POPULATION CONTROL AND TE FAMILY IN FEUDAL AND POST-RESTORATION JAPAN Gordon T. Bowles The analysis of population statistics from the standpoint of social thropology promises to become an increasingly significant field of study peoially in regions where economic pressures have been the greatest. It also clear that in the long run any change in society, either structural- or functionally, which reveals itself in population statistics must neces- rily affect the genetic inheritance of that society. The following is a rtial analysis of some of the available statistical data on the population Japan during and after the feudal period and implications with respect population trends in Japan today. Population increase has always been a matter of grave concern to the pmese but it reached alarming proportions in the immediate postwar period the returning flood of demobilized soldiers and repatriated civilianes Md by a sharp rise in the birth rate, raised the natural increase to the thest level ever reached in Japanese history. Realizing the acuteness thei situation, the Japanese government in 1948 passed a Eugenic Protec- f Aot that permitted the establishment of birth control clinics in the ,al Health Centers and legalized abortions to protect the mother's health, Oerpretation of the latter including among its provisions economic as a1 as the more narrowly conceived medical reasons. These measures resul- t in a sharp decline in the birth rate and in 1950 the population figure ed exactly at the point anticipated by the pre-war trend line. By 1952, * tine had dropped even further and in fact the past five year period m1947 to 1952 has witnessed one of the most spectacular birth rate dee- 1zies in all history. The declining birth rate has been so remarkable as to have become the ijeet of much debate and study by students of Japants postwar problems. the oontrol by contraception has undoubtedly been a contributing factor, :o6nservative estimates indicate that more than a million abortions are ^ performed each year. In spite of these measures, the annual natural egase remains substantial, the death rate having been reduced to a level parable with that of the most complex industrial nations by the intro- tion of modern public health measures. To the Government and the people IJpan alike it has become clear that population increase remains the Wtest single national problem and that unless radioal and as yet undis- prd agricultural methods can be devised to achieve food sufficiency, the extremely difficult task of r~ationalizing industry and exterAing can be realized, the problem of achieving a; stabilized econoay will Weach a solution. Countless studies have been directed toward these issues and several have dealt with various aspects of the feudal period when Japan was faced with many of the same problems that confront the nation today. Of special interest is an article on abortion and infantioide by Bonsen Takahashi which appeared in the November and December 1952 issues of the periodical Shizen. In the following pages I have drawn freely from this artiole whioh is a composite analysis of more than thirty separate sources; unless otherwid indicated, the illustrations used are from Mr. Takahashits article. I have also referred to the Encyclopedia of Folklore (Minzmkugaku Jiten) which likewise appeared in 1952 and to various older publications. As explanatory and contrasting data, I have had recourse to my notes on modern Japan and to the data gathered on field trips with or by my student assistantbo Mr. Chikasato Ogyu and Mr. Yasuhiro Haraguchi in a mountain village in Nagano prefecture. The vil-lage is among the more conservative of those classed as mountain villages by Japanese ethnographers and many features which developed in the feudal period still survive either in actual practice or in the memories of the older inhabitants. Japanese feudalism was characterized by a rnumbor of unuou&l foatures not duplicated with such intensity in other feudal systems. Among the most significant of these weres 1) political and geographic isolation; 2) xenophobic cultural exclusion; 3) rigid social class dichotomy and 4) almost complite economic self-sufficiency. They were not all present in the earlier period, but with the establishment of the military dictator- ship in Yedo under the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603, they became part of national policy and persisted as such until the close of the period in 1867, or 260 years later. The threat of foreign domination was removed by the expulsion of all foreigners with the exception of a closely guarded Dutch trading post in Nagasaki and by the virtual elimination of the Christian Church. Coinage was scarce and foreign commerce was vary limit- ed but the Shogunate or Bakufu government sought to achieve self-sufficien- y -by assuring a constant supply of rioe. Rice was made the basis of natiomal economy and the tribute of vassals as well as the taxes of famers were fixed on the basis of this single commodity, the latter being detor- mined aocording to local conditions in amounts ranging from 50%-80% of the annual crops. Hold alof from the commoners by a strict dode of ethics, the non- taxed Bushi or ruling olasses which constituted from 6%4.8% of the total population depended for their welfare upon the labor of the farmers. There was virtually no middle class in the early period: the peasants and artisans comprised over 90% of the population, with the Eta or out- castes aoooiting for the remait#ig mr.11 peroontagev The government tried to follow a policy of allowing the farmer just enough to maintain existence without impairing production. Cultivated lands were technioally owned by the lords. but the farmers hold the right of tenure and in theory the transfer of land rights was prohibited. Un- able to sell or leave their lands and forced to maintain normal production, the farme.rt only hope of improving their lot was to inorease the area under cultivation, to seek part-time employment as laborers, or to engage in handicraft inidustries as sidelines. All of these they did, especially the developing of upland fields where nonwtaxable dry farming crops could be raised. At first the system seemed to be reasonabJ.y successful. There was an increase in the population but it was largely offset as the cultivated area increased; in normal times, at least, the lot of the farmer was bear- able Only in periods of famine was there serious economic distress. Not until about the middle of the period, about 1750, after new lands imedi- ately surrounding the farms had been exhausted and the rice lands had be- eome increasingly encumbered by mortgages and debts, did the fundamental weakness of the system become apparent. In order to lileet their tax