Population Discourse as Governing Technology: The Unemployment Problem in Japan in the 1920s

Abstract

In this paper, the discourse of the overpopulation problem in Japan in the 1920s is analyzed through texts of the population experts and the bureaucrats of the Social Affairs Department of the Ministry of the Interior, and how the discourse framed the social policies at that time is examined. Today, the idea that overpopulation is the cause of unemployment is not accepted. However, population studies in the 1920s defined overpopulation as a decline in living standards and regarded it as the fundamental cause of unemployment. The bureaucrats also recognized the same problem and promoted a policy for the unemployed to migrate to South America. As a result, the overpopulation discourse became the excuse for inadequacies in employment policies and forced the unemployed themselves to find solutions.