The Overpopulation Discourse and the Japanese Total-War Regime

Problematizing the Rural

Abstract

This paper clarifies how the discourse on the “overpopulation problem” in rural areas was formed in Japan from the late 1920s to the wartime period, and examines the significance of this discourse in establishing the Japanese total war regime and welfare state during this period and beyond. It mainly analyses the discussion by population experts affiliated with the Institute for Research of Population Problems and the Council on Population Problems.

Population increase does not necessarily equate to overpopulation. In the late 1920s, the excessive rural population was problematized within the academic sphere, in contradiction to the actual population outflow to cities and the gradual decline of the rural population. Even when labor shortages and the necessity for population increase in rural areas became the imminent social issue after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, there was still a widespread agreement on the need to solve the overpopulation problem in rural areas. By framing the issue in this way, it was made possible to attribute the causes of every social problem to the demographic dynamics in the rural areas, and to conceive the idea of disposing of the overpopulation problem outside of the cities.