pay- ments, farmers gradually lost the rights to their lands as the ever-grow- ing class of merchants found ways of evading the anti-alienation, laws. Thus, the merchant class grew in numbers and in wealth and the farmers -became more and more impoverished. This in turn reduoed the income of the lords and both classes accordingly sufferedo Under such conditions, it is scarcely surprising that the people should have been driven to extreme measures to ensure their survival, As their incomes continued to decrease, farmers and warriors forced to extremes by their dire economic plight sought relief by limiting the number of chil- dren through abortion and infanticide to a minimum necessary for survival. Both practices were old in Japan but they assumed new significance in the feudal period which they seem not to have assumed before. As early as the ninth century there is specific reference to the necessity "to reduce the number of mouths" during periods of famine gnd general economic distress, A particularly striking statement is recorded in a letter dating from 1571 which illustrates how widespread the practice was and how intensive it could becomes "Japan is a mountainous country and as children are abundant many of these must be killed in order that the others may live. The woman is known to have killed from ten to twenty infantsfll Another report states that "throughout Japan whenever there are too many childrens all that are in excess are destroyed.tt A letter written about the Japanese by a Christian for despatch abroad reads in parts "They mistreat their women. Households need only one or two ohildren and if more are born they are destroyed. The devil has deceitful ways of causing a woman to bear female children and she will consequently be damned to hell, WTomen are consequently fearful and some drink medicine in ordor to avoid having children." As a world phenomenon, the resort to aboftion and infanticide as a means of population control are as old as the memory of. man a:-zJ their occurrence has been virtually universal, but their significance in Japan lies in the extent of the praotices, the relatively abundant documnentation and the relationship they have borne to the social structure and in parti- cular to the familya Ln considering population control, especially in the context of the famLlyo it is essential to distinguish between the selective methods which involve preferential discrimination between the offspring to be preserved and those to be destroyed, and the aselective methods which are concerned merely with the limitation of numbers. The la'tter may include any form of pre- or postconceptive control or indiscriminate infanticide, but preferen- tial discriminlatory control based upon physical factors rather than upon magical properties is neoessarily postnatally administered. Infanticide is then a means of achieving either discriminate or indisorimiat6ocontrol. and it is usually difficult to distinguish between the two from general population figures except through an imbalance in the sex ratio in the in- fant categories. The deliberate destruction of only males or only females, or more of one sex than another, tends to skew population figures notice- ably outside of the normal range of expectancy. The sex ratio may be af- fected if there is an attempt to achieve a desirable sexual alternation in birth sequence but it would not normally be affected by the elimination of children of multiple progeny births or of those afflicted with-physical abnormalities or of -those who fail to resemble either parent sufficiently. Population figures first became available for Japan on a national basis when in 1721 the Tokugawa Shogunate ordered a report on the number of commoners in the realms Prior to this time, various reports or compila- tions and register data had been made every six years for periodic inter- vals from the year 645 onward but these were generally based on the number of households or on grain consumed. Even the report of 1721 was incomplete as it excluded some of the nobles, the daimyo, the samurai, and the retain- ers as well as the outcastes who may colleotively have accounted for as much as eight percent of the total. In Table I are given the total popu- lation figures for various years from 1750-19356 TABLE I Population increase in Japan based upon the total for 1750 and the sex ratios (females per 1000 males) for corresponding period (modified from Takahashi, Pt. I, p. 53). Year Total Percentage Females per Population Increase 1000 Males 1750 25,9220288 100.0 876 1756 26,070,712 10006 891 1786 25,073,046 96.7 894 1804 25,527,229 98.5 917 1834 27,058,910 104.4 929 1846 26,907,625 103.8 942 1852 27,210,939 105.0 923 1872 33,109,826 127.7 970 1916 53,461,000 206.2 993 1935 69,254,148 267.2 994 4 The most significant feature of the table is undoubtedly the steady maintenance of the total population at practically the same level for over a century. That this was accomplished by means of wholesale resort to abortion and infanticide is clear from numerous accounts. There is no way of telling exact figures but the destruction of infants before or im- mediately after birth must have been sufficient to reduce the birth rate of the farmers to the level of the death rate over any considerable number of years. But this may have been above deaths in good years, for famine and pestilence took their toll and young and old alike suffereds The heaviest mortalities occurred during the six year period from 1780-1786 during which there was a reduction of over one million in the total popu- lation (l). A second significant feature of the table is the rise in the sex ratio from a low of 877 to virtual parity by 1916. It is difficult to assess the relative roles of spurious reporting and actual differences in this changing ratio. There was nothing inherent in the structure of Japanese society which demanded an automatically fixed sex ratio. It tended to fluctuate widely and favored first one sex and then the other. In the earliest periods during the millenium preceding the Tokugewa periods roughly from 600-1600, almost all figures available contain an unusual feature which is difficult to explain in full although the flight of men from tax in kind and labor service was doubtless involvede Females always considerably exceed males; the ratios ranging from 120-150%o But the proportion of males steadily increased and by the seventeenth century or thereabouts it had overtaken the female, The ratio continued its down- ward course until it reached a low of 877 in 1750. About this time, a reversal set in and the figure steadily rose thereafter as already indica- ted abovea Whatever the degree of -validity in the reported sex ratios, the changes in such ratios are contrasted with the economic