A transpacific history of clashing imperial ambitions, Contraceptive Diplomacy turns to the history of the birth control movement in the United States and Japan to interpret the struggle for hegemony in the Pacific through the lens of transnational feminism. As the birth control movement spread beyond national and racial borders, it shed its radical bearings and was pressed into the service of larger ideological debates around fertility rates and overpopulation, global competitiveness, and eugenics. By the time of the Cold War, a transnational coalition for women's sexual liberation had been handed over to imperial machinations, enabling state-sponsored population control projects that effectively disempowered women and deprived them of reproductive freedom. In this book, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci follows the relationship between two iconic birth control activists, Margaret Sanger in the United States and Ishimoto Shizue in Japan, as well as other intellectuals and policymakers in both countries who supported their campaigns, to make sense of the complex transnational exchanges occurring around contraception. The birth control movement facilitated U.S. expansionism, exceptionalism, and anti-communist policy and was welcomed in Japan as a hallmark of modernity. By telling the story of reproductive politics in a transnational context, Takeuchi-Demirci draws connections between birth control activism and the history of eugenics, racism, and imperialism.
"This path-breaking book weaves together a fascinating study of transnational feminism and international policy that yields an exciting new frontier for transnational histories. Takeuchi-Demirci decenters the story of the birth control movement from the America-centric view characteristic of American scholarship, showing how the birth and population control work of Margaret Sanger, American NGOs,
Santa Clara University
"This fine book explores the complex and often counter-productive alliance between the birth control movement and population control/eugenics advocates in Asia, Japan in particular. Its extensive international research demonstrates how campaigns for women's right to control reproduction became skewed toward governments and organizations committed to male-dominated, even authoritarian regimes. A ma
