XXX Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 19–21 июня 2019 г. Т. 2

к 150-летию академика В. В. Бартольда (1869–1930). Ч. 2 125 Секция XVI. Источниковедение и историография Японии Historiography of Japan Astghik Hovhannisyan (Russian-Armenian University, Armenia) Non-consensual Sterilizations in Japan: Learning from Kanagawa Prefectural Archives In January 2018, a woman fromMiyagi prefecture sued the Japanese government over forced sterilization she underwent when she was 15. The lawsuit renewed interest towards the eugenics law that existed in Japan in the second half of the 20 th century and prompted other victims to voice their experience. The aim of this paper is to provide details on the procedures related to the implementation of the law that allowed non-consensual sterilizations, on the basis of Kanagawa Prefectural Archives’ documents. Eugenics, or the “science of human betterment”, was introduced in Japan in the late 19 th century, and gained popularity in the 1920s. In 1940, Japan enacted its first eugenics law (kokumin yūsei hō, or National Eugenics Law), the aim of which was to increase the healthy population and decrease births of “unhealthy” children.About 538 sterilizations were performed under this law, none of which was compulsory (Fujino 1998: 368) 1 . After Japan’s defeat in theAsia-PacificWar, fears of overpopulation and economic hardship prompted many to question the pronatalist stance of the National Eugenics 1 Yutaka Fujino. Nihon fashizumu to yūsei shisō [Japanese Fascism and Eugenics]. Kyoto: Kamogawa shuppan, 1998.