and cultural changes known to have occurred in Japanese societyv Early in the Tokugawa period, the destruction of girls was greater than that of boys. One ac- count states that t"after villagers have one or two children, they will kill the remainder, especially the girlse' The best explanation which has thus far been given is that girls were an economic asset in the earlier periods when the agricultural methods tended to employ more female than male labor, but, as the methods changed and as women came to be employed less and less in direct productive labor, they lost their economic value and consequently were less likely to be retained than maleso The economic argument is adduced to account for all sex ratio fluctuations which wb.uld thus be based on the worth of the individual to the economy and more par- ticularly to the individual family household* In Table II are shown the sex ratio figures based on geographical distribution as given by Naotaro Sekiyama in a book entitled Kinsei Nihon Jinko no Kenkyu (Study of the Population of Japan in Modern Times)o These also show a steady change from the mid-Tokugawa period to the present. In 1750, in the central Tokai area (Mie, Aichi, and Shizuoka prefectures) and on the island of Shikoku, virtual parity existed between the sexes. 5 Proyr, this contral area the ratio diminished in both directions and reached its lost point in northern Honshu with a figure of only 784 females per 1000 males. In the southfest it dropped to 832 in Kyushu. A hundred years later the same general distribution occurred but in less acute form and with a marked increase of nearly seven units in the figure for the entire country. The most notablo changes occurred in the south especially in Shikoku where there was a drop to a level oomparable with that of the neighboring prefecturess By 1916, the high statistical plateau in the center had wholly disappeared and was replacoed by an irregular pattern but the national averago wao increased by three units reaching a high of 972. TABIE II Ratio of Japanese Females to Males per 1000 at Selected Periods (Modified from Sekiyama, p. 112) Location Region 1760 1846 1916 Northeast Tohoku 784 925 943 Kanto 824 943 986 Hokuriku 932 983 993 Tosan 940 959 978 Central Tokai 996 989 931 Kinki 935 967 990 Sanin 926 933 947 Sanyo 934 908 942 Shikolku 985 911 938 Southvoest Kyushu 832 909 971 National Average 876 942 971 If it oan bo assuwod that.tho..sox ratios for tho rogions boar somo rolationship to the actual number of males and females born and roared in tho various regions, two aapoots of interiial migration must be oonsiderede As living conditions continuod to doteriorate in the country districts and wealth accumulated more and more in the urban areas, there was con- siderable movement of mature males to the town and city to seek their for- tunes as apprentioes and domestics. Meantime, the ranks of the ruling classes grew thinner as the impoverished Bushi turned from their tradition- al occupations as warriors and officials and Joined the despisod but ever swelling ranks of the merchants. The number of male migrants far outnum- berod that of females but many of the latter were forced to leave their homes in the remote rural areas and were sold into virtual slavery as domestics, entertainers and prostitutes. The Tohoku area has always fur- nished a relatively high percentage of girls in these categories; even today, more prostitutes in the Tokyo area come from northern Honshu than from any other part of Japan. In connection with migration, the popula- tion figures for a district in the city of Osaka in the year 1868, as shcwn in Table III are most revealing. 6 TABLE III The Population of Minamigumi District, Jikeicho Mura, in Osaka City for the year 1868 (Modified from Sekiyama, p. 116) Age s No. of No. of Males per 1000 Females per 1000' 8 Soix ;Ratio * Males Females Population Population (Femalos per 1000 Males) 1-10 64 42 79 90 1135 11-20 64 51 136 108 797 21-30 32 32 68 68 1000 31-40 40 39- 85 83 975 41-50 31 25 75 53 806 51-60 29 9 62 19 310 61-70 11 16 23 34 1455 71-80 1 7 2 15 7000 Total 245 221 530 470 Clearly the numbers are small but the figures are most irregular in these data for Osaka in 1868* The totals in the 1-10 category should be the highest if the population were uninfluenced by aritificial controls and the sexes should be approximately equal. Actually$ the 11-20 age category is larger and the number of malo infants is disproportionately high and quite beyond the range of normal expectancy. Abortion and pos- sibly infanticide appear to be the major causes of both irregularities. In the next category, the 11-20 year olds, the greatly increased number of males and slight female increases are probably both due in part to temporary migrant labor, These migrants returned to thoir towns or rural homes as husbands and wives after a few years in the city and the figures drop accordingly for the decade aged 21-30. In the 31-40 age group, there is another influx of workers. Those who came at this stage tended to remain the rest of their lives, a fact which is generally cor- roborated by a steady decline in the old age categories. The shift in the proportion of urban to rural dwollers is a second factor of importance in the interpretation of regional differences in the sex ratios. When Yodo was first selected in 1603 as the capital of the Bakufu government, it was a country village with only a few hundred inhabi- tants. By 1723, it was a city of over half a million and by 1800 the inhabitants exceeded a million. The total number of town inhabitants throughout the country had risen from 7% to 10% between 1710 and 1850 while the farming population had remained praotically stationary at 82%. These figures did not include the Bushi or warrior classes who lived in the castle strongholds. Their number first rose from .7% in 1710 to 8.5% in 1755 and then dropped to about 7% by 1850. Another element of significance was the fluctuating character of the outcaste or "unclean" population, the Eta or Hinin, who are sometimes 7 oolleotively referred to as the Senmin. In 1750, they totalled nearly 4% of the populationo During the ensuing hundred years their numbors steadily dwindled to less than half their previous strength but suddenly about 1850 a reverse tendency set in so that when their outoaste status. was offioially abolished and they were acoorded full citizenship they had inereased to about 2,5%. In 1945, their numbers had increased to well over 3% and all distinctions bebween them and the rest of the population were officially banned. They were renamed Shinheimin or "new commoners," a title which eeems to be of dubious worth as a distinotion is thus per- petuated which tends to delay the oomplete eradioation of segregation. An