“Counting One's Allies”: The Mobilization of Demography, Population, and Family Planning in East Asia, Late 1920s–Present

Abstract

This article interrogates the category “Cold War family planning” for the East Asian context (1945–1991), arguing that the category remains highly relevant while also reflecting a much longer regional history of demography and population studies. In this sense, the category is both useful and insufficient, especially if we fail to examine a revised periodization and a constructed nature for the category. If the category as constructed has its origins in a highly charged, ideological binary following the close of World War II and the fracture of colonialism, this reduced version of the narrative prioritizes the role of external partners, funding and grant agencies, and the attempt by powerful nations to reconstitute their relations with postcolonial nations through developmental aid. In turn, the longer version of the story emphasizes actors on the ground, the role of registration and demographic practice, and parties who strategically used the arrival of external actors to mobilize their own agendas. Cold War family planning thus represents a dynamic, interactive story, one in which multiple sets of partners with distinct agendas were able to work together. Building from this more complicated version, the final section of the article turns to the role of postwar Japan and Asian developmentalism, noting that family planning activities became a core part of the aid offered by emerging donor nations by the 1970s. Many Southeast Asian nations today encounter not just colonial history but also the reconfigured version of an earlier paternalism made available through their Asian partners.

Keywords:

• demography
• population
• registration
• Cold War
• family planning
• reproduction

Notes

 1 KAP (Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice) became the dominant form of social science research for much of family planning, reaching out to informants on the assumption that they would become “acceptors” if only they knew of the technology. For many East Asian nations, the process had to be calibrated carefully, as access to technologies such as television or radio could not be assumed, and literacy was not necessarily a safe baseline.

 2 For the idea of “Free World” in regard to Asia, I want to thank James Lin of the University of California, Berkeley for his input. The Robert Komer Papers at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, also fit this theme of promoting inter-Asian exchange and development as part of “Free World” interests.

 3 Arthur Schneider of the University of Minnesota was part of a pattern in which the first Korea scholars (e.g., Edward Wagner of Harvard) tended to come out of the US Occupation (1945–48), which here also refers to the Occupation of Japan (1945–52), and subsequent generations who emerged from the Peace Corps and English-language teaching.

 4 Prominent examples here include Bruce Cumings (University of Chicago) and Michael Robinson (Indiana University-Bloomington).

 5 Both the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency)/JOICFP (Japan Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning) were major actors in family planning throughout postwar Asia.

 6 Taeuber's papers are housed at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Western Historical Manuscripts Collection (Taeuber, Irene B. [1906–1974], Papers, 1912–1981 2158 linear feet, 2 audio cassettes).

 7 Taiwan absorbed much of the interest previously devoted to China by American diplomats, missionaries, and educators, with the population program at Taichung serving as a model for other nations.

 8 The border remained porous though at least the late 1960s.

 9 See the forthcoming “Engineering Asia,” a volume I am coediting with Hiromi Mizuno (University of Minnesota) and Aaron S. Moore (Arizona State University), which looks at the aftermath of the Japanese Empire and its reconfiguration as development expertise for much of postwar East and Southeast Asia. Publisher information not yet available.

10 I first learned of this through personal communication with Bonnie S. Kim, Columbia University.

11 Frank DiKotter has composed a trilogy of works devoted to this subject matter.

12 For the Meguro Parasitological Museum, see http://www.kiseichu.org/Pages/eaboutus.aspx (accessed 28 June 2016).

13 The film's title references a famous Korean song of the 1960s.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John P. DiMoia

John P. DiMoia is an associate professor of history at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he teaches classes focusing on the broader history of technology (esp. in East Asia, eighteenth century to the present), the history of medicine (tropical, global, eighteenth century to the present), and Modern Korea (mid-nineteenth century to the present). He holds a PhD in the history of science from Princeton University (2007) and has previously taught in South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

Along with his position in the History department, he is an associate fellow at Tembusu College (NUS), a member of the STS cluster, and an affiliate with the Centre for Family and Population Research. He is working on two new projects: the first a book on energy issues in Northeast Asia and the Korean peninsula, centering in particular on the decision by South Korea to develop control over its built environments in the late 1960s; and the second, an edited volume, “Engineering Asia,” a project jointly coedited with associate professors Hiromi Mizuno (University of Minnesota) and Aaron S. Moore (Arizona State), linking Northeast (Japan, South Korea) and Southeast Asia (Burma, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam) after 1945 in terms of construction and infrastructure.

In addition to the first book, he has published essays and reviews in Cross-Currents, EASTS, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Technology and Culture, and Theory, Culture and Society, among others.