Preventing the birth of ‘inferior offspring’: eugenic sterilizations in postwar Japan

Abstract

The aim of this article is to introduce details about the forced sterilizations performed under Japan’s Eugenic Protection Law (1948–96) and provide answers to questions about why such a piece of legislation could exist in postwar democratic Japan, how its constitutionality was discussed at the time, and how involuntary sterilizations were performed, perceived, and rationalized. It suggests that the law was conceived amid complex discussions on overpopulation and the quality of the ‘nation’ and that even though its constitutionality was put under question, these doubts were overlooked in favor of ‘public welfare’. This article also suggests that forced sterilizations were not only an attempt to improve the genetic stock of the Japanese nation but were a complicated mixture of the state’s willingness to promote sterilizations, care institutions’ and families’ inability or unwillingness to cope with the hygienic needs or sexuality of certain disabled people, and misguided concerns for the happiness or parenting abilities of these people.