Urbanization, industrialization, and mortality in modern Japan: a spatio-temporal perspective

Abstract

The mortality rate in Japan increased from the late nineteenth century until World War I. However, immediately after the influenza pandemic (1918–1920), the Spanish flu, the mortality rate began to decrease. While it is generally recognized that one of the major factors for this phenomenon was the decreasing mortality rate in metropolitan areas such as Tokyo and Osaka, there are a few studies regarding the regional variation of mortality rate in this period. Actually, trends of mortality rate fluctuated with prefecture and cause of death and were obviously different from the trends in metropolitan areas in particular causes of death. Respiratory tuberculosis is a typical example of such a cause of death. Youth accounted for the large part of victims of tuberculosis in the between-war period. The high mortality of youth female factory workers was recognized as an especially serious social problem. Thus, the issue of tuberculosis should be discussed from the viewpoint of not only an individual's health but also its implications on national efficiency, economic management, and rural life. In this study, we focus on the regional variation of tuberculosis mortality and analyze it by a quantitative approach adopting socioeconomic variables. As a result, we present a risk model of regional variation of tuberculosis mortality. The model suggests that the regional variation can be explained as an effect of urbanization and industrialization. Therefore, it could be concluded that tuberculosis mortality was a proxy variable for human cost of economic growth in modern Japan.