우생학 담론에서 ‘배제’의 논리

Ikeda Shigenori s Eugenic Elimination: Biopower in Eugenics Movement

One of the growing concerns for the policy makers and ideologues of imperial Japan during the 1920s and early 1930s was quality control of the population. In concrete terms this generated a momentum to redefine ‘marriage’ primarily as a reproductive unit in accordance with the laws of science, rather than a union of love. On the marriage market it meant an implementation of state-assisted “natural selection,” a scientific procedure of weeding out those individuals with potentially inferior genes. For example, the government commissioned a research organization working towards the “betterment” of the population in 1928. Leading members of this organization included physiologist Shimomura Hiroshi, legal scholar Nagai Hisomu and journalist Ikeda Shigenori. Some of the committee’s notable proposals submitted to the government included legalization of birth control, abortion, vasectomy and tubal ligation, as well as mandatory submission to a physical examination before marriage. This article focuses on Ikeda Shigenori’s popular eugenics movement through a close reading of his journal, Yūsei undo (Eugenics Movement). I show how Ikeda Shigenori’s notion of ‘elimination’ operates at all levels, ranging from marital partner selection and birth control to forceful sterilization.