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.

The triumph of a linear, providentialist, and teleological history, forged by authors such as John of Biclaro and Isidore of Seville in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo could prompt equally linear readings of its content. This chapter examines how John and Isidore – the principal narrative sources in the construction of the Visigothic past – portrayed relations between central and local powers with a particular focus on the lexicon of conquest. This does not necessarily imply a rigid vision between centre and periphery, but rather an exploration of the role that these relations played in the construction of a linear history by clerics, monks, and bishops in seventh-century Hispania.

Consolidation of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania

Recent research has undoubtedly demonstrated that consolidation of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania did not occur through a linear process of conquest. As we shall see below, while it is true that dominion was sometimes achieved through military conquest in the strict sense of the word, it is no less true that these conquests formed the basis of more complex processes related to negotiated – and sometimes imposed – mechanisms such as taxation, administration, and pacts with the Catholic Church, aspects that are beyond the scope of this chapter but which form the backdrop to the subject under study.

The Goths, who from the time of Cassiodorus, Jordanes, and Procopius of Caesarea came to be known as Visigoths in the sources, formed their kingdom in Hispania in gradual stages. Their defeat at the hands of the Franks at Vouillé (507) undoubtedly represented a turning point, but was not the only reason why the Visigoths settled in Hispania.

The proliferation of known ‘Ecclesiastical Histories’ should be located in the Greek-Byzantine world, where a theological-political reflection on the empire, conceived as universal and providential, made inroads. Eusebius of Caesarea is unanimously considered the founder of this Christian historiographic genre, which spread in later centuries in both the East and the West. Eusebius’s Chronici canones , in fact, radically transformed the formulation of Christian Chronography and he created a new literary genre with the Historia Ecclesiastica . This author conceived a new type of history, unconventional in outlook and methodological in approach, grounded in a new religion. He established and transmitted the notion that God’s plan of salvation realises itself through the centuries.

Eusebius’s notion is characterised as a providential vision of history, devoid of free will. This is one of the key differences that would soon distinguish pagan from Christian historiography. The first was based on free judgement, which was a source of pride for ancient historians. Conversely, the other was grounded in scriptural authority. Concerning pagan historiography, Eusebius’s originality lies in the object of his history, namely, the church/ churches, which he characterises as the people or the Christian nation (ethnos ). Indeed, the very title of his work, Historia Ecclesiastica , does not refer to the church as a theological and institutional entity. In this work, the word ‘church’ seldom appears in the singular, indicating the theological notion of a universal church intended as an assembly united by faith, feeling, and institutions.

Isidore of Seville is an exceptional witness with respect to analysing the purpose of historia production in late Antiquity. He wrote a Chronicon and stories of the Germanic peoples settled in Spain. In his Etymologies , he defined the various genres of writing historia about the past in service of his cultural project. Finally, there are many references to historia in the De ecclesiasticis officiis , the Liber differentiarum , the De natura rerum , the De fide catholica contra Iudaeos , and the Sententiae .

We can distinguish three different aspects from the Bishop of Seville’s works, which mention uses of the term historia more than one hundred times. The first aspect is the definition of historia as a literary genre based on classical standards. The second is an exegetical reflection on the plural readings of the historia of a biblical text. The third aspect concerns the specific usages that Isidore discerns from the data provided by historia , whether sacred or profane, in order to produce texts aimed at describing the etymologies of words or the human past.

Explicit definitions of historia as a literary genre

Definitions of historia as a literary genre are mainly found in the Etymologies , in particular in chapters 41 (De historia ) and 44 (De generibus historiae ) of book I. They include various classical data that coexist but that are not always harmonised.

In antiquity, there was no such figure as the professional academic historian as we understand it today. Transmission of and reflection on past or present was conceived of as a service to the state, society, God, or the Church. It was done by persons belonging to the elite, who utilised History as a source of social power. The writing of History in Late Antique Iberia was penned by ecclesiastics such as Hydatius of Lemica, John of Biclaro, Isidore of Seville or Julian of Toledo, among others; most of them bishops, linked to the privileged sectors of society and intimately connected to groups of episcopal, monastic, and political power, who were also the main recipients of their writings. According to their vision, God was the rerum actor of historical events. In line with this perception, the rerum gestarum scriptor became a passive figure, a mere transmitter of the divine incidence in human history. A careful examination of the historical works by ecclesiastics shows us, however, that the Christian rerum gestarum scriptor was not an impartial or passive emissary of the events of the past. On the contrary, his presentation and reflection on that past, which, on many occasions, was about his own present, was active and committed and obeyed particular political and ideological motivations and interests.

