Wombs of Empire

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"The pronatalist slogan, Umeyo! Fuyaseyo! (Give birth! Grow [the Nation]!), was ubiquitous during the heyday of Japanese imperialism, and the targeted population of 100 million was reached a half century later in 1970. Today, Japan has one of the fastest aging and shrinking populations among post-industrial countries, and the postwar democratic state can no longer exercise autocratic control over citizens' reproductive lives. Through her careful analysis of early 20th century birth-control 'research societies' and their discursive matrices, Lee complicates the socio-political construction of marriage, motherhood, and modernity in Japan that continues to shape the intersecting discourses of demography today in Japan."-Jennifer Robertson, University of Michigan "Sujin Lee's Wombs of Empire provides a brilliant analysis of interwar and wartime Japan's biopolitics with a focus on the discourse on birth-control and its pivotal role in the problematization of population. Deftly interweaving a Foucauldian analysis and the intricacies of modern Japanese history,Lee illuminates the centrality of biopolitics for Japan's modernity or modernity at large. A tour de force."-Katsuya Hirano, University of California, Los Angeles "Wombs of Empire is a compelling and rigorous study of the politics of population control offering a multi-scalar analysis that traverses discourses of gendered and racialized sexual practices, linking individualized morality and hygiene to national population control through eugenics policies and the criminalization of birth control. With erudition and eloquence, Sujin Lee forwards an illuminating and fascinating analysis of Japanese biopolitics within a transnational context which spans debates ranging from neo-Malthusianism, leftist birth control movements, eugenic feminism and calls for proletarian birth strikes."-Setsu Shigematsu, University of California, Riverside