The Mysterious Drop in Japan's Birth Rate Why did the birth rate decline by 26 percent in 1966--and pick up again the next year? KOYA AZUMI In 1966, the birth rate in Japan suddenly plunged to a record low of 13.7 per thousand--down almost half a million births from the preceding year. This decline in births--26 percent in one year--was extraordinary. Such a birth-rate plunge would have exceeded the wildest hopes of the countries that are frantically trying to limit their populations. But in Japan, a prosperous and heavily industrialized country that is not trying to limit its population, the drop seemed to make no sense. None of the usual explanations for a rapid birth decline seemed to work. A quick survey of the country showed that Japan in 1966 was no different from Japan in 1965 or 1967--and the number of births in 1967 increased by 50 percent over 1966. The year 1966 was marked by no war, no sudden shifts in prosperity, and no change in the legal codes that might have influenced reproductive behavior. Furthermore, the decline could not be ascribed to any sudden lack of sexual activity. In fact, during the last half of 1965 the number of induced abortions rose sharply. This suggests that people were still engaging in their usual sexual activities but that, for some reason, they were determined not to have children. This determination first became evident in the birth statistics for January 1966. In December 1965 the birth rate stood at a steady 17.3; by the end of January it had fallen to 14.6. In a single month, the Japanese made their birth rate fall by a spectacular 16 percent. True, with modern contraceptive methods (and, as a last resort, modern abortion methods), people have greater control over their reproductive lives. But under no normal circumstances do they choose to exercise this control to the extent that the Japanese did in the last nine months of 1965 and the first three months of 1966. This was not the first time that the Japanese birth rate had fallen sharply. But this was the first time it had done so without apparent reason. The birth rate took a sharp plunge in the 1950s, for example, but that was in response to deliberate government policy. Such a policy was necessary because by 1947, two years after the end of World War II, the Japanese rate had risen to 34.3 per thousand--a figure comparable to the current high rates in countries like Taiwan, Cuba, and Ceylon. The Japanese government was alarmed. To stop this dangerous trend toward overpopulation, the government launched a massive birthcontrol campaign. It adopted family planning as national policy and began to spread birth-control information and materials throughout the country. Legal restrictions against abortion were eased--so much so that abortion became available to almost any woman who wanted it. The desire to limit family size was apparently there, for contraception soon became accepted and widespread. Within 10 years, the birth rate had actually halved--a decline unprecedented in Japan or anywhere else. If it had continued at this pace, within a few decades there would have been no births at all. But by 1957, the rate stabilized at between 17 and 18 live births per thousand per year. On the basis of that sustained low rate, demographers predicted that by the 1980s the Japanese population would hit a ceiling of about 110 million. Then a cycle of depopulation would begin. The nationalistic Japanese, faced with the declining vigor of an increasing older population and the longterm threat of possible depopulation, might have been expected to respond to this prospect by starting to plan larger families. But instead, in 1966, they reduced their birth rate even beyond the sustained low figure that had prevailed for the past nine years. A Bad Year for Girls [Caption: Even modern Japanese families may believe in superstitions, as is suggested by the decline in the birth rate during 1966---a bad year, according to an old superstition, to have girls.] Why then, against all logical expectations to the contrary, did the Japanese apparently declare a moratorium on child-bearing in 19667 The answer lies in an ancient superstition. The superstition is rooted in the ancient lunar-solar calendar of Chinese origin. This old calendar, although abandoned by the Japanese in 1872 in favor of the Gregorian calendar used in the West, is still very much a part of Japanese thinking. It is composed of two circular systems--one a decimal system of 10 "trunks" and the other a duodecimal system of 12 "twigs." The trunks carry the names of natural objects or elements, and the twigs carry the names of animals. Every 60 years, when the "fire" period of the first system coincides with the "horse" period of the second, a new cycle of history begins. The first year of each new cycle is called a year of Hinoeuma. What explains Japan's sudden birth-rate decline in 1966 is the fact that 1966 was a year of Hinoeuma. For according to the superstition, any girl born in such a year will be of harsh temperament and invite misfortune in other words, she will have great difficulty finding a husband. The Japanese just weren't taking that chance. Rather than conceiving children on the chance that they would be boys and thus immune to the misfortunes of Hinoeuma, many Japanese decided to wait till next year. During 1965 and early 1966, they practiced rigorous birth control. And failing that, they were quite prepared to resort to abortion to make certain that they brought no unlucky daughters into the world. Recurrent Declines Plainly, the Hinoeuma superstition has withstood industrialization, mass education, and the growth of science and technology, as well as the