interesting feature of the Eta was that they alone appear to have been free in general from the practices of population limitation, the reasons for whioh will be noted later. That this fact was of sooial and, to a limited extent, genetio significance cannot be denied but the influence on the total number of people was unquestionably slightx Statistios vary in their. referenoes to the Eta or Hinin, some :.dikb?ins guishing between the Eta whose characteristic ocoupations were butchering, skinning, and leatherworking, and the'Hinin' (literally poor people but connoting subhuman status) who inoluded among their ranks travelling show- men and musicians, watchmen, midwives,. and executioners. Being exempt from the rules affecting oommoners, Eta parents were generally not permit- ted the right to disown their children, a oondition enoouraged by the Bakufu goverment whioh feared that disownment of Eta children would be an encouragement to the viatims to seek or find refuge among the oommon people. This actually seems to have happened in many cases and probably accounts for the notioeable drQp in the' peroentage after 1723. 'The trend to escape from Eta status seems to have gained such momentum that as a final measure to prevent its continuanoe the government began to permit disownment, but only in instances where it was accompanied by arrangements for transfer and adoption into another Eta village. Many Eta also served as midwives and pregnant women from among the commoners frequently oalled the women to their homes, or if they wished to acoomplish delivery unde- tected they went to Eta hamlets at the time of parturition. There is also reason to believe that the Eta suffered less in times of famine. Being unclean, they were not bound by the general repugnance to the eating of the meat of four-footed animals which oharacterized the Bushi or even the Heimin. Domestic quadrupeds were raised for their labor and leather, the caroasses being considered unfit for normal human consump- tion. As the shortage of food increased, animals could be slaughtered and eaten as foodo All economic writers of, the times stress this point and attribute to it the fact that they did not resort to abortion or infanti- cide, presunmably because there was no necessity to do so. In the early part of the seventeenth century the Bakufu government attempted to prevent both abortion and infanticide. The first effort was a:i edict issued against their praoitee in Yedo, the capital, and their practitioners were expelled from the city. Despite the threat of severe penalties this effort was a signal failure. About 1660 a second attempt was made and by 1750 the prohibition was extended throughout the entire 8 nationo But even these measures met with little success and both practices continued to increase in intensityo It is not surprising then that because of their interdiction by the government, direct reference to either act was generally avoided. In fact, not only the act but the victim as well were generally referred to in such ways as to make clear the meaning with- out z'esorting to specific terms. That these circumlocutions and substitu- tions may have been employed in part or possibly even primarily to avoid incrimination cannot be denied, but such actions are also in keeping with Japanese culture As has been pointed out by numerous observers, it is characteristic when discussing unpleasant subjects to employ euphemisms and ev-asionso The technical term for abortion was "datai," a combinations of the charsacters "throw" and pregnancy," but the word usually used was 1torosuti meaning "to lower." Similarly, a technical term for infanticide existed, but it was popularly referred to as "mabiki" which literally means "thin- ning" (as used in cultivating a row of seedlings). But in referring to a specific instance of infanticide even the indirect tern of "thinning" was not employed. Instead, a phrase was generally used which meant "to returnt" or "to send backmt-'.to the place from whence the baby came. Along the coast this was often altered to "sending or returning to the sea," In Nagano prefecture, an infant was usually "prevented from crying" or it was sometimes "turned into a mole" and in Kyushu it was frequently "sent dig- ging after mountain potatoes." In the north it was sometimes said that the infant had "gone to the mountains to work" or that it had been "sent to fetch a hoeo" Even the most direct expressions were likely to convey the impression of accidental destruction; and an infant was sometimes ttcompressed,"t "fcrushed," "twisted," or "clawed," (presumably in the process of birth) or it might have "become smaller." One observer of the times writes that "everywhere are poverty stricken farmers and so even if women conceive they can't rear their 6hlldren; therefore they resort to " lowering" and "thinning." In Sendai, a Confucian scholar of the period wrote: "In the Genroku era (1688- 1703) couples used to have five or six children but in the Horeki era 1751-1763) all resorted to "thinningt and seld'om had more than one or two." The extent of population control varied both regionally and periodi- cally and there was a contrast between the practices of the city and those of the country. Abortion was limited primarily to the urban areas and infanticide to the rural districts and in particular to the mountain vil- lages, In the urban areas abortion methods were better known, the tools were superior and medicines and the services of practitioners were readily available. A very practical consideration against infanticide in the urban areas was doubtless the greater difficulty of disposing of infants undebec- ted. If, through timidity or considerations of health, an unranted foetus was carried to its full time, the mother was likely to go to the hut of a midwife in the outskirts of the town, thus avoiding any serious issue, either with her conscience or with the authorities. Otherwise, if the delivery could be accomplished in secret the infant was more than likely 9 abandoned, a practice more froquently resorted to in the towns than in the oouiAtry. In the courts of nobles and even in the household of the Shogun abortions ocourred. There is an aocount of an heir to the Shogunate who became enamored of one of the court ladies. She was an extremely beautiful lady who at the age of sixteen had been put under the care of nuns. Later, when oalled to oourt by the Shogun, she had changed her name and let her hair grow. As a result of her enoounters with the heir she conceived but inasmuch as the Bakufu government expressly forbid heirs to the highest offices from having natural children, beoause of the fear of pretenders, her child was "returned to water.tt In the rural areas, eoonomic conditions were more