Infanticide and fertility in Eastern Japan: Discourse and demography, 1660--1880

This dissertation argues that between 1660 and 1880, the demography of Eastern Japan was twice transformed. Effective fertility rates dropped sharply in the 1670s and remained so low for the following century that the region experienced severe depopulation. In the 1790s, that trend reversed and set the stage for a demographic expansion that ended only in the late twentieth century. At the center of these developments lay the rise and demise of a culture that tolerated and even encouraged infanticide. This culture was sustained by particular understandings of human life, political space, and the nature of time. In the 1790s, campaigners appalled by what they saw as a demographic and moral crisis successfully undermined these understandings. For the next ninety years, infanticide was a central topic in a public conversation about the nature and direction of society. A new discourse dehumanized the perpetrators of infanticide and for the first time portrayed its victims as fully-formed humans, protected by higher powers and ready to avenge their deaths as malevolent spirits. In this new context, the disastrous consequences of infanticide negated its usefulness as a tool for planning ahead and ensuring the prosperous continuity of the household.;The argument that discourses and demography were locked in a feedback loop is examined with two broad categories of materials. A close reading of discursive sources, especially propaganda texts and images, polemical tracts, and policy proposals charts the changing mental worlds of literate elites as they intersected with the infanticide question. The second pillar of the dissertation is a database of 5 million person-years, which was created from the population registers of 980 villages through the application of the Own Children Method. Analyses of this dataset chart the contours of demographic change and, by making visible the patterns of infant selection, open a new perspective on the fears and aspirations of the population at large. Together, the two types of sources tell a contingent story of discursive transformation and demographic expansion, contraction, and resurgence that challenges unidirectional narratives of modernization and demographic change.