Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the use and advertisement of hormonal products in 1930ties and 1940ties Japan. It will show how the popular discourse on so-called sex-hormones influenced the understanding and definition of sexed bodies and aided pronatalist and eugenic policies of imperial Japan.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is exploring the discussion, use and advertisement of hormone products in 1930ties and 1940ties Japan. During the first half of the twentieth century, research on hormones flourished in Japan and Japanese pharmaceutical as well as cosmetics' companies such as Takeda pharmaceuticals, Shiseido, Kurabu Cosmetics and Teikoku Hormone offered a wide range of products including Hormones.

Advertisements for such products were disseminated in popular magazines and articles and interviews with medical personal let to the spread of information about hormonal functions. In the discussions in popular media, the discovery of hormonal treatments was connected to techno-scientific expectations for human improvement as well as to discourses on gender. Experts recommended the use of hormone injections as a means of rejuvenation and speculated about yet to be discovered benefits of hormone treatments. The interest in so- called sex-hormones was especially high and the question, in how far these hormones were responsible for sexual appetite and fertility, for men's sexual potency and women's reproductive capacity, remained at the heart of many arguments about hormones. Even during the wartime, production of hormone products, including those targeting men or women and their supposedly specific needs, increased. Furthermore, the use of such products was encouraged from official sites and hormone advertisements were disseminated in state-sponsored propaganda magazines. But the presence of hormone advertisements in Japanese wartime propaganda is not only a subtle reference to and acknowledgement of sexuality and sexual activity - the propagation of the use of gender-specific hormones can be understood as an echo and integral part of Japans pronatalist and racial hygienist population policy. This paper explores the use and advertisement of hormonal products as both a cultural practice which influenced the understanding and definition of sexed bodies and as the expression of pronatalist and eugenic policies in imperial Japan.