worried about a very different set of problems: a drastic decline in the fertility rate and an aging society. In a total change of values and life patterns, Japanese women were marrying much later than before, having fewer children, if any, divorcing at higher levels, or choosing to remain single. The average family in 2005 is 1.3.