The Population Problems and Anthropology

Abstract

The final object for our studies on population problems is how to improve the disharmony between the man and his environment from socio-biological point of view. The author tried a historical review on population theories ; most of them were approached from socio-economical view of point, but the biological considerations were always employed at the base of them. We have seen two outstanding debates concerning the population problems after the War in Japan ; the one being in relation with the population capacity and the other with the population control. The former is to inquire into the limit of population in which a established level of living could be maintained, and to make clear the real feature of overpopulation, especially in the light of the relationship between modern industry and rural population. The results of these inquiries had an effect to turn the general attention toward the social security system. The latter subject was taken up as a means to secure the people from the financial poverishment and sociological as well as biological deficiencies which would result from the free birth. Some fundamental researches were conducted by the Research Institute of Population Problems in Welfair Ministry, including the survey on the birth control practiced among urban and rural population, together with the status of sexual behavior of married couples. In Japan there are two characteristic types of society, the modernized urban society and the rather primitive rural one, and as a whole the increasing population confined in a limited territory presents serious fact which demands immediate and drastic study on and measures for population problems for the practical solution of the situation. The population problems involves many important subjects which are to be inquired by anthropologists from the view point of this field of science.