Contested boundaries of personhood: the moral status of the fetus and infant in late Tokugawa Japan

This dissertation examines the competing notions of personhood in the late Tokugawa era in Japan (from the mid-eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries), by investigating conceptualizations of the beginning of life articulated and negotiated by different stakeholders in society. During this period, the concept of personhood was disputed, with increasing numbers of poor families performing abortions and infanticide, while moral entrepreneurs vehemently condemned such practices. Further, doctors in nascent obstetrics developed technologies to save the lives of the fetus and infants, contributing to the idea that the fetus and infant were persons worthy of protection. To decipher changing notions of the beginning of life, this work examines the manners in which the fetus and infants were included in the categories of patients in medical practices, victims in anti-abortion and infanticide discourses, and children in parents’ point of view. Drawing on textual analysis of materials including Confucian, obstetrical, and legal texts, as well as the analysis of archeological data, this study identifies and analyzes divergent perspectives on the genesis of life, and personal, political, and ethical motivations behind such claims.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Eiko Saek