Acknowledgments

Many around me would know exactly what I mean when I say this book is a product of much juggling. Between when I began writing this book and now, some from the first cohort of students I taught at the University of Manchester have received their PhDs, others have got fabulous jobs, and others are married. My children have graduated from their primary school, my mother has had and survived cancer, and I have had two research leaves and been through an Achilles tendon rupture and COVID-19. Throughout all this drama, at work and in life, many supported me. At work, the guidance and friendship of four historians of medicine and science I respect dearly – Roberta Bivins, Elizabeth Toon, Michael Worboys, and the late John Pickstone – shaped me profoundly as a historian of science and medicine. I would also like to acknowledge the generosity and kindness of my colleagues in Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester. Outside Manchester, Professor Yoko Matsubara gave me invaluable guidance through our research collaboration, which I am happy to say lasts to this date. Specifically for this monograph, I would first like to express my sincere thanks to the Wellcome Trust (085926/Z/08/Z), JSPS London (JSPS London Symposium Scheme FY16), and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (No. 5073), whose financial support gave me opportunities to shape this book’s ideas. An earlier version of Chapter 5 appeared in Japan Forum (“Birth Control Survey Research, Technical Bureaucrats and the Imagining of Japan’s Population, 1945–60,” published online on July 16, 2020, doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2020.1750450), and I would like to thank the journal’s editors and reviewers who helped me refine the chapter’s argument. Dr. Reiko Hayashi at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research generously granted me access to the Tachi Bunko archive, gave me research affiliate status at the institute in 2016–17, and read an earlier draft of Chapter 2; thank you for all the help. I would also like to send my special thanks to Professor Ryuzaburo Sato, who was so generous as to read the entire manuscript and always sent me words of encouragement. Professor Sato’s insider knowledge as a renowned demographer has been extremely helpful. My thanks extend to colleagues across the world, specifically to Ruselle Meade, Reut Harari, Jaehwan Hyun, and John DiMoia, who commented on earlier drafts of this book. The members of the Hayama seminar group led by Dr. Kenji Ito at Sokendai gave me invaluable advice toward the end of the book project. Rebekah Zwanzig was more than a proofreader; over the years, she has become my writing partner. Lucy Rhymer, Rachel Blaifeder, Emily Plater, and Natasha Whelan of Cambridge University Press, and Jessica B. Murphy of the Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard Medical School, have been fantastically friendly and efficient, making the book production process so much easier than it could have been. I have many more colleagues and friends to thank here but cannot due to the limited space, so please accept my sincere apologies for not listing all your names. Finally, I want to thank my families: My parents for looking after their grandchildren during summers when I was writing; my brother and sister-in-law for offering me shelter while I was doing research in Japan; my nephew Rintaro for having been my reliable research assistant; my husband, who helped me plough through this book manuscript; and my children for being their happy selves so I could concentrate on finishing this book.