Kato Shizue: The Pioneer of the Birth Control Movement in Japan

Kato Shizue (1897-2001) was a Japanese feminist and was one of the first women elected in the Diet. However, she is best known to be the pioneer of the birth control movement in Japan. Kato first gained a curiosity in women’s rights after moving to Fukuoka prefecture with her then-husband, where she witnessed many women with numerous children who were suffering from severe poverty.¹⁶

Portrait of Socialist Party candidate Mrs. Kato Shizue. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images.

Born in an affluent family, Kato had the privilege to visit and study abroad in the United States. She met Margaret Sanger in 1919 and was inspired to start a birth control movement in Japan.¹⁷ With the Sanger’s influence, upon Kato’s return to Japan, she led and started the movement among the members of the women’s liberation movement to achieve “health and happiness at the individual level”.¹⁸ She gathered support by relating the subject of birth control to mainstream political attitudes and government policies, which in turn prevented the movement from police suppression.¹⁹ Among the ideas she related birth control to was the “good wife, wise mother” ideology. To her, reducing the number of children within a family through birth control would help women realize their role as good mothers, further strengthening family ties.²⁰ Kato also brought Sanger to Japan in 1922, and shortly after, organized the Japanese Women’s Association for Birth Control, which gained support from women in rural areas, some authorities, several doctors, and even the personal physician of the late Emperor at that time.²¹ By the late 1920s—due to her efforts—birth control was no longer regarded as a taboo in the country.²²

Baroness Ishimoto, Margaret Sanger, and Grant Sanger during the Japan trip, 1922. Photo from Bettman via Getty Images.

In 1932, Kato trained at the Sanger Clinic in New York²³ and said in a journal article that she endeavored to bring back her learnings on birth control to Japan in order to teach and spread information about it, for she believed that with the issues in Japan then, that it was “only through making birth control a mass movement that Japan can reduce her population and solve her difficulties”.²⁴ True enough, in 1936, she opened a birth control clinic in Tokyo, where she provided information to clients regarding the various methods of birth control.²⁵

Unfortunately, Kato was arrested in 1937 for her affiliation with the movement, because it was during this time that women were encouraged to “give birth and multiply”. Among the policies enacted to realize the aforementioned slogan were a complete ban on contraceptives, and the reinforcement of police measures against birth control advocates. and her clinic was forced to close.²⁶ After her release, Kato stood for the Japan Socialist Party and was elected as one of the first female members of the House of Representatives, where she advocated the implementation of the Prostitution Prevention law.²⁷

Japan’s first postwar election was held in April 1946, where 39 women, including Kato, gained seats in the Diet. Photo from Wikipedia.

In Post-war Japan, not only was Kato able to resume the birth control movement, hosting further visits by Sanger, but her role in the government enabled her to advocate for birth control on a larger stage. She once again aligned herself with mainstream societal attitudes in order to garner support for birth control. With the rise of the government’s interest to utilize birth control as a way to solve the population problem, Kato “blamed overpopulation for territorial expansion and war” and claimed that birth control was “the only way to solve Japan’s population problem”. In her perspective, the “achievement of birth control would lead to world peace, while at the same time improving the quality of the Japanese population.”²⁸ Kato and her Socialist Party, also pronounced that control of family size was imperative to improve the quality of life and ensure equality of men and women. In 1947, Kato, along with other representatives Fukuda Masako, and Ota Tenrei introduced the Eugenic Protection Bill, which aimed to legalize contraception, eugenic sterilization, and physician-supervised abortion.²⁹ Kato was said to have ‘officially’ supported legal abortions but was generally opposed to the practice and with this legislation, wanted to emphasize education and contraceptives so abortion would be less necessary. However, they did not get enough support and this bill died in the Diet.³⁰ The next year, this bill was enacted into a law, but instead focused on eugenic sterilization and physician-supervised abortion, not legalizing contraception.

Even though those prior efforts failed, Kato continued to be a champion for birth control, under the umbrella of women’s reproductive rights. She led the establishment of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and various gender equality laws were enacted partly due to her efforts³¹ and most notably, out of all of those, was birth control.