Organizer: Patricia Boling, Purdue University
Chair: Deborah J. Milly, University of Tokyo
Discussant: Merry I. White, Boston University
This panel explores issues related to current reproductive policy in Japan, placing reproductive issues in the context of familial relationships and arrangements. Two papers focus on abortion politics, one on the reasons for the divergence between Japan's policies on contraception and abortion, one on the emerging alliance between advocates for the rights of disabled people and pro-choice activists. One paper looks at Japan's policies aimed at encouraging women to have more babies, comparing those policies and the current crisis mentality in Japan about the falling birthrate with family and pronatalist policies and attitudes toward declining birthrates in western Europe. The fourth paper examines relationships between parents and their adult children, looking particularly at the effect supportive parents can have on the fertility behaviors of their adult children.
The panel provides a variety of approaches to widely discussed but poorly understood issues (abortion, contraception, family size, how best to nurture families) that are related to the organization of families, decisions to limit conception and birth, and constellations of power-including organized interest groups and grassroots activists-aimed at influencing reproductive and family policies. The differing angles of vision afforded by these papers-survey research, historical political analysis, qualitative sociological work on emerging social movements, comparative political and policy analysis-will be enormously useful for scholars attempting to understand Japanese reproductive and family politics.
Abortion Before Birth Control: The Interest Group Politics Behind Postwar
Japanese Reproduction Policy
Tiana Norgren, Columbia University
The puzzle I will explore in this paper is, Why is abortion policy in Japan relatively liberal, whereas contraception policy is relatively conservative? Third trimester abortions have been legal in Japan since 1948, but Japan is the only industrialized country that has not yet approved the Pill.
I argue that the explanation for Japan's contradictory abortion and contraception policies is that the two policies are products of very different historical circumstances-and in particular, of very different interest group configurations. Japan's liberal abortion policy was generated during a small window of historical opportunity, and was maintained by the subsequent formation of entrenched interest groups-designated doctors and women. The Pill, however, first appeared at an inauspicious time, when there was widespread concern about prescription drug abuse and drug-induced birth defects, and when most of the relevant interest groups had reason to oppose it.
I further argue that the role interest groups play in Japanese politics has been underemphasized in the literature. Religious groups put pressure on the government to restrict access to abortion in the 1970s and 80s; medical interests and women's groups fought back to maintain liberal abortion policy. The origin of Japan's Pill ban can also be traced to a conflict of interests-a conflict in which the government first leaned toward the drugs companies who initiated the approval process but ultimately sided with anti-Pill medical groups and family planners. Thus, the case of reproduction policy does not support strong state arguments; rather, it lends credence to notions of the Japanese state as follower or referee.
A New Alliance of Pro-Choice Women and Disabled People for Reproductive Rights in
Japan
Kozy K. Amemiya, University of California, San Diego
The Eugenic Protection Law has provided Japanese women with access to legal abortion since the late 1940s. At the same time, this law has symbolized state authority over individuals with disabilities. Revisions to this law were unsuccessfully proposed first in the early 1970s, which gave rise to a pro-choice voice, and again in the early 1980s, primarily to restrict access to legal abortion. The law proposed in the 1970s originally included a clause to legitimize abortion for indications of fetal abnormality, which galvanized opposition from disabled people and transformed their associations into a political force.
Forming an alliance with disabled people has been important for Japanese pro-choice women, who have tried to develop both an ideology and a political movement that would encompass the issue of reproductive rights for all, including disabled persons. In contrast, many disabled people have been resentful of or even antagonistic to pro-choice arguments. In recent years, however, pro-choice ideology and pro-choice women's actual support have encouraged more disabled women to bear and raise children than before, and a new alliance of pro-choice and disabled women is being formed. This new political and ideological alliance has begun to pressure the Japanese government to consider rewriting the law to regulate abortion practice. In this paper I examine this alliance and explore its effects on current discussions and movements dealing with reproductive issues in Japan.
Family Size Policy in Japan: A Comparative Approach
Patricia Boling, Purdue University
In recent years policy makers and commentators have become alarmed over the falling birthrate in Japan. This paper will look at family size policy in Japan from a comparative perspective. It will compare how the declining birthrate has been viewed in Japan with reactions in other countries with falling and very low birthrates, especially Italy, Germany, and France; and it will examine the policies proposed and implemented in Japan to encourage women to have more children, such as parental leaves, tax breaks, and subsidies, and compare them to pronatalist and other family policies in western Europe (the three above plus Sweden, at a minimum). The aim will be to understand the ways in which Japan's family policies both resemble and diverge from those in European countries experiencing falling birthrates, and to think about why this phenomenon appears to be viewed with more alarm in Japan than elsewhere.
Relationships Between Parents and their Adult Children: Japan
Ronald R. Rindfuss, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Kelly Raley, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Fertility preferences, policy, and behavior are set within a broader context of family and kinship relationships. When a child is born (or not born) there are implications for relationships with the maternal and paternal grandparents. Conversely, the nature of relationships between parents and their adult children can impact the fertility behavior of adult children-particularly if the senior generation is in the position to help with child care. Further, in Japan, where the emphasis on links between past and future generations is quite strong, a grounded understanding of intergenerational links is especially important. This paper provides background on the nature of relationships between parents and their adult children in Japan, as well as assessing the impact of the quality of reporting based on which member of the kin group is the respondent. The paper uses data from a 1994 national survey of Japan. The data set includes a variety of measures of intergenerational relationships ranging from co-residence to financial assistance