This paper uses a nested logit model to explain the departure and destination choice patterns of the 1979-80 interprefectural migrations of the Japanese in five age groups : 15-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34 and 35-39, defined as of October 1, 1980.

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Japanese mortality statistics since 1872 shows upward trend in overall mortality until 1920, and thereafter mortality goes down. Whether this was true or just an artifact caused by improvement in death registration rate has been a matter of debate. The author tried to examine the accuracy and completeness of death registration data for the period 1890-1920. Death registration data by single year of age were adjusted for lay reporting (1.5%) and emigration (3.5%) and then re-arranged as cohort decrement data by year of birth. The first census population (Oct. 1, 1920) by single year of age was also re-arranged as cohort data and by adding up the cohort decrement data, year by year, the population was moved back to the beginning of 1890. Estimated series of annual birth and age-specific population for the period 1890-1919 were compared with the series of registered birth and the Honseki population (registered population), which was believed to be highly reliable around 1890. The result showed striking coincidence between either the two series of annual birth or the age-specific populations estimated and registered at the beginning of 1890. But this was not the case with the other published estimates, which were derived from the same base population but making use of the estimated life tables, that imply increasing mortality toward 1890. Although, there are some evidence to believe that the registration rate of infant deaths have increased on a large scale soon after the promulgation of "The Graveyard and Burial Regulation Law" in 1984, which provided the necessity of reporting death and stillbirth, in order to get "Burial Permit", there are no reasons to suspect the trend of the recorded mortality. Because, the procedure of death reporting have not been changed thereafter, and the neonatal mortality rate, which is most likely to be affected by under-reporting, continues to decline since 1900, while the post-neonatal mortality continues to rise. After all, registered mortality data for the period 1890-1920 are believed to be highly reliable and would be a valuable source of data for the study of the early stage of mortality transition.

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This paper reconsiders regional and nation-wide marital fertility in rural Tokugawa Japan refering to the framework of natural fertility analysis. Many scholars have touched on the concept of natural fertility (deviced by Louis Henry ,a French demographer) since the decline of fertility in Europe became a central topic of European historical demography. Coale & Trussell's model is a quantitative one by which the level of natural fertility (M) and the degree of parity-specific fertility control (m) are estimated statistically. Since their original model, many corrections have been given by demographers. This paper estimates the value of M and m in rural Tokugawa Japan mainly using this model. What we gained through this analysis is 1) the level of natural fertility (M) in rural Tokugawa Japan was very low comparing to the pre-transition level of England, 2) in spite of this low level fertility, parity-specific fertility control was not practiced as far as refering to the value of m in nation-wide analysis. So we can say that rural Tokugawa Japan since the second half of seventeenth-century was in a "natural fertility regime", but 3) the degree of fertility control (m) contained considerable regional and local differences. These concluding remarks are tentative and intermediate because this analysis contains only eighteen village-based data and the diffusion of them is biased regionally. It is not to say that we can not complete natural fertility analysis only through this estimation. We need to proceed the conversation with micro-demographic researches of marital fertility in order to make these conclusions more reliable.

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Trends and correlates of dramatic fertility declines in the NIES from the 1960s to the 1980s are examined in this paper. Specifically, we first look at changes in the fertility effets of such demographic factors as age structure of fertility, age pattern of marriage, and marital fertility. Next, as major proximate determinants of fertility, we examine changes in contraception and induced abortion. We then examine the fertility effects of changes in infant mortality and family planning programs. Finally, by examining changes in such socioeconomic factors as educational attainment and female labor force participation as well as attitudinal changes toward marriage and the family, we seek to infer their effects on fertility declines in the NIES. Rapid and steady declines in fertility in the NIES are due to postponement of marriage and deliberate control of marital fertility among women in their twenties and thirties. The effect of the latter is found to be especially strong, owing to the rapid spread of modern contraceptive methods with readily available induced abortion as a back-up, as well as to the dissemination of the concept of fertility control. These are thought to be facilitated, in turn, by the spread of universal primary education and significant declines in infant mortality prior to and during the early period of fertility transition. Traditional cultural values based on Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism also are not detrimental, but rather adaptive, to legitimatization of the concept and practice of family planning in the NIES societies. Once fertility declines started, they are thought to have facilitated further increases in educational levels (spread of secondary education) and labor force participation among young women, thus causing even more effective fertility control, delay of marriage, and then fertility declines to below-replacement levels.

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[in Japanese]

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