Why did Japan‘s population grow so much during the 20th century?

[Rufus]

I‘ve known that Japan experienced rapid population growth over the last 100 years, but having looked up some data, i had no idea just how rapid Japan grew!

Japan‘s population grew from 50mio in 1910 to 128mio in 2010. That‘s an increase of more than 250%, with basically no immigration! Such a natural increase seems to be unprecedented in the industrialized world in the 20th century, since countries like the US, Canada, or Australia multiplied their populations in large parts thanks to huge amounts of immigration from all around the world. Japan‘s rapid growth only really stopped in the 80s. The incredible baby boom right after WW2 is especially astounding, since you had fertility rates of around 4.4 children per woman for a time, which was roughly twice the rate of women in the rest of the industrialized world.

Just as a comparison, if Britain had grown at the same rate, it would have a population of around 100mio today, while Germany would have more than 150mio people. Their actual current populations are 63mio and 82mio, respectively. And that‘s with lots of immigration!

What are the reasons for this incredible discrepancy? What would need to happen for this to be replicated in other industrialized countries in the 20th century?

 

[Rufus]

Hm, no one has any ideas? Demography is probably one of the most important factors to determine the economical, cultural and political shape of a country. If we ignore immigration, then Japan grew basically twice as fast as other industrialized countries. There has to be some factor, or several of them, that is responsible for this difference in population growth.

 

[Ameck16]

Well Japan was one of the last industrialised cultures to let women vote or work, basically one of the last to liberate women from traditional roles. It doesn't matter what a countries economic status is if it is patriarchal in nature population will always increase naturally.

 

[Rufus]

Well Japan was one of the last industrialised cultures to let women vote or work, basically one of the last to liberate women from traditional roles. It doesn't matter what a countries economic status is if it is patriarchal in nature population will always increase naturally.

I’ve thought about this before, if maybe Japan’s patriarchal culture played a role. While that’s certainly possible, surely that would have an effect on its current birthrate as well, since Japan is much more ‘patriarchal’ even today, with far less female political representation on all levels of government than any other democratic country, and less than many non-democratic or even third-world countries. But instead its current birthrate is even worse than in the west.

And it certainly doesn’t explain Japan’s incredible fertility rates immediatley after WW2, which were on a level western countries hadn’t seen since before WW1. The comparison to Germany is especially interesting, since Germany’s birthrates immediately after WW2 were very low, lower than at any other time in its history until then. It’s really quite puzzling.

 

[Deleted member 114175]

Japan industrialized a few decades later than Western Europe, so the demographic transition both started and ended later.

 

[Ameck16]

But instead its current birthrate is even worse than in the west.

There is a big difference between a traditional conservative society and a patriarchal one. In the former women choose to work when they want, women can choose when they have children, women can choose who they marry etc. But in a patriarchal society they can't do any of that. They are basically a mans property and do what he want Ie have children and get the house in order.