Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan by Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci (review)

Birth control activist and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) visited Japan seven times during her lifetime. Her friend and counterpart Katō (Ishimoto) Shizue (1897–2001) traveled to the United States several times and, in 1935, published a bestselling autobiography, Facing Two Ways: The Story of My Life in English, a book that continues to be used in classrooms. At first glance, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci's Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan appears to be about these two women and their transnational careers as advocates for birth control beginning in the 1910s and 1920s and extending through the 1950s. A photograph from 1936 graces the front cover—the two women pose smiling for the camera in front of what appears to be a Japanese building.¹

But the book is about more than Katō and Sanger.² Although the two women make appearances throughout, and Sanger's trips to Japan constitute an ongoing thread, Contraceptive Diplomacy takes up several related topics including the eugenics movement in transnational perspective, the evolution of birth control policies and technologies, the policies of the postwar Allied Occupation of Japan toward contraception, and the postwar Japanese government's emphasis on "eugenic marriages." Takeuchi-Demirci recreates for readers the then-dominant worldview that overpopulation would lead the world to war, an understanding many intellectuals, policymakers, and government officials took as common sense. She addresses how the birth control movement gained traction in Japan and around the world after the occupation ended and how what we now call "thought leaders" everywhere feared a population explosion that would threaten world peace. Through this juncture, she points out that "the term 'birth control' had become synonymous with 'population control'" (p. 115).

One of the main arguments Takeuchi-Demirci advances is that birth control was originally a radical, feminist idea. But in order to bolster the cause, feminist leaders like Katō and especially Sanger made strategic compromises with male officials; they moved away from grassroots activism and instead focused on working with male leaders. Sometimes they were aware they were making concessions and sometimes not. As a result, birth control ended up operating in the service of the perceived national interest (or even "imperial" interest) rather than being for the sake of women's rights; its radical potential was dissipated. Birth control finally became mainstream in the post–World War II era not because governments wanted to help women, but because officials and other elites were convinced of the need for population control. At the same time, they hoped to limit the spread of contraception among social groups they deemed worthy (middle-class whites in the United States and educated Japanese in Japan).

Chapter 1 discusses how Katō and Sanger first met in New York City in the early 1920s. It then turns to Sanger's first trip to Japan in 1922 and the "indigenous birth control campaigns that took place throughout Japan after her visit" (p. 20). Takeuchi-Demirci finds that the energy generated by Sanger's trip (the author refers to Sanger as a "catalyst") did not last, for in the following decade, "feminists and other activists became preoccupied with political goals that placed women's concern as a secondary issue" (p. 53). Chapter 2 delves into how both women used the language of "maternal pacifism" and "liberal internationalism" in the 1920s and 1930s to advance their cause. Interestingly, Takeuchi-Demirci observes that the women activists had a better chance of being heard abroad than they did at home. Ultimately, however, their efforts were swallowed by rising imperialism and nationalism in the late 1930s.

Chapter 3 discusses the rise of eugenics. It details the process whereby eugenic scientists came to support birth control and how Sanger accommodated their views (and meanwhile, male scientists were eager to...