Temporalidad y narrativa hagiográfica

Fruto de la visión rectilínea y teleológica de la historia –de la Historia de Salvación- propia del cristianismo, los seguidores de esta religión tienen una fuerte conciencia de la naturaleza del tiempo, de su continuidad e irreversibilidad. Para los cristianos el tiempo siempre hace referencia a una realidad, a algo ya vivido, que se está viviendo o que se espera vivir, todo ello irrepetible y conectado. En consecuencia, pasado, presente y futuro tienen un valor absoluto. De igual forma, antes, ahora y después adquieren un significado relativo o relacional.

Así concebido, el tiempo es un elemento esencial, consustancial, a la narrativa cristiana. El subgénero hagiográfico, por más que peculiar, no pude escapar de esta máxima por sus pretensiones de carácter historiográfico. Y sin embargo, no cabe ver en estos escritos una perfecta sucesión temporal o cronológica.

Dentro de las narraciones hagiográficas contamos con dos tipos principales: los relatos martiriales y las biografías de santos. Por lo que se refiere a los relatos martiriales, en concreto a los comprendidos en el Passionarium Hispanicum , el asunto que nos ocupa, aparentemente, no reviste mayor complejidad. A la par que destaca la presencia de la conjunción cum –junto con sus equivalentes y locuciones-con valor temporal, el llamado cum histórico, aparecen dos tiempos claramente definidos: pasado (la propia narración del martirio, habitualmente encabezada por la conjunción igitur ) y presente (emplazamiento de las reliquias y celebraciones diversas).

Introduction

Some of the historians of Visigothic Iberia had a well-developed appreciation of the boundaries of the historiographical genres within which they were writing and may even have had their own philosophies of history. Isidore of Seville’s theoretical writings on history, for instance, clearly had some influence on his practice as an historian. Yet, it is necessary to extend our analysis beyond purely theoretical matters if we are to understand better how and why Isidore and his peers in sixth- and seventh-century Hispania wrote about the past. If they wanted to see how others had written about the past and what they had written, Visigothic-era writers also had access to a wide range of historiographical sources, produced within the Iberian Peninsula and beyond, in addition to the theoretical works of Isidore and his predecessors. The historical productions of the period cannot easily be separated from the immediate historical contexts in which they were written either. John of Biclarum wrote his Chronicle to celebrate the conversion of the Goths to Nicene Christianity at the Third Council of Toledo in 589. Isidore of Seville rewrote his Chronicle and Histories in the aftermath of the expulsion of the Byzantines from Hispania in the mid-620s. Julian of Toledo composed the History of King Wamba to record Wamba’s triumph over the rebel Paul in the mid-670s.

Para qué sirve la Historia (antigua) o tardoantigua no es una interrogante nueva, ni siquiera desde la vertiente historiográfica, pero sí de recurrente actualidad. Al contrario, es una ‘vieja’ cuestión de la epistemología histórica, que atañe, en principio, a la duda razonable sobre la utilidad o inutilidad de la Historia (Antigua) como instrumento gnoseológico, como saber, en la medida en que todo conocimiento – y el histórico tal vez más- no debería ser considerado un fin sino precisamente un medio, un instrumento capaz de cambiar no sólo nuestra percepción del pasado sino también nuestra comprensión del presente. En definitiva, una actitud coherente con la conciencia crítica del mundo y la sociedad que se presume en el acervo del historiador, que no reconstruye el pasado de forma arbitraria sino mediante un conocimiento sujeto a reglas y métodos y, ante todo, con una hermenéutica peculiar para interpretar los testimonios del pasado y determinar su fiabilidad contrastados con otros coetáneos o posteriores y, en suma, para valorar los hechos en cuanto referentes válidos de un pasado meticulosamente analizado.