stringent, the cost of medicines was prohibitive, the servioes of practitioners were exorbitant or unattainable and detection by officials less likely. For these reasons, infanticide was generally preferred to abortion and, as the having of children was in a sense a village as well -as a family affair, there seems to have been less tendency to draw a distinction between a born and an unborn child; both were potentially mouths to feed. Under these circumstances also the concealment of an impending birth would neither be practicable nor necessary and it is more than likely that the question of what to do with the infant would have been a matter of common disoussion with neighbors and their advice would have been sought. General- ly also neighbor women assisted in the delivery and even served as midwives. A mother generally went back to her parents' home for the first deli- very, a custom which still prevails ih many mountain villages. There- after she was likely to have the servioes of a midwife or, if she lived in a mountain village, parturition might even be alone. If a midwife was called, it was customary for her to ask if the child was "to be left" or "to be returned" and the child would accordingly be retained or disposed of by the midwife. The mother might even specifioally request that it be "squeezed" or "twisted." Babies so destroyed were generally buried near a shrine or temple. In Sendai, many hundreds were thus buried in the grounds of the Yatsuzaka tomploe Oocasionally, parents might destroy the baby themselves and in such instances the simplest methods were to throw the child into the river or to plaoe a moistened sheet of soft paper over the child's face. Another method was to suffocate with a bed quilt or press with the knees until breathing oeased. Still another was to place the baby under a stone mortar. In these oases, burial was usually in the "mortar yard" and the ohild was referred to as a "mortar child" (2). "Twisting't was done by strangling or pressing d on the throat and ohest with one hand and on the genitals with the other. Posters were exhibited by the Government in an effort to discourage the killing of babies and on them this particular method was illustrated. In the scene a .oman is shown suffocating a child and emanating from her heart is a second illustration showing a devil in the same position as that assumed by the woman. The accompanying text reads: t"This woman thinks nothing of killing her own child. Because she is this kind of a woman she must be a horrible person. If you want to see the face of one 210, who would kill a child take a good look at this picturee If you look-at the picture-you wiLl see that although a person who commits infanticide. may have an innooent face it is in reality horrible. Even the man who has such a woman_ as a wife. must also have a terrible heart" (3)o The economic plight of the farmer- was so grave that sometimes families would merely dispose of all or most of their children at-birth and, if at some later time a death occurred or for some other reason another child was needed, they might adopt a partly grown one and thus save the cost of raising it through its expensive infancy. In case a child was not to be had in the ocauntry, as was sometimes the case, the couple might buy one which had been kidnapped from the city. The kidnapping of town children for sale in the country became in fact a regular business. Abortion was often associated with illegitimacy, especially in the towns and castle cities. In the latter, court intrigues were quite fashionable and the fashion spread to the merchant classes and the arti- sans. These intrigues not infrequently ended in conceptions and the prob- lems thus created were usually solved by abortion. In the rural areas, hwever, while the bearing of illegitimate offspring was never condoned, there was more of a sense of community responsibility and various social devices were employed to obscure irregularity of parentage. Today, in remote areas, an illegitimate child is not infrequently registered as the mother' s brother or si ster. The problem of social ab sorption is thus accomodated but the practice tends to play havoc with vital statistics and caution must be exercised in their interpretation. There was indeed less cause or opportunity in the rural areas to prevent disclosure of a disgrace. In Iwate Prefecture there is an account of a village in which abortions: were resorted to at ttiunes to -prevent.illegi- timacy. If, however, the child was actually born then it was necessary to perform what was known as a "Tetenashill festival. The word itself is a euphemism which combines the childish form of father ("toto"l or "tete"l) and absent. At the time of the festival, three four-foot straw dolls would be made and from dusk to' da*n the village young people would sing the following song to the tune of drums and fifes. "Nani wo matsuru no ]ai? Tetenashi matsuri wo .matsuru no dab" (WIJhat is boing oclobrated? Tne festival of the fatherless is being oelebratedO) lWhn they roaohed the. mother-s home, she was obliged to bind her buttocks and, while striking them. circumambulate her house three times. No blae was attached to the father, but unless the -ceremony was performed the village would becomo impoverished and all would suffer.' Infants -to be abandoned were generally taken to a neighboring village and left under conditions likely to guarantee discovery3 Formerly aban- donment was a common practice and for various reasons,, e3.pecially in cases of physical malformations or because of failure to resemble e ither parent satisfactorily. It was believed that the latter children (known as onigo or "demon" children) would growf up to be spendthrifts0 Only by their adoption by other families could this fate be avoided, 11 There was also a rather unusual form of false abandonment. If a child was born with an erupted tooth, it was believed to possess a demon which had to be exorcisedo This could be accomplished by carrying the child to a fork in the road and "abandoning" it. By prearrangement the child?s godmother would discover it and bring it back safely to its home. The demon would believe that he had accomplished his purpose of separating the child from its parents and would promptly forsake the child. It is said that this form of false abandonment is still practised but that now- adays a towel is sufficient to decoy a demon and can be used in place of the real baby. Villages tended to develop local patterns for disposing of tlheir un- wanted offspringo This was particularly true of those which were the most hard pressed* Commenting a few years ago upon the economic history of a village in Iwate prefecture in northern Hunshu which even today has a relatively low standard of livring, a