In parts of Tokugawa Japan, every other pregnancy ended in an abortion or infanticide. Why did contraception not take their place before the twentieth century? Fabian Drixler (Yale University) explores this unusual contraceptive practice in Tokugawa Japan.  

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Tokugawa Japan occupies an unusual place in the history of contraception. Pessaries are well documented among prostitutes, and one Catholic record from the early seventeenth century features a line-up of Japanese converts confessing their use of contraceptive "devices". For the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the evidence for the use of effective contraception by the general population is elusive. This was not because married couples desired large families. In parts of Tokugawa Japan, every other pregnancy ended in an abortion or infanticide. The practices were painful, dangerous, and vulnerable to moral attacks. Why did contraception not take their place before the twentieth century?

Bio

Fabian Drixler is Associate Professor of History at Yale University. He is author of Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950 and currently works on a new book that considers climate history from a Tokugawa perspective, Fractal Inequality: Japan in the Volcanic Winters of the Early Modern World.