This chapter studies how an amorphous group of population experts became prominent in policymaking during the 1920s, when the phrase “population problem” entered the Japanese lexicon. This catchall term was used to refer to various kinds of socioeconomic ills, all of which were deemed to require state intervention. The chapter first describes how policy-oriented debate about the “population problem” developed in the 1920s, mostly among social scientists familiar with the “Karl Marx versus Thomas Malthus” argument initially introduced from the west. It then explores how the “population problem” became a policy priority in the late 1920s, by examining research and policy discussions that took place in the Investigative Commission for Population and Food Problem. By scrutinizing policy deliberations within the Investigative Commission about emigration and population control, the chapter shows that population experts were necessarily always in line with the government’s agenda. It also points out that the policy deliberation and research mobilized by the Investigative Commission laid a critical foundation for the institutionalization of government research on population problems, and for the establishment of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, both of which were realized as Japan entered war with China in 1937.

This chapter examines the development of modern population statistics, c.1860s–1910s. It describes the institutionalization of population statistics in Japan, first in tandem with the making of a modern official administration in the 1860s–1880s, and, from the 1890s, alongside colonial rule of Taiwan. It explores how the emerging cohort of individuals centering around bureaucrat Sugi Kōji established a scientific community, by taking advantage of their positions within the new government. At the same time, it depicts these modern statisticians’ coterminous position to political authority did not automatically grant them power to implement the scientific practices for which they lobbied. It illustrates this point by exploring their campaign to implement a national census in Japan. The chapter also shows how statisticians campaign came to fruition not in the metropole, but initially in the context of Japan’s colonial rule over Taiwan. Gotō Shinpei, a high-ranking officer in colonial Taiwan, promoted a population census, deeming it a valuable tool for scientific colonial governance. Finally, this chapter examines the activities of Mizushina Shichisaburō to describe how the scientific practice and community thrived in Taiwan surrounding the census work, and how the Taiwanese experience ultimately fed back to the statistical activities in the metropole.

This chapter examines the birth control survey research conducted by population technocrats c.1947–60, and analyzes how this research resonated with government efforts to manage the emerging problem of “overpopulation” via fertility regulation. Focusing on the leading population technocrat Shinozaki Nobuo, this chapter depicts how human agency participated in the at times precarious relationship between policy and practice. It also shows how the epistemological framework inscribed in the scientific knowledge produced by the survey research, harmonized with the economic and political rationale that buttressed the post-WWII state’s reconstruction efforts. To illustrate this point, the chapter examines: (1) the evident absence of the category of race and (2) the categorization of data by region and the research participants’ socioeconomic status. For (1), it contends that, by maintaining silence on the question of race, the research consolidated an image of Japan’s population as ethnically homogeneous, which was becoming increasingly dominant political discourse during this period. The phenomenon (2), I argue, embodied the burgeoning developmentalist logic that explicitly portrayed reproductive practices in terms of a nation’s socioeconomic achievement. Together, these phenomena served to produce a certain knowledge of the Japanese population that was particularly compatible with post-WWII Japan’s reconstruction efforts.

This chapter traces the development of Public Health Demography, a field of population science represented by activities at the Department of Public Health Demography at the Institute of Public Health. The department was established in 1949 by Koya Yoshio, the Institute’s Director and leading wartime racial hygienist who became a birth control activist after the war. Drawing on existing work that locates Japanese birth control advocacy in transnational histories, the chapter argues that domestic efforts to discipline reproductive bodies within Japan, realized by population scientists such as Koya, were directly linked to collaborative working relationships with international colleagues to restrict world population growth by popularizing contraceptive practices in so-called underdeveloped nations, through development aid programs. At the same time, going beyond the existing literature, I also depict how the transnational movement fostered inter-Asian scientific interactions between Japanese and Indian colleagues via the funding support of the American Foundations, most notably the Population Council. Ultimately, this chapter portrays the Japanese state’s efforts to regulate citizens’ fertilities as a complex practice based on the co-production of scientific knowledge, scientific discipline and social order involving multi-layered interactions at local, national, regional and transnational levels.

Japan today is known for the world’s most aged population. Faced with the challenge, policymakers deliberate on policies to curb the demographic trend, based on the material provided by population experts. But, why are these population phenomena seen as problematic in the first place? What are the roles of population experts in turning the demographic trend into a government matter? Science for Governing Japan’s Population tackles these questions. It examines medico-scientific fields developed in Japan in 1860s–1960s around the notion of population and analyzes the role of the population experts in the government’s effort to manage its population via policies. It argues that the formation of population sciences in modern Japan had a symbiotic relationship with the development of the neologism, “population” (jinkō), and with the transformation of Japan into a modern sovereignty. Through historical study, the book unpacks assumptions we have for the links between population, sovereignty, and science.

This chapter examines the wartime population policy, the balanced distribution of population that became deliberated in the process of creating policies for “national land planning.” It analyzes the debates relating to population distribution policies as well as policy-oriented research activities mobilized for national land planning, the wartime government’s “sacred mission” to construct the new order in East Asia by establishing the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. By focusing on the population technocrat Tachi Minoru, the chapter describes how Tachi’s research reflected the political agenda of the wartime government, which primarily viewed the population as an invaluable resource to be deployed for the nation at war. It details how the research carried out with this understanding came to create the knowledge about gendered and racialized demographic subjects that were categorized around the notion of economic production and biological reproduction. The chapter also analyzes the technocrat’s research to illustrate the fragile nature of demographic knowledge produced for policymaking and concludes that the role of policy-oriented scientific investigation in wartime statecraft was by no means as stable as has been claimed.

Japan today is known for the world’s most aged population. Faced with the challenge, policymakers deliberate on policies to curb the demographic trend, based on the material provided by population experts. But, why are these population phenomena seen as problematic in the first place? What are the roles of population experts in turning the demographic trend into a government matter? Science for Governing Japan’s Population tackles these questions. It examines medico-scientific fields developed in Japan in 1860s–1960s around the notion of population and analyzes the role of the population experts in the government’s effort to manage its population via policies. It argues that the formation of population sciences in modern Japan had a symbiotic relationship with the development of the neologism, “population” (jinkō), and with the transformation of Japan into a modern sovereignty. Through historical study, the book unpacks assumptions we have for the links between population, sovereignty, and science.

This chapter studies medical midwifery in Japan, which developed in the 1860s–1890s in parallel with the management of vital statistics within the Meiji government. The chapter describes that the profile of midwives was significantly transformed in the Meiji period, from regionally diverse birth attendants, often implicated in abortion and infanticide, to medically informed and licensed healthcare practitioners, defined by their role in enhancing – yet simultaneously monitoring – people’s everyday reproductive experiences. At the same time, it also shows how this transformation of midwives was intimately tied to the public health officers’ desire to collect and manage more “accurate” data about infant births and deaths, which they judged would be essential to construct a genuinely “modern” public health system. In this context, the medical midwife was an invaluable local point from which statistical data on infant health entered into the state administrative system. By juxtaposing the history of the professionalization of midwives with that of the establishment of vital statistics in public health, this chapter shows how the burgeoning statistical rationale acted as a pivotal background for the making of medical midwifery in modern Japan.

Process tracing is a familiar analytical tool in a number of sciences.Successful process tracing pulls together what is already known, believed or assumed and the various events, activities and entities in a case study in order to construct a narrative of the case. Several chapters in this volume offer accounts of narrative science that are explored through process tracing. These examples are analysed to reveal how various aspects of process tracing inform narrative and how narrative, in turn, aids process tracing in an iterative process of interpretation and reinterpretation of evidence, testing, development and revision of hypotheses, and the explanation of singular events.