Gender and Family in Japan by Nobuko Okuda & Tetsuhiko Takai

Author:Nobuko Okuda & Tetsuhiko Takai
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811399091
Publisher: Springer Singapore

Keywords

Traditional childrearing methodsDecreased breast milk productionFarming communitiesDecreased growth of infantsTaishō period

This chapter is a translation of an article that originally appeared in Shakai Keizai Shigaku 74(3) (September 2008), pp. 65–83.

3.1 Introduction

Infant mortality rates are generally regarded as an indicator of living standards. This is because they are thought to respond closely to changes in the surrounding environment, such as the nutritional state of the mother, methods of childrearing, and health and hygiene. According to Kōseishō Daijin Kanbō Tōkei Jōhōbu (1999), from 1901 until the mid-1920s, the infant mortality rate resulting from such factors exceeded 150‰, but from the second half of the 1920s it began to fall. It never again reached such a high rate, and lies at around 2‰ today. In other words, infant mortality rates in Japan can be characterised as having been at a high level until the mid 1920s, with a steady fall after that. Further, when neonatal and post-neonatal mortality rates are divided, it becomes clear that rates remained high because a drop in neonatal mortality that began at the beginning of the twentieth century had been offset by a rise in post-neonatal mortality. The sudden fall in overall infant mortality rates from the second half of the twentieth century was because the rise in post-neonatal mortality had been reversed.

The issue that needs to be addressed is therefore why infant mortality rates continued at this high level into the first half of the 1920s. It is probably correct to say that the search for the reasons began with the work of the Health and Hygiene Research Council, which from its foundation had as one of its purposes the need to “investigate the causes behind the high mortality rates of infants, children, adolescents and adults and devise ways of lowering them” (Hoken Eisei Chōsakai 1918, p. 4). From 1918 the Council undertook field investigations to examine health and hygiene in farming communities, including nationwide surveys of infant mortality rates and sanitary conditions.1 The results showed that infant mortality rates in farming communities were higher than the national average, while figures for caloric intake and physical constitution were worse, and parasitic infection more frequent (Mōri 1972, pp. 106–108). Responsibility for these surveys passed to government agencies at a prefectural or equivalent level and continued until 1927. Meanwhile, medical researchers such as Sasaki (1922) used the same methods to survey and report on the sanitary conditions in farming communities.

In 1921, three years after the government had begun nationwide surveys, Gitō Teruoka, a labour physiologist and the pioneer of labour science in Japan, pointed out that it was “yet to make known its views” regarding the evidence that had been revealed of the high infant mortality rates in rural communities (Teruoka 1921). This continued to be the case. Rather than investigating the causes behind the survey results, the Health and Hygiene Research Council responded by focusing on suggestions for concrete policies that would lower the mortality rates, such as the establishment of public health centres for infants and children (Mōri 1972, pp.

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