looal historian wrote that formerly only five persons were permitted to each household and the sizes of the fields were fixed accordingly. In reply to the question "What would happen if you had more children?," the answer was "Oh, this would never happen; there could never be an increase* It is a custom of the village to keep things this way as we cannot increase the size of our fields." In Kyushu, it was almost universally the custom to limit the number of children per household to three and in Kagoshima this was referred to as "heshigo" which might be translated "complement of children." While con- trol methods were thus widely practised) many reports appear to have been exaggerated. An observer records that in Chiba prefecture, adjacent to Tokyo, among 100,000 farming households as many as 30,000 children were killed annually. Another report states that in Tohoku alone in northern Honshu, 60-70,000 infants were destroyed in one year. Abortions were induced both medicinally and mechanically depending upon the state of the mother and the stage of the foetus. Generally the latter method was employed more frequently after the child had assumed recognizable shape at about the fourth month, while medicinal means were employed in the earlier stages. In medicinally induced abortions "s'.igingan" or meroury tablets were employed* Althlough the medicine was quite powerful and sometimes fatal to the mother, it was widely sold during the Tokugawa period and advertised openly on bill boards in front of pharmacies. There was an accompanying label stating the purpose for which it wa.s to be used. Sato Nobuyoshi in Tosui Hiroku writes: "If a woman wishes to control birth she almost always uses poison to induce abortion." Agai-n he writes: "If a lover should cause a woman to conceive during her husbandts absence, she may avoid carrying the child by drinking tsuigingan1." In the third year of Kamnon (1664) the open advertising of abortion medicines was prohibited but in the Mita Kyo Monogatari there is an account of a pharmacist's sign-advertising "Liberty Medicine" and nearby was a notice reminding the reader that "it is strange that children are born and still stranger that they are not born," presumably a subtle way of inr dicating that the answer to the riddle could be found in the medicine. No statistics are available as to the number of' fatalities in abor- tion cases, but in reoovery the usual estimate was seven days if the operation was performed prior to the fourth month of gestation and thirty days>for any stage-thereafter. The mechanical means consisted of kneading or pressing tho abdomen with the .knee or of inserting and twisting an object in the vaginal passage until the foetus was destroyed. The objects most commonly used were the branch of a nanten" bush; codarwood ohopsticks from Yoshino; or the root of the mountain burdocko 1Tomen were trained in the art as specialists and were known sometimos as "blood passa Le repairers" or in later periods as "those who engage in 'chujoryut" (4)Q The "chujo" acquirod an unsavory reputation for charging exhorbitant rates and engag- ing in blackmail* An indication of this reputation is containod in the following poem: "Is there no way but to go to the tchujoe? Children die by her hand; The chujot destroys the motherts organs. Nefariously she fills her own warehouse, Fearful is her profit." The downfall of the Shogunate and the commencement of the Meiji ora in 1868 marked the beginning of a new population policy. The government sought to croate a large standing army and, as the country became more and more industrialized, there was nood for labor in the factories. Expanding foroign trade made rapid population increase feasible and the people wore urged to have more babios. As inducements, the government offered various prizes. To households having more than three children,s several saplings wore given to be planted in the gardon; households having six or more children were given one hyo of ricoe per child per year, monoy for assistanoo in nursing ("nyuryo") and an additional bonus of rice per head ("yoikuryo" ) . As a result of favorable e conomic conditions and tho se added inducementss, the population began to incroase rapidly, first in the Industrial urban areas and eventually, as the stimulus spread, in the rural areas. Figures are probably not available as to the speed with whhich the latter movement took place but there was considorablo lag in the country villages and it is signifioant that there are persons alive today in the remoter parts of the oountry and in particular in tho moun- tain villages wrho recall the practice of infanticide in their youngor days Last year there appeared in a local Tokyo papor an account of the reminiscences of a sixty-fivo year old woman from northern Japan. The old lady rocallod that oearly one oold morning in her youth as she was ongaged in a roadside privy she was startled to hear the wail of a baby from the road. Upon inquiry as to who was there and why the baby was crying, she learned that the passerby was a hired hand of one of the neighbors. Ho explained that he and his wife had decided that they could not afford to koep the baby and consequently he was on his way down to the river to throw it in. Upon further inquiry, he also revealed that the baby was a boy but that, as they already had a son, they didntt need anotlher. The girl engaged the father in discussion, prevailed on him to keep the boy and so that child was spared. She commented further, however, that she knew of several instances of babies being thrown into the river (5) and recalled once hearing a baby crying in a shallow by the riverbank. In Borne instances, midwives were asked to dispose of babies by choking them with rico chaff and in one instance, a father had masked himsolf and, after suffocating the child, buried it in a deep hole. Judging from pre- sumed time factors, these events must have oocurred about 1900 and attest to the continued occurrence of infanticide, at least in certain rural areas, up to half a century agoo There is then a fairly clear and continous tradition of population limitation throughout Japanese history from its earliest days to the ond of the feudal period and oven into the post-Restoration period. In the face of this long and continued tradition it may be well to consider just what relationship thoso practices bofe to the structure of society and in partioular to the institution of the family Almost all studios of modern Japaneso society stress particularly the traditional love of parents for their children and the desire to have as many children as possible. Both of these concepts are traoed to the influence of Confucian ethics. The love of the emperor for his subjocts and the classical references to the