This award to Stanford University will allow the PI to analyze the interaction between reproductive behavior and family process in Japan during the Tokugawa regime (1702-1872). The data will be drawn from unusually complete household records for eight villages, covering some 10,000 persons, 4,200 births and 1,000 conjugal units. The general objectives of the project are to complete a full-scale multivariate analysis of family reproductive process (using log-linear contingency table models) relying on historical ethnography and a reconstruction of environmental conditions both to inform the analytical design and to help interpret the results. Infanticide was practiced by households in these villages throughout the period of study. This research will test the hypothesis that in general infanticide was a form of family planning designed to serve the long run interests of the corporate stem family. This research will contribute to demographic anthropology, historical anthropology and family-kinship studies. It will provide important theoretical material about the status of women in agrarian families and may help illuminate the passive infanticide found in the Third World today.
