The Population Problem; 3; Japan: The Answer in the Orient
- Series
- The Population Problem
- Episode Number
- 3
- Episode
- Japan: The Answer in the Orient
- Producing Organization
- National Educational Television and Radio Center
- United States Productions
- Contributing Organization
- Thirteen WNET (New York, New York)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/75-02c86779
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- Description
- Episode Description
- Japan: Answer in the Orient, the third in this series of six episodes, examines the transitions through which Japan became the only Asian nation to reduce its birth rate since World War II. The documentary report, produced in its entirety in Japan, details how the Japanese people have balanced births with deaths at about replacement level.
- Series Description
- Five of these six episodes will examine population growth as it exists and as it is being slowed or increased in Latin America, Europe, Japan, India, and the United States. The sixth episode will take viewers into the laboratories of scientists who are on the one hand, trying to find methods of birth control satisfactory and morally acceptable to everyone and, on the other hand, are trying to unlock the riddles of barren marriages. The human race is growing faster than ever before in history. At its present rate of growth, world population will double in 35 years. Today there are well over three billion people on earth. Demographer scientists who study population say that by the year 2,000 there will be nearly seven billion if the current rate continues. This staggering projection threatens the living conditions of most of the worlds people. And the present growth rate is crippling the globes poorer nations, nations trying desperately to step into the Twentieth Century as the western world understands it. 2028Thus, population growth constitutes one of mans most awesome crises. It was a lowered death rate rather than a higher birth rate that lead to rapid population growth. For centuries man lived with a high death rate the result of war, disease, and famine. Man kept his birth rate high to insure survival. But revolutions in agriculture, industry, transportation, and education, increased food supply, the spread of public sanitation, and medical advances all lowered the death rate. The Europeans were the first to lower their birth rates to bring them into line with their lowered death rates. This demographic transition a changeover from high birth and death rates to low ones has been successfully carried out in the USSR, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, Developing nations are still striving for this goal. Through the demographers scientific eyes and the cameras documentary eyes, The Population Problem will study the seriousness of this modern and perplexing crisis. The demographic advisory committee that is working with National Educational Television for THE POPULATION PROBLEM is composed of the following members: 1. Frank Notestein (Chairman of the Committee), president of the Population Council; 2. Bernard Berelson, vice president of the Population Council; 3. Ansley J. Coale, director, Office of Population Research, Princeton University; 4. Robert Cook, President of the Population Reference Bureau; 5. Howard C. Taylor, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, College Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University; and 6. P. K. Whelpton, director of the Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems. THE POPULATION PROBLEM is a 1965 National Educational Television presentation. Produced for NET by United States Productions. Executive producer: Tom Hollyman. Executive producer for NET: Charles Vaughan. The series is being produced under a grant from Cordelia S. May. The 6 hour-long episodes that comprise this series were originally recorded on film, with episodes 1, 2, 5, 6 in black and white and episodes 3 and 4 in color. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
- Description
- Japan: Answer in the Orient, the third in this series of six programs, examines the transitions through which Japan became the only Asian nation to reduce its birth rate since World War II. The documentary report, produced in its entirety in Japan, details how the Japanese people have balanced births with deaths at about replacement level. Modern Japan seems a paradox. It is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet one of the most crowded. For a