comfort of many children to their aging parents are particular parallols cited. In the light of the extensive history of infant disposal, tho quesw tion might be raised as to the validity of the tradition or why daily practice diffored so much from the traditional ideal. To find the answer, it wilL be necessary to review more closely the structure of society in the feudal period. Mention has already been made of the groat social gap between the Bushi or ruling classes and the Heimin or commonors, including merchants and artisans as well as farmers. The gap was more than one merely of ruler and rulod; it ponotrated overy institution of society and every aspect of behavior. The Bushi wore guided by a strict code of ethics, the outlines of which havo been detailed by many writers (6). This was a code steeped in Confucian philosophy and geared to the concepts of preserving the strictest etiquette in all human relationshipsi unbonding loyalty to one's lord, extreme self-discipline, sincere filial piety, and the preservation of class consciousness. Duty to one's conscionce was always to be within the framework of a series of othor graded duties. To the commoner, these wore not unkcnown "virtues" and, in fact, commoners were expected to observe tho codo within the limits of their lowly station in life but in such a manner as not to obviously imitate their betters, For the commoner, and espooially for the farmer, obedi- once to command rather than conflicting dutios was the keynote of eXis- tonce. Unquestioning obodience was the highost form of loyalty to be rondored. Bound as they were to this overriding emphasis on obedienoo, commoners wore seldom caught in tho never ending cycle of conflicting 14 loyalties botwoon love of family and duty to onots lord so characteristic of tho life in the uppor classes. Tho various layers or strata of society woro thus sharply differontiatod and the moaning and place of the family in tho two major strata, warriors and farmors, assumod widoly differing oharacteristios. At the timo of the Restoration, there was a change in the socio- political structure paralleling that in oconomic policy. Distinctions btitweon the Bushi and the Commonors woro abolished under a constitutional form of government and the strict code of othios practiood by tho Bushi Qnd rofloctod limitedly by the Comonors bocamo the standard for all Japanese. But the transfer was nover complete. Commonors failod to achiovo an economic status which would permit thom to exorcise the privi- logos of thoir newly acquired standard and tho Bushi lost thoir- distinc- tive identity only nominally. The result has beon a romoval of the out- ward manifostations of class distinctions but an inward retention of their significance. This is one of the characteristic featuros of Japanese society vevn today and is particularly true in the realm of the family. Among the Bushi the family anld moro particularly the clan and its lineage and ranking in society were all important and immediate loyalties wore fixod within this framework. Tho formation of the immediate or nuolear family group was not a matter of decision solely for the clan or tho extended family; all marriages had to be approved by tho lord and any changes in stiponds also required his approval. There oxistod an idoal of many children in a family which in the oarly days was often realized. It was only as social and economic controls wore tightened that there vras a tendency to limit the number of childron at this lovel of society. Among the farmers, thore was increasingly even loss inducemont to have children. Until tho ond of tho feudal period, farmers possessod no surnaaes and thorefore had no clan to perpetuate; they wore not pormitted to loave thoir lands, change their social ranks or marry without express approv"al of thoir lords. In the earlier days, it was common for the housoholder to divide his land among his sons, each son establishing a branch family in ordor of rank or seniority but such a procoss had its limits as lands wrore exhaus- tod; in the latter part of tho Tokugawa period, tho ostablishing of a new household bocame incroasingly difficult, if not prohibitive, and was a matter of concern to tho entiro village. A farmer's attention came thus to bo focused incroasingly upon the House as the social unit of the villago through which he expressed his loyalty. His perspectives wero loca;i.zed not so much upon his immodiato family or household as upon the. 2Ir,I-ry in rolation to tho specific houso and lands which it possessed aL_&. wish which it was traditionally associated. The Japanese word "Ie" incorporates both concopts: the physical housd and the household' Each houso had a speci- fic namo and, among the farmers, the fariily associated with i1 was identi- fiod by the house name. Tho association of a family was thus fixod from generation to genoration by tho houso and its lands- as part of a villago complex. 15 In tho caso of the Bushi, the association was far loss localized. It is truo that the lords possessed lomdod ostatos with castlo strong- holds and lands with which the noblos and warriors wore associated but loyalty was to the lord's family and clan more than to any spocific houseo Loyalty and clan allogianco among tho Bushi wore spiritual mattors and found their oxprossion no mattor where tho locality* They had in this sonso a national rathor than a localizod focus and tho concopt of tho "Io" found its identity moro with its intangible than its tangible interprota- tion. The Bushi tondod to look away from thoir castles and estates to the original sourco of a famil-, namo and fortuno; while tho farmorst rivoted to the soil, found thoir sonso of soeurity and solidarity in im- modiate local villago communitios, and spocificdlly in tho Houso. Thero was a family duty to preservo tho in-togrity of tho Houso and to onsure fulfillment of its continuing rosponsibilty to tho extended family, to the doparted ancostorss and to the village. 