Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950 (Volume 25) First Edition
by Fabian Drixler (Author)
3.3 out of 5 stars 2 ratings
This book tells the story of a society reversing deeply held worldviews and revolutionizing its demography. In parts of eighteenth-century Japan, couples raised only two or three children. As villages shrank and domain headcounts dwindled, posters of child-murdering she-devils began to appear, and governments offered to pay their subjects to have more children. In these pages, the long conflict over the meaning of infanticide comes to life once again. Those who killed babies saw themselves as responsible parents to their chosen children. Those who opposed infanticide redrew the boundaries of humanity so as to encompass newborn infants and exclude those who would not raise them. In Eastern Japan, the focus of this book, population growth resumed in the nineteenth century. According to its village registers, more and more parents reared all their children. Others persisted in the old ways, leaving traces of hundreds of thousands of infanticides in the statistics of the modern Japanese state.
Nonetheless, by 1925, total fertility rates approached six children per women in the very lands where raising four had once been considered profligate. This reverse fertility transition suggests that the demographic history of the world is more interesting than paradigms of unidirectional change would have us believe, and that the future of fertility and population growth may yet hold many surprises
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Mabiki is a fabulous piece of historical scholarship on an important topic that until now had been relegated to the realm of traditional Japanese folktales."
-- Martin Dusinberre, American Historical Review Published On: 2014-04-01
"This complex and immensely valuable book is certainly essential reading."
-- Luke S. Roberts, Journal of Interdisciplinary History Published On: 2014-04-07
“Innovative, interesting, and rewarding . . . [an] extremely stimulating book.”
-- Osamu Saito, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Published On: 2014-12-01
"Mabiki skillfully blends statistical and textual analysis. . . . Drixler’s methodology is rich and complex. . . . The book is packed with interesting insights that will appeal to a wide range of readers."
-- Robert Eskildsen, Public Affairs Published On: 2015-12-01
"Mabiki is a model of methodological sophistication, imaginative and thorough use of primary sources, and incisive writing... an immensely important work and a must-read."
, Monumenta Nipponica
"Fabian Drixler has written a book that is at once structured around sophisticated analytics, packed with thoughtful interpretations, and polished off with questions that extend beyond the confines of Japanese history to challenge long-held assessments about worldwide demographic trends."
, The Journal of Japanese Studies Published On: 2014-08-20
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From the Inside Flap
"Mabiki shows how reproductive choices are embedded in dynamic cultural, social, and economic contexts. Marshaling evidence as diverse as religious artifacts and computer simulations, Fabian Drixler offers a compelling account of changes in the culture of infanticide over three centuries of Japanese history."—George Alter, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan
"International work in Japanese studies is intellectually vibrant and booming in a way that most outsiders to the field probably don't realize. Among this excellent work, Drixler's Mabiki is one of the most important books to appear in any field of Japanese studies in many years. It is also a book that will disturb many readers and certainly be widely read, discussed and debated."—Mark Metzler, University of Texas at Austin
"This book removes any question that infanticide was a widespread practice in eastern Japan, as well as a handful of other regions -- not only throughout the Edo period but well into the twentieth century. Drixler's analysis will force future scholars who are thinking about demography, family, gender, social policy, ethnography, and other topics to include infanticide in their analyses. The implications are broad, especially for discussions regarding the forces that slowed Edo-period population growth." —William Johnston, Wesleyan University
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Product details
Item Weight : 1.8 pounds
Hardcover : 439 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-0520272439
Product dimensions : 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
Publisher : University of California Press; First edition (May 25, 2013)
Language: : English
Top review from the United States
dm92590
5.0 out of 5 stars "Redrawing the Boundaries of Humanity"
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2013
Verified Purchase
This work, although seemingly dark, is an inspirational lesson in human capacity to change the course of deep-seeded societal practices that had become harmful. Using a variety of research materials, such as computer models, maps, letters, tablets, family registers, birth reports, and scrolls, Drixler traces how a society that has chosen to implement convenient (read: extreme) measures of population control for perceived pragmatic reasons then becomes fully aware of the dire consequences of that practice. And unlike many societies in the world today that realize the consequences of commonly-accepted practices, this Edo-period society, at least, was able to reverse institutionalized beliefs surrounding the practice of infanticide and revolutionize their demography, experiencing a population boom. In an age when population growth and population control have once again become hotly-debated issues central to our survival, Drixler challenges us to think beyond official projections on the future of human demography. Taking Edo-period Japan as an example, fertility and population growth are rather unpredictable trends, and our choices may hold more individual power in the demographic landscape of future generations than we would like to admit.
I primarily decided to read Mabiki for pleasure, although Drixler's work concerns the heavy topic of infanticide during Edo-period Japan. This is because Drixler's eloquent prose and striking anecdotes carry the reader through a greater discussion on human status. Drixler's wooden tablets not only depict mother-turned-she-devils smothering their freshly-born children, but they also reveal a society grappling with what it means to become human, "redrawing the boundaries of humanity" (Drixler 151), and how to process that phenomenon to reform society. I found the world to be highly-extensive, covering an impressive and holistic range of topics to reflect the nuances and complexities of Japanese society at the time. However, the work did not at all sacrifice depth; I felt like Drixler took me through a journey through the streets of Edo, past seedy abortion clinics and into the homes of expectant couples, from mysterious tablet-concealing cedar forests to barren rice fields populated with starving, wild beasts.
One of the most memorable pieces of evidence came from Tsunoda Tozaemon's diary: "My wife has had a safe delivery; the child was in the womb in two different calendar years; since it was supposed to be a girl but turns out to be a boy, [we] returned the child" (Drixler 101). Tozaemon commits infanticide because the child was of an unexpected gender according to a man-conceived system of projections. Moments like these, true pieces of our shared human history, shocked me--how terrifying that utterly meaningless social constructs lead us into mindlessly committing such grave offenses. I can only imagine how so many of the things we do now, thinking that they are of no moral consequence, will one day be considered reprehensible, inhumane acts.
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