JAPAN: High-Low

In the two decades before Pearl Harbor, when the population of Japan was growing by almost 1,000,000 every year, warlords used population pressure as an excuse to conquer or dominate foreign lands. But World War II defeat brought more than one remarkable change. Last week, after six years of study, the government’s Population Research Institute announced that Japan’s birthrate has been cut in half, and is now one of the world’s lowest. In 1932 the average family boasted 5.8 children; today it has under three.

Last week the high priestess of planned parenthood, Margaret Sanger herself, was in Tokyo seeing the Prime Minister. But though pleased that “in no nation in the world has the birth rate been cut so drastically in such a short time,” she was distressed by the fact that few parents used contraceptives, instead relied on abortions, which are now legal and cost $2.78 if the mother can show that otherwise her health might be harmed, or that “unbearable” economic hardship might result. Margaret Sanger argued that too frequent abortions are also injurious to health, and Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi agreed. In the past year alone, there have been 1,500,000 abortions in Japan.