Powering the Nation: A Conceptual History of "National Power" and the "Population Problem" in Modern Japan (1870s-2000s)

In 2014, the *Asahi Shimbun* reported about Okada Takahirō, a Japanese man in his mid-50s, who ran for a third term as a mayor of Ōno, a small town in central Japan. Okada campaigned with the idea of tackling the town’s depopulation, which represented a result of decline in industrial productivity and a large-scale urban migration, as well as low birth rates that reflected the nation’s average. However, despite the attention that Japan’s “population problem” has been garnering both within the country and globally, the socioeconomic implications of demographic changes are not only a problem of *contemporary* Japan. These were discussed by Japanese policymakers, intellectuals, and in the media already in the 1880s and 1890s. However, in spite of numerous policies which included encouragement of emigration, pronatalism, and the development of welfare policies, the population problem still persists to this day. My research examines modern Japan’s concern with its population changes that had been ambiguously dubbed the “population problem,” and which coincided with the inception as well as the later development of the Japanese state. I offer a new perspective by approaching the issue from the stance of conceptual history to argue that the idea of “national power” (*kokuryoku*) represented one of the guiding principles for the statist and conservative layers of Japan’s leadership when they conceived of Japan’s population. In other words, the persuasive anxiety of the impact demographic changes would have on Japan’s “national power” kept the population problem in constant discursive and policy focus. However, this thesis seeks to move beyond the underlying idea that the “population problem” equalled a “national power problem.” Instead, my research simultaneously implies that *kokuryoku* - however defined at that particular moment in time - stood as the main measurement of power through many transformations of the modern Japanese state. Furthermore, this thesis showcases the connection between the pursuit of economic nationalism and power, while emphasising local, international, and transnational factors which shaped the Japanese “national” idea of power. Previous scholarship, such as Aya Homei’s study on the history of population science in modern Japan (2023) have recognised the close link between population and national power. Historicising development of modern demography, Homei’s work has shown how the emergence of different scientific fields between the 1860s and 1960s affected population policies. My work builds on this notion to show how the transformation of the idea of what makes a country powerful in turn transformed Japanese approach towards demographic changes. By adopting a long historical timeframe between the 1870s and the 2000s, this thesis demonstrates not only how modern Japanese leadership sought to increase national power through population management, but also how they understood the nature of the modern state itself. Through five chapters, which correspond to five different political and socio-economic time periods in modern Japanese history, my thesis seeks to understand the conception, ambiguity, acceptance, transformation, and, at times, rebuttal, of the idea of national power through discourse and policies relating to the population problem. The broader aim of this thesis is three-fold. First, it elucidates a continuity of certain ideas in modern Japanese nationalism, which are reflected in policies as well as in the use of the particular Meiji era language, from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Second, in addition to elucidating how changing national aims affects the perception of demographic changes, my research probes the limits of economic nationalism and of the state itself, to show how a state’s grand strategy to ensure wealth and strength has been dependent on the ordinary individual and their aspirations. Third, my work seeks to position Japan in the global flow of ideas. Scientific and intellectual exchanges with other countries, as well as wartime experiences, served as a crucial factor in shaping Japanese bureaucrats and policymakers’ ideas of what makes a country powerful. This meant, by extension, that the size and quality of a population were oftentimes deeply linked to fostering national power.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Marković, Mina

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kushner, Barak

• Japan
• Modern History
• National Power
• Population Problem

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/e8fdb9c0-fa3f-40f7-8f9d-7fb41bd1b14b/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109634

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/370050