'Tithout a male hoir those responsibilitios could not be accomplished, sinco tho head of the family, by law, must be a maloe If. thereforo, a wife failed to produce a son, the dofoct had to be romedicd in somo fashion, eithor by socuring a wife who would fulfill this requiremont or by the less desirable moans of adoptior. The sticcoss of a marriago ofton hingod upon the birth of a boy as the first childo Until the first birth a brido romainod on trial, and de3livry of a girl was only partial fulfillment of her obligationo Some strict families wcro oven inclined to view such an event as a forewarning of ultimato incapaoity to meet the requiroeonts of a good wifeo If a wife continued to bear only girls but -in othor respects had provon satisfactory, the problom might bo solved by adoption of a "gift child" I'moraiko"t, to be raisod in the family as an own child, or by logally adopting the old- est daughterts husband as a son, having him thus assumo the family name and inherit the title of householdor. Thoso practices aro still common in couLatry districts today. There woro then many roasnns why the control of how and what childron should be born wore of immodiato concorn to society and that they difforod according to social strata. To the Bushis olimination or limitation wore ofteon considored necessary but such control was goneral without solection. The Bushi could often arrange advantagcous botrothals for their daughters so that sons w,ore not necessarily greator oconomic assets than their sisters. Abortion was thus quito a satisfactory mothod of control. In the rural a.reas, on tho other hand, vrhoro womon could be used only limitodw ly for farm or other labor, any increaso in numbors beyond the minimum roquiromonts of the home and perpotuattion of tho House line genorally proved to be more of a liability than an asset ovon in periods of good harvest and satisfactory prices. Solective limitation was thcroforo the answer to the farmerts problome Among the farmors, an idoal sequenco was doevloped of having first a boy, who would be rearod to tako over tho House and family lino; next a girl, who wvould ultimatoly provide a basis of exchango for the eldest 16 sonts wife; and finally a seoond son to help support the family or, in the event of the elder sonts aemise, to assume his role. Thus it was general- ly the first and last born girls who were most likely to be eliminated. This was the most economical pattern for preserving the welfare of the family and at the same time ensuring its solidarity and that of the vil- lage. Such a pattern also fitted into the concept of psychologically preparing the eldest son for his future responsibilitiess it was consi- dered undesirable to place the future head of the household in a position of juniority to an elder sister. To this day, the favored sequ ence is to start with a boy and to have the sexes alternate thereafter. It is interesting in this connection that, in one mountain village of over one hundred families, a recent survey shows that the eldest child is a boy in nearly two-thirds of the families with a sex ratio for the first born of 709 girls per 1000 boys. Throughout Japan, the areas with the lowest sex ratios tend to be in the oountry dis- tricts where the social structure has retained many of the features which charaoterized it diring the feudal period. To understand the significanoe of population control during the feu- dal days, it is also neoessary to examine the moral iss ue involved. The Bushi were inclined to draw a distinction between abortion and infanticide. They viewed the former as a private conoern of the parents to be neither condoned nor considered necessarily reprehensible; whereas infantioide, involving the destruction of a separate being, was morally objeotionable and a legitimate concern of the authorities. That abortion was considered in some instances even a social duty is illustrated by the fact that priests often served as advisers in abortion cases and dealt in abortion producing drugs. The greatest moral abuse in the upper classes lay in disturbing the tranquility of the family and, since an illegitimate child posed the problem of potential disgrace, it was a threat to that tran- quility. Among the farmers, on the other hand, the threat to tranquility lay in any increase, potential or otherwise, of the number of mouths to feed. The birth or retention of a child was undesirable if it tended to upset the social and economio equilibrium of the family and the oommunity. This potential source of disturbance was in itself a moral issue which overshadowed the mere elimination of human life. Population control might even be demanded in the name of social obligation. There was thus a graded concept of moral issues differing charaoter- istically from class to class, the rationalizations for population control varying within a changing framework of a series of stratified loyalties* As to Bakufu government policy, the fundamental objection to population control in any form was not based so much on grounds of personal or even family or social morality as upon the even higher obligation to the state. The national state policy was to increase the population and any counter- measures constituted a sin against the state. The weight of ethical training placed primary emphasis upon duty to the household at the expense of any single individual. This was the supreme obligation and any sacri- fice should be made to fulfill it. 17 ENDNOTES (1) Sansom, George B., Japan, A Short Cultural History, p. 518. (2) The mortar yard (usu niwa) was actually in the house or at least under the main roof although it was probably originally a part of the courtyard. There is apparently some symbolism involved in the use of the mortar. Even today in some mouiitain villages at the time of birth a candle is lit and pl3a-Qed on the rim of the mortar. A string is run from this to the rtwpe on which the mot4her leans at the time of delivery. At funerals t1he mortar again assumes significance. Upon returning from the grave of a newly buried person the mortar is overtirnede While the mortar is a symbol of the souroe of food and especiaLly of timoohill (pounded rioe dough) i; is used on many core- monial occasions with apparently deoper psychological significance in which as a sex symbol it is assoniated or identified with mater- nity and possibly fertility. (3) From ttShisson Hanjo Tebikigusal quiated by Takahashi. (4) Literally, 'tchujoryu" meanat the way- or means of delivery but the word came later to be used commonly in place of the usual word for abortiono Today the term is used fk.r the medioated batheoo lying- in patients (from the Encyclopedia of Folklore). (5) In a certain village in Nagano prefectvore, the talo is today related of an old woman who died only a year or two agos when just born, she was thrown into a mountain stream. She survived a tortuous trip of nearly tws..P:y miles to the junction - f tbe stream with the main river, was pioked up, and adopted by a .mil.y living nearby. C6) Notably by George B . San3om in Japan A Short Cultural Histo and Ruth Benedict in The Chr..-antheraum ari the Stvord! .9 _ . - _- _ ~ - ___ _ 18 BIBLIOGRAPHY Benodict, Ruth 1946 The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Houghton Mifflin, Bostone Minzokugaku Jiten 1952 Enoyolopedia of Folk:oro, Tokyo. Sansom, George Bo 1943 Ja,pan. A Short Cultural Histo Appleton-Contury, Now York. Sokiyama, Nastaro 1948 Kinsoi Nihon Jinko no Kenkyu, Tokyo. Takahashi, Bonsen 1952 Nihon Jinko Shi to Datai; Mabiki, Shizens Volo 7, Novembor and December* 19