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Eugenics in Japan has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally brought to Japan through the United States (like Charles Davenport and John Coulter), through Mendelian Inheritance by way of German influences, and French Lamarkian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eugenics as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th, in ''Jinsei-Der Mensch'', the first eugenics journal in the Empire. As the Japanese sought to close ranks with the West, this practice was adopted wholesale, along with colonialism and its justifications.〔 The concept of pureblood as a criterion for the uniqueness of the Yamato people began circulating around 1880 in Japan, while eugenics in the sense of instrumental and selective procreation, clustered around two positions concerning blood, the and the .〔 Popularity of the pure-blood eugenics theory came from a homegrown racial purity or monoculture national belief that has been part of Japanese society since ancient times. The local movement was however less focused on modern scientific ideals and more on the "outside person" vs the "native or inside person" and blood purity.〔 Later legal measures were supported by certain politicians and movements that sought to increase the number of healthy pure Japanese, while simultaneously decreasing the number of people suffering mental retardation, disability, genetic disease and other conditions that led to them being viewed as "inferior" contributions to the Japanese gene pool.〔"The National Eugenic Law" The 107th law that Japanese Government promulgated in 1940 (国民優生法) 第一条 本法ハ悪質ナル遺伝性疾患ノ素質ヲ有スル者ノ増加ヲ防遏スルト共ニ健全ナル素質ヲ有スル者ノ増加ヲ図リ以テ国民素質ノ向上ヲ期スルコトヲ目的トス〕 Opposition to the eugenics movement persisted amongst several right-wing factions, including members of the Diet of Japan and obstetricians, who perceived eugenics as suggesting that the Japanese people were only animals, not inhabitants of the as believed by the Japanese national Shinto tradition. , author of "Japan's Shinto Revolution",〔http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA61018648〕 wrote in 1940, "When we look up into the past, the people of our country are descended from the ''kami''. Are they claiming we must sterilize these people?"〔Hiroshima 1981, p. 73〕 Similar resistance to these theories occurred within conservative and traditional Christian communities in the United States. == Origins of Japanese domestic scientific eugenics == Yamanouchi Shige (1876–1973), a plant cytologist, was one of the early and important members of the Japanese eugenics movement, who was trained under John Merle Coulter (1851–1928) an American eugenicist and botanist. He was a major promoter and academic of early Lamarckian theory, but later blended his ideas with Mendelian evolutionary theory. His career is a direct link between United States and Japanese eugenics. His approach has been credited with searching for a way for the Japanese ''race'' to genetically "catch up" with the "dominant Western race" of the 19th and early 20th centuries. According to Jennifer Robertson of the University of Michigan, eugenism, as part of the new scientific order, was introduced in Japan "under the aegis of nationalism and empire building." She identifies "positive eugenism" and "negative eugenism." Positive eugenism, promoted by Ikeda Shigenori, refers to "the improvement of circumstances of sexual reproduction and thus incorporates advances in sanitation, nutrition and physical education into strategies to shape the reproductive choices and decisions of individual and families" Negative Eugenism, promoted by Hisomu Nagai, "involves the prevention of sexual reproduction, through induced abortion or sterilization among people deemed unfit".〔 "Unfit" included people such as alcoholics, lepers, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, and criminals.〔 Social Darwinism was at that time gaining credit with scientists around the world and thus was introduced to Japan as well.〔中村 桂子・米本 昌平 「現代社会と遺伝学――第二世代に入る遺伝操作論争」 『世界』 March 1980〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eugenics in Japan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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