Abstract

This short essay introduces the special issue, ‘Critical approaches to reproduction and population in post-war Japan’. It first explains that the issue came out of the two-year project entitled ‘Historicizing the Discourses of Declining Fertility and Ageing Population in East Asia, in which we reappraised Japan’s post-war history by identifying the demographic, discursive, social, scientific, and political factors that shaped the post-war population policies and reproductive practices. The essay then elaborates on the two interwoven threads of analysis we incorporated to reach the overall goal of the special issue, namely, to complicate understanding of Japanese post-war reproductive politics. The first thread is the politics of reproduction in modern Japanese history was inherently a politics of population. The second is that the medical and scientific knowledge on reproductive bodies and population statistics constituted a discursive register that allowed issues surrounding reproduction and population to be reformulated as concerns of the state. By locating the stories of everyday reproductive practices within a broader history of population politics embedded in the post-war Japan’s sovereignty and statecraft, the special issue clarifies hitherto understudied, yet critical, elements that shaped domestic reproductive experiences and the interpretation of the reproductive bodies in Japan’s post-war history.

摘要

这篇短文介绍了特刊“战后日本对生殖和人口的批判方法”。它首先解释说，这个问题出自为期两年的名为“将东亚生育率下降和人口老龄化的话语历史化”的项目，在该项目中，我们通过确定人口、话语、社会、科学和塑造战后人口政策和生殖实践的政治因素。然后，这篇文章详细阐述了我们为达到特刊的总体目标，即使对日本战后生殖政治的理解复杂化而纳入的两条相互交织的分析线索。第一条线索是日本近代史上的再生产政治本质上是人口政治。第二，关于生殖器官和人口统计的医学和科学知识构成了一个话语记录，允许围绕生殖和人口的问题重新表述为国家的关注点。通过将日常生殖实践的故事置于更广泛的人口政治历史中，该历史嵌入战后日本的主权和治国方略，特刊澄清了迄今为止尚未充分研究但至关重要的影响家庭生殖体验的因素以及对日本生殖器官的解释。日本战后历史。