Population of Japan

THE legends of the ancient societies and the non-literary peoples indicate the age-old interest of man in the trends of his numbers. Counts have long been taken and records have been kept, but the field enumeration and data processing that permit analysis were products of the scientific developments of recent centuries. Demographic statistics became available primarily for the industrializing and urbanizing nations of Europe or the overseas nations settled and developed by peoples of European origin. Here also were concentrated the statisticians, the social scientists, and the demographers. It is only natural, therefore, that the early studies of social, economic, and demographic relations were culturally limited descriptions rather than generalizations covering relationships without specificity in place and time.
When statistical activities were extended into colonial areas, the analyses of the data indicated persistent increases in the numbers of many of the agrarian peoples. There seemed to be a bifurcated world. People of European origin, with industrial economies, urbanized societies, and high levels of living had already or were in process of balancing their reduced mortality with reduced fertility. Other peoples with agrarian economies, village societies, and low levels of living were characterized by high fertility and reduced mortality. One of the few historical developments that permits analysis of the cultural context of demographic change occurred in Japan. Here an industrial economy and an urban society developed in an independent Asian nation.