Por eso una reflexión sobre los ‘principios teóricos’ que conforman el discurso historiográfico pasado y presente, antiguo o reciente, sobre la Hispania tardoantigua no puede limitarse a una mera descripción de contenidos o a una lista – si larga- de autores, obras, fechas de publicación y ediciones, sino que en todo caso debe intentarse una revisión crítica de los mismos que, en muchos casos puede y debe implicar una re-interpretación, en la línea del ‘historical rethinking ’ anglosajón de K. Jenkins, por ejemplo, o del ‘pensar históricamente ’ del francés P. Vilar, entre otros.

Introducción. Historiografía tardoantigua y reino hispano-visigodo

Se tiene cierta tendencia a establecer una clara línea divisoria entre la historiografía del Mundo Clásico y la elaborada durante la Antigüedad Tardía, por responder la génesis de esta última a una matriz de signo netamente cristiano. Una observación más atenta de los escritos históricos tardoantiguos descubre que, más bien al contrario, el panorama no es tan contrapuesto como en principio se suele dar por sentado. Con rapidez se advierte que existe una reconocible continuidad en su tipología, algo que no es contradictorio con la incorporación de los recursos necesarios para su inserción dentro de un nuevo universo religioso, cultural y por extensión también político, articulado en torno al cristianismo, la nueva religión triunfante. Al igual que ocurría en la historiografía grecorromana, el perfil de quienes elaboran los textos históricos sigue siendo el de personajes ubicados en la primera línea de la actividad pública, protagonistas directos o indirectos de los acontecimientos más relevantes, y la finalidad de su escritura resulta del entrecruzamiento de vectores dispares, como son, entre otros, la declarada intencionalidad ejemplarizante, abiertamente teñida de contenido apologético, y una innegable dimensión política, no siempre evidente a primera vista.

Introducción: la herencia escrituaria

Uno de los principios ideológicos que la clase intelectual pagana reprochaba al ‘naciente’ cristianismo era la ‘novedad’, su falta de antigüedad y de una tradición suficientemente consolidada que avalase su doctrina. Por ello, a sus ojos, carecía por completo de legítima autoridad. Los defensores a ultranza de las ancestrales creencias arraigadas en el mundo grecorromano recelaban de las nuevas formas de culto religioso por considerar que en su seno escondían la expresión de dañinas supersticiones. De ahí que los apologistas se apresuraran a presentar como propios los sagrados escritos de la tradición judía, asegurando que existía una estrecha vinculación entre los antiguos profetas y la doctrina cristológica que fundamentaba la creencia cristiana. La literatura bíblica proporcionaba así a los cristianos una respetable antigüedad, mayor incluso de la que gozaban los propios mitos grecorromanos. La Biblia se convirtió, de hecho, en la depositaria de la ‘verdad histórica’, si bien el sentido de muchos de sus libros no parecía del todo claro.

In 2015, a Roman tombstone was unearthed in Cirencester in South West England. It bore a dedication to a 27-year-old woman named Bodicaca: a variant of the name Boudica. Though no firm dating is possible, the stone is likely to have been carved in the second century AD, some two generations after the uprising against Rome in South East England led by the Queen of the Iceni. Memories of the Queen lived on in Britain throughout the Roman period and beyond. The fifth-century author Gildas speaks of a ‘treacherous lioness’, leana dolosa , who butchered the rulers in Britain who had been appointed by Rome, and it is difficult not to see a gesture to the Icenian queen here. This reference is deeply hostile and there can be no doubt that it reflects Gildas’s own feelings. But these may not have been typical of his times. Gildas wrote to induce repentance in his audience and to do this he belittles the Britons at every opportunity, presenting them as a deeply flawed and ungrateful race who deserved to suffer. It is likely, therefore, that here he is deploying the rhetorical trope of refutatio : denigrating in advance an episode of history well known to his contemporary readers, which they would have used to counter his arguments. In short, the passage suggests that there was both a positive and a negative memory of Boudica in late-Roman and immediate post-Roman Britain.