This magnificent book takes up the controversial subject of infanticide in early modern Japan. Historians and demographers have long understood that infanticide—known euphemistically as mabiki or “thinning”—was quite common in the Tokugawa era, and that it was more widely practiced in some regions than in others. But they have not agreed on why. Was it the last resort of the desperate poor or the coldly rational strategy of the upwardly mobile? Through virtuosic statistical analysis of population registers and a careful reading of an array of primary sources, including pamphlets, petitions, votive tablets, pregnancy reports, and policy memos, Fabian Drixler addresses this question and many others. The result is an expansive argument that opens up new terrain in both population studies and Japanese history.

Focusing on “eastern Japan,” roughly northeast Kantō and southern Tōhoku, Drixler argues that infanticide was even more common than historians previously recognized. Before 1790, a combination of abortion and infanticide claimed more than four in every ten children. This “culture of infanticide” was not equally shared across space; some provinces, notably Echigo, and some villages remained holdouts. But in places where it held sway, this culture shaped the practices of both poor peasants and their wealthier neighbors. To the question of whether infanticide was the last resort of the poor or the cold calculation of the affluent, Drixler answers persuasively that it was both. Across most of the region, peasants shared a “fertility norm” in which couples raised only a few children. This preference emerged from both religious and material considerations. Peasants who were learning to venerate their ancestors and hoped for the same treatment from their descendants favored the stem family, which could perpetuate itself indefinitely. This form required meticulous stewardship of household resources and demanded investment in a single, promising heir. At the same time, new farming techniques required long-term planning and careful attention to quality. These preoccupations were reflected in the agricultural metaphors employed by peasants who turned the same logic on their newborns, weeding out those who—for reasons of sex, timing, or physical appearance—were deemed unpromising.

Mabiki would be a major contribution to the field if even if it stopped at this point. But in a striking illustration of the interplay of discourse and demography, Drixler shows that the demography and culture of eastern Japan shifted decisively after the 1790s, as local elites and samurai officials concerned about depopulation began to inveigh against infanticide. Pamphleteers redrew the boundaries of humanity to include newborns and exclude infanticidal mothers. Where peasants had equated large families with animalistic behavior, pamphleteers argued that infanticidal parents were in fact inferior to animals because they showed less concern for their offspring than dogs, crows, or monkeys. Votive tablets depicted demonic mothers who crushed their newborns. Meanwhile, village leaders created reputations for civic virtue by paying for the care of unwanted children. Samurai officials, concerned about depopulated villages and declining tax revenues, made villagers register their pregnancies and offered subsidies for childrearing. And slowly, infanticide began to retreat.

This powerful argument about change over time constitutes an intervention into several fields at once. Most importantly, it suggests that there is no predetermined progression of demographic history, in which premodern large families inevitably give way to modern small ones. Eastern Japan experienced a “reverse fertility transition,” in which premodern small families grew, a trend that continued into the modern period before reversing once again in the mid-twentieth century. But the smaller arguments and suggestions here are also provocative. For example, Drixler makes a strong case for studying not domains or villages, but regions. In the course of this argument, he suggests that since even ideas about the appropriate boundaries between life and death varied dramatically across space, early modern Japan may not have been culturally unified after all. He also shows that the early modern state was surprisingly effective at surveillance and that its policies could penetrate into villages and families, shaping decisions as intimate and consequential as how many children to raise. In contrast, his epilogue makes clear that the modern state, usually seen as much more interventionist, retreated from this arena, and that widespread infanticide continued in some areas until the middle of the twentieth century.

Mabiki is so rich and provocative that it will initiate conversation and reflection from scholars in every field of Japanese history. For historians of gender, it invites further thought on the issue of women and work. Drixler's argument emphasizes the value that families attached to women's labor and illustrates that they understood how child bearing and rearing could interfere with a woman's productivity at the loom or in the fields. Campaigners against infanticide hoped to reconcile these competing priorities. For example, when Takada domain officials hoped to encourage childrearing, they stipulated that employers should provide frequent nursing breaks for maids (p. 107). But perhaps there is also another, darker story to be told here, one that foregrounds patriarchal anxiety about women's opportunities in an increasingly commercialized economy. As contemporary debates illustrate all too clearly, arguments about abortion, contraception, and infanticide are not only about the humanity of babies or the shape and size of families. They are also about the control of young women's bodies and sexual behavior. It is not surprising, then, that as Drixler points out, infanticidal mothers and midwives were condemned more viciously than fathers. It is also striking that these critiques surfaced as women's wages rose and young, working women became a more prominent presence in the capital. Criticism of commoner women's involvement in prostitution, fashion, and consumption also emerged with new force during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It may be that arguments articulated as concerns about newborns' lives were also about their mothers' freedom.

This insight might provide a partial solution to a situation that Drixler presents as an unsolved puzzle: Why was contraception known but not used outside of brothels? Drixler suggests that perhaps “for couples who resorted to infanticide [rather than contraception] … sexual propriety was more important than the safety of mothers or the lives of newborn children” (p. 241). But couples did not necessarily negotiate “sexual propriety” on equal terms. Village patriarchs and samurai officials may have been motivated by a desire to limit peasant women's reproductive choices in general. In that case, for the same reason that they would have wanted to eliminate infanticide, they also would have wanted to restrict access to contraception. In contrast, in brothels, where women's sexual and reproductive choices were already completely negated, contraceptive use was no threat.

This book is brilliantly conceived and executed. It is already changing how we think, write, and teach about Japan, and it will also have an impact on other fields. It is a revelation. Everyone should read it.