Seminar: Failures in the Science of Governing Japan’s Population
13 AUG 2024 – 5pm-6pm
USyd, John Woolley Building (A20), Common Room N480, Camperdown, NSW 2050
Hybrid event: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88982634832
This event is co-hosted with UNSW Laureate Centre for History & Population.
Synopsis
The medical and scientific fields studying population in Japan have evolved since the 1860s, paralleling Japan’s development as a modern nation-state-empire. The human and social sciences related to population played a pivotal role in naturalizing ‘population’ (jinkō) as a crucial element of state intervention, maintaining a symbiotic relationship with state sovereignty based on population management. However, was this relationship between population science and governance always smooth? This seminar will address this question by exploring the everyday activities of population bureaucrat-cum-scientists, some of which have been obscured in history due to a lack of sources. Focusing on these bureaucrat-cum-scientists and their science in action will reveal how this symbiotic relationship often ended in failure and identify some factors contributing to these failures.
Speaker
Dr Homei is a Reader in Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester. She specializes in the history of medicine and science in modern Japan, focusing on reproduction and population. She is the author of Science for Governing Japan’s Population (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and has guest-edited special issues for East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (2016), Japan Forum (2021), and the British Journal for the History of Science (2024). Aya is currently working with Hiro Fujimoto (University of Heidelberg) and Ellen Nakamura (University of Auckland) on Women and Medicine in the Japanese Empire (Routledge) and a monograph tentatively entitled Negotiating for Asia’s Population: Japan in the Transnational Network of Family Planning, Development Aid, and Global Health