Population Policies and Health

The Historical Context in Prewar Japan

Abstract

The concept of the quality of population historically meant both genetic quality (inborn characteristics) and non-genetic quality (acquired characteristics). From a historical point of view, increasing attention to the quality of population was fundamentally linked to the eugenic-euthenic ideas that were popular in the late 19th and early 20th century Japan as well as internationally.

From the late 1910s to the 1920s, the eugenic-euthenic principle, which was accepted by many scholars and public officers, highlighted issues surrounding the ‘quality’ of population and had a great impact on policy debates of the time. The situation produced a health view that we should be healthy both physically and mentally for the good of society. In this paper, I show the ideological background for the foundation of the Japanese Society of Health and Human Ecology in 1930.