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Opinion,
Comment & Reviews
Contraception |
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The
contraceptive pill is legalised in Japan
By
Maxine Lattimer
The Japanese government, after deliberating for nine years
over the oral contraceptive pill that has been available in
the West for decades, has decided to allow its limited sale.
The Central Pharmaceutical Affairs Council submitted its recommendation
to the Health Ministry today and formal approval will take
place by the end of the month. Toshiki Hirai, a ministry spokesman,
said that the pill (which requires a doctor's prescription)
is expected to become available in Japan by the autumn. Previously
the pill had been banned for contraceptive purposes since
the 1960s. Only high and medium dose pills could be legally
prescribed for menstrual disorders, low dose pills were not
available.
Claims that the pill would promote promiscuity, lead to a
rise in the spread of AIDs and STIs, and would lead to oestrogen
contaminated waste polluting the environment and cause low
sperm counts among Japanese men, all helped delay the pill's
legalisation. Initial demand is not expected to be very high
as the pill has received a great deal of negative publicity
and Japanese women wary of it. Kunio Kitamura, head of Japan's
Family Planning Association said 'Now Japanese women will
finally have the contraceptive choices that women in other
countries have. I didn't think it would take this long', and
added 'The pill has such a bad image that now I will have
to educate women about its advantages'. The pill will still
not be available on Japan's national health service.
As well as a legacy of myths and misinformation about the
pill, cultural ideas about what is 'natural' will also have
to be considered, and a historical reliance on abortion to
regulate fertility. The following resources may be useful
for understanding these issues.
In accordance with nature: The impossibility of family planning
in Japan Abstract of a paper presented at Changing contraceptives:
technologies, choices and constraints,
University of Durham,
Stockton College,
12-14 September 1996
Mariko Jitsukawa,
Department of Anthropology,
Stanford University,
Stanford
CA 94305, USA
Mari@leland.stanford.edu
The prevalence of abortion among Japanese women combined with
their lack of support for the legalisation of oral contraceptives
has perplexed many observers. Do Japanese women believe abortion
is safer than oral contraceptives? A survey showed that about
60% of women who were about to have abortions rejected the
idea of taking the Pill for fear of 'negative side-effects'.
Besides, almost 10% of the respondents said that the Pill
should not be legalised. I explore what Japanese women mean
by 'side-effects' through an analysis of the Japanese discourse
on the Pill. Japanese feminists articulate women's fears of
side-effects rather than supporting the legalisation of the
Pill. In addition to reminding of the incidence of iatrogenesis
that occurred in the sixties and seventies, they condemn the
Pill saying that it represses women's sexuality by forcing
them into a daily regimen; that regulating their bodies by
chemically manufactured hormones is another defeat to male
domination; that artificial regulation of the hormonal cycle
is a violation of bodily ecology. In short the Pill is not
natural.
For them, maintaining the female body's natural rhythm is
essential to the control of one's personhood. By 'negative
side-effects' Japanese women do not refer to the effects identified
by the medical community; they refer to the perceived possibility
that the Pill deprives the body of self-control. In contrast
to the Occidental view, in which humans confront and conquer
nature, in the Japanese view, nature is seen as something
that is not subject to human control. The ideal status of
a body is considered to be in accordance with nature. Nature
is an inevitable constituent of the human body and the human
body is a micro-cosmos of nature. The body should remain natural
to be in the most empowered condition. By 'staying natural',
Japanese feminists mean the will to keep anything from interfering
with their relationship with nature. By making the fertile
female body infertile, hormonal methods, the IUD, or surgical
sterilisation violate women's relationship with nature. This
is unacceptable to Japanese women. Family planning is a human
effort to control fertility in order to gain mastery of the
body. However, with the underlying assumption that the body
is subject to women's control, such an artificial practice
is inconceivable. The conspicuous absence of the practice
of long term planning among Japanese women --be it family
planning, career planning, or life planning - reveals not
their lack of independence but women's conviction that they
should stay natural.
Also, try reading anthropologist Susan Hardacre's Marketing
the Menacing Foetus in Japan published in 1997 by University
of California Press, Berkeley, for a fascinating and impressively
well-researched exploration of the cultural and historical
meanings of abortion in Japan.
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