passage of time. But how can we be sure that it was responsible for the birth decline of 19667 The answer is that the persistence of the superstition and its link to the birth rate can be shown statistically. For example, government figures indicate that the 1966 decline was greatest in the traditional, rural areas. Since the phenomenon is also a recurrent one, the case for superstition becomes even stronger. The last time a year of Hinoeuma came around was in 1906. Predictably, the birth rate declined--from 31.1 per thousand in 1905 down to 29.6 in 1906. The next year, it rose rapidly to about 34. Something else very peculiar happened in 1906: The sex ratio at birth became noticeably unbalanced. Normally, each year there are slightly more boys than girls born, but in 1906 the number of boys so far exceeded the number of girls that the usual ratio was definitely upset. In 1905, the sex ratio of boys to girls was 102.7 to 100. In 1906, the year of Hinouema, the ratio jumped to 108.7 to 100. Then in 1907, it returned to 102.7 to 100--a normal figure. The explanation circulated at the time laid the sudden increase in boys to a mysterious force of nature that compensates for the loss of men during war. And Japan had concluded a war against Russia the year before. But there is some reason to doubt that such an increase in male births really occurs after a war. For example, the American demographer C.T. McMahan tested this expectation against actual birth statistics in the United States following both world wars and found no such increase. McMahan's findings suggest that Japan's apparent proportionate increase in male births following the Russo-Japanese War may need a skeptical second look. How can we be sure that such an increase occurred? In other words, how reliable are Japan's birth statistics for 1906? False Statistics It turns out that in 1906, like today, the responsibility for registering the vital events of birth, marriage, and death rested with Japan's heads of household. This fact, plus the fact that 1906 was a year of Hinouema, may help explain the peculiar activity of the 1906 birth rate. Household heads may simply have responded to the Hinouema superstition by failing to register the births of girls born in 1906. Since there was no vigorously enforced time requirement for registration, these household heads could easily have registered these girl children as having been born in 1905 or in 1907. If this had happened, we would expect the over-registration of girls in those years to depress the sex ratio--and the 102.7-to-100 figure that prevailed during both these years was, although within the normal range, slightly below average. (The figures for 1904 and 1908 give male rates of 105.1 and 104.6 respectively.) By this very rational method of accommodating to an irrational belief, then, Japanese parents --in their effort to shield their newborn daughters from the stigma of Hinouema--likely falsified the birth statistics for 1906. By 1966, the next unlucky year, the Japanese no longer needed to falsify the birth statistics. Modernization had brought family planning within the reach of almost everyone. But in the 60 years since 1906, Japan had also undergone other radical changes: Illiteracy had been wiped out, the agricultural population had dwindled from about two-thirds to less than one-fourth of the labor force, and a modern industrial economy had evolved. In addition, most of the women who were of child-bearing age in 1966 were modern women, born after 1930. All of this should have helped quash the Hinouema superstition. If, as sociologists believe, modernization means demystification, secularization, and rationalization, then the Japanese of 1966 should have been free of the idea that a woman's year of birth can determine her personality and even her life chances. But the birth-rate plunge of 1966 showed that the superstition was still very much alive. Modernization, it appears, served only to provide the Japanese with more efficient ways to propitiate the same old dieties. The Japanese of 1906 concealed female births, and the Japanese of 1966 prevented them. But the motivation- to avoid the year of Hinouema--was still the same. Of course, it is not fair to conclude that all the Japanese who avoided having children in 1966 because it was the year of Hinouema were themselves superstitious. Perhaps they merely felt that others believed in the superstition and that this might be enough to hinder the chances of girls born in that year. But whether the potential parents of 1966 themselves believed in the superstition, or whether they merely thought that others believed in it, they acted as if they believed it by postponing many of the births that normally would have occurred that year. Despite the plunging birth rate, there were still a great many girls born in 1966. Perhaps Hinouema's 1966 children will have sufficiently fortunate lives to dilute the superstition, or to dispel it completely. In any case, most of them will still be around to see what happens the next time a new cycle begins, in the year 2026. It will be interesting to watch the birth rate then, and to see whether Japan's Hinouema superstition can survive the turn of still another century. ------------------------------------------------------ Koya Azumi is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin. His book, The Recruitment of University Graduates by Big Firms in Japan, will be published this year by the Teachers' College Press at Columbia. His current research includes an empirical study of activists in the Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist organization that has become a political third force in Japan.