This book tells the story of a society reversing deeply held worldviews and revolutionizing its demography. In parts of eighteenth-century Japan, couples raised only two or three children. As villages shrank and domain headcounts dwindled, posters of child-murdering she-devils began to appear, and governments offered to pay their subjects to have more children. In these pages, the long conflict over the meaning of infanticide comes to life once again. Those who killed babies saw themselves as responsible parents to their chosen children. Those who opposed infanticide redrew the boundaries of humanity so as to encompass newborn infants and exclude those who would not raise them. In Eastern Japan, the focus of this book, population growth resumed in the nineteenth century. According to its village registers, more and more parents reared all their children. Others persisted in the old ways, leaving traces of hundreds of thousands of infanticides in the statistics of the modern Japanese state. Nonetheless, by 1925, total fertility rates approached six children per women in the very lands where raising four had once been considered profligate. This reverse fertility transition suggests that the demographic history of the world is more interesting than paradigms of unidirectional change would have us believe, and that the future of fertility and population growth may yet hold many surprises.

An exquisite collection of objects relating to the traditions of samurai warriors, from swords and armor to dishes and paintings Through artifacts from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and other collections at Yale University, this lavishly illustrated volume takes readers on a journey into Japan's early modern cultural and political history. It also offers tantalizing glimpses of medieval Japan and the technology underlying the material culture of the samurai. Some objects are dazzling aesthetic and technical feats: impossibly intricate lacquerware, swords as bright and sharp as the day they were forged, and glittering suits of armor from daimyo collections. Others are more unassuming, but equally capable of evoking visions of a lost world. Readers will encounter commoners alternately fearful of samurai violence and swept up in the romance of the cult of loyalty; artists and writers conjuring scenes of adventure and wit; families reaching out to departed kin across the chasm of death; parents deciding whether to raise or reject a newborn baby; underground Christians hiding their faith behind a Buddhist icon; and Japanese artifacts that take on new meanings in Ainu villages and the parlors of New England collectors. This book covers some well-known facets of Japanese history, but also features cutting-edge research. Like the exhibition from which it emerges, it is designed to be engaging and accessible to the general public while offering experts new information and perspectives. Distributed for Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History