- Convenor:
-
Anna Vittinghoff
(University of Sheffield)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- History
Short Abstract
This panel examines how Japan's 1948 Eugenic Protection Law regulated bodies through intersecting economic, racial, and ableist logics, revealing the gap between legislative frameworks and coercive practices targeting women's reproduction in postwar Japan.
Long Abstract
This panel examines how Japan's Eugenic Protection Law of 1948 operated as a multifaceted instrument of bodily regulation in the postwar period, bridging the distance between legislative frameworks and their implementation. Whilst abortion had been criminalised during Japan's modernisation in the 1880s, the 1948 law and its 1949 amendment suddenly rendered it de facto legal, ostensibly to manage population quality and quantity. The three papers analyse how this legal architecture enabled systematic control over reproduction through overlapping logics of economics, race, and disability.
The panel's first paper explores how eugenic abortion became foundational to Japan's economic reconstruction, demonstrating that productivity imperatives excluded disabled bodies deemed unproductive. The second paper reveals how rape provisions within the law functioned as de facto tools for racial engineering, targeting 'mixed blood' offspring of Japanese women and foreign soldiers through a nationwide campaign that transformed abortion from an option into an imperative. The third paper traces how grassroots advocacy groups in the 1990s exposed continuities between policy and practice by documenting forced hysterectomies of institutionalised disabled women, revealing mechanisms through which legislative frameworks authorised medical violence.
Together, these papers illuminate how the Eugenic Protection Law's formal provisions translated into coercive bodily control across multiple axes of difference. The panel contributes to scholarship on postwar Japan by demonstrating how state sanctioned eugenic ideology operated through intersecting economic, racial, and ableist logics, and how the gap between policy and practice enabled sustained institutional violence against women's bodies.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper analyses how coalition building between disability rights and reproductive justice advocates exposed gaps between eugenic policy and forced hysterectomies in 1990s Japan, demonstrating how grassroots activism challenged state sanctioned violence against disabled women's bodies.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how grassroots advocacy groups challenged the gap between eugenic policy and discriminatory practice in postwar Japan, focusing on forced hysterectomies of institutionalised disabled women under the Eugenic Protection Law (1948). Whilst the law ostensibly regulated reproduction through medical frameworks, its implementation enabled systematic violence against disabled women's bodies, revealing how state sanctioned eugenic ideology operated through institutional practices.
Centring on coalition building between the groups such as the DPI Josei Shōgaisha Nettowāku (DPI Women's Network Japan) and reproductive justice advocates such as SOSHIREN, the analysis demonstrates how collaborative activism exposed continuities between official eugenic policy and coercive practices. These coalition partners documented how the law's formal provisions translated into forced hysterectomies within institutions, revealing mechanisms through which legislative frameworks authorised medical control over disabled women's bodies.
The paper traces how intersectional coalition networks transformed documentation of forced procedures into collective testimonies that challenged both the law's eugenic rationale and the medical practices it legitimised. Through strategic alliance building across disability rights and feminist movements, activists confronted the historical marginalisation of disabled women within both spheres. By converting individual experiences into broader social movements, these coalitions generated public awareness and political pressure that exposed institutional violence. Coalition partners strategically leveraged international human rights frameworks, particularly the 1994 UN Cairo Conference, to pressure the dismantling of overtly eugenic policies, demonstrating how grassroots activism drove efforts to start untangling eugenic legacies in postwar Japan and align national policies with international standards on reproductive autonomy and disability rights.
The paper contributes to understanding postwar Japan's eugenic regulation by demonstrating how intersectional resistance and coalition building exposed the distance between policy and practice that enabled sustained violence against disabled women's bodies. The case of forced hysterectomies exemplifies how collaborative activism across movements challenged eugenic violence whilst revealing the limitations of legislative reform in transforming institutional practices and eradicating entrenched systems of bodily control.
Paper short abstract
After World War II, Japan selectively decriminalized abortion in the Eugenic Protection Law. Why did a law designed to block births of “inferior descendants” also permit abortion in cases of rape? Rape by foreign soldiers was coded as a racial threat and mixed-blood fetuses were aborted en masse.
Paper long abstract
After defeat in World War II, Japan’s government selectively reversed its longstanding policy of criminalizing abortion. The law that codified this shift, the 1948 Eugenic Protection Law, endorsed abortion as a means of managing the “quality and quantity” of Japan’s population. Why did a law designed to block the births of “inferior descendants” also sanction abortion in cases of rape? The eugenic stakes of rape are rooted in a narrative of national victimization foregrounding the rape of Japanese women by foreign “races” of men who invaded and occupied the country. Between Japan’s defeat in 1945 and passage of the Eugenic Protection Law in 1948, abortion and infanticide were both illegal. Yet “mixed blood” offspring sired by foreign soldiers were targeted for elimination by civic medical groups and Japan’s Ministry of Welfare in a nationwide eugenic campaign. While the subsequent Eugenic Protection Law gave no de jure standing to race as grounds for abortion, the fact that rape was coded as a racial threat rendered the Law a de facto tool for racial engineering. The Eugenic Protection Law is sometimes celebrated for its “progressive” treatment of abortion. However, for Japanese women who had sexual relations with foreign soldiers, abortion was not an option granted by a democratic government newly concerned with women’s rights. Abortion was an imperative imposed by a diverse array of governmental and non-governmental actors uniting behind an ideology of racial purity.
Paper short abstract
This paper reconsiders abortion policy in post-war Japan by foregrounding its eugenic foundations. Using administrative records, it shows how maternal protection shaped practice, challenging assumptions about ‘economic’ abortion and linking policy to post-war reconstruction and disability exclusion.
Paper long abstract
Abortion has been a topic of intense scrutiny in modern and contemporary Japan. The established narrative on the post-war history of abortion in Japan holds that abortion contributed to the country’s declining birth rates in the mid-twentieth century, as it was made de facto legal by the Eugenic Protection Law (1948). In particular, the 1949 amendment to the Law, which permitted abortions on ‘economic’ grounds, is widely understood to have accelerated fertility decline by expanding women’s access to abortion. This narrative also emphasises how the legal framework, compounded by gender discrimination, produced a distinctive contraceptive landscape in post-war Japan, in which early- to mid-term abortion functioned as a primary form of birth control. Finally, it highlights abortion as a key site where women navigated the tensions and intersections between women’s and disability movements in the 1970s.
Despite this scholarship, the eugenic dimension of abortion policy has received surprisingly little attention. Abortion in Japan was legalised through explicitly eugenic imperatives and was required to be performed strictly under the Eugenic Protection Law. This paper addresses this gap by examining administrative records of eugenic abortions conducted between 1948 and 1952, a period during which all procedures under the Law had to be reviewed and approved by Prefectural Eugenic Protection Review Boards prior to operation. It demonstrates that maternal protection—another stated objective of the Law—was a principal justification for eugenic operations recorded in these files.
These findings are significant in two respects. First, they challenge the assumption that the 1949 amendment automatically and immediately resulted in widespread abortions on ‘economic’ grounds. Second, many recorded procedures were not ‘eugenic’ insofar as they aimed to protect women’s health as mothers rather than to realise the Law’s original goal ‘to prevent the birth of defective offspring from a eugenic point of view’. Nonetheless, abortions conducted under the Eugenic Protection Law remained closely tied to Japan’s post-war, economically driven reconstruction, which prioritised the productivity of able-bodied citizens while marginalising disabled bodies as unproductive.