Dr Fabian Drixler - 'Infanticide and a Demographic Revolution in Japan'
| Dates: | 27 November 2013 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 19:00 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Current University students |
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Japanese Studies and History present visiting speaker Dr Fabian Drixler;
'Infanticide and a Demographic Revolution in Japan'
Around 1790, Eastern Japan's culture of reproductive restraint
and responsible parenting came under attack amid a deepening depopulation crisis. Previously, many of its inhabitants believed that they had to choose which children to raise and which to discard at birth, and infanticides were so frequent (40% of all births) that every generation was smaller than the one that went before.
The fight against infanticide, motivated by this depopulation, became a central concern. The number of children increased from about three per woman in the 18th century to about six in 1920.
This talk will outline this reverse fertility transition and discuss the changing metaphors and images, political concerns and understandings of the world, that made infanticide normal and normative in one century, and a dehumanizing crime in another.
Does this journey from low fertility to high matter for how we view demographic change in other societies, past, present, and future.
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