Securing the health of the nation: life insurance, labor and health improvement in interwar Japan

Abstract

In 1916, the Japanese Post Office established a public life insurance system especially geared toward poor laborers. By offering laborers the security of insurance, the state hoped to quell the labor agitation that threatened domestic order. A few years later, in 1922, this life insurance system expanded its mandate and created one of the first nationwide health promotion systems in Japan. Post Office officials had grown concerned over the growing discrepancy in mortality rates between Japan and industrialized Western nations. This divergence was especially apparent for serious infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. Within the institutionalized space of the health center, doctors exhorted customers to transform their everyday habits in clothing, dining, household organization and exercise. Japan's famous rajio taisō (radio calisthenics) program, for example, emerged from the Post Office's health guidance stations. I argue that through rajio taisō and the other health practices taught at the health guidance stations, the Japanese state sought to make healthy everyday habits a moral obligation for all Japanese citizens. Within this discourse, the state presented healthy living within a stable domestic space as the key to a happy and productive life, diverting attention from the political and economic crises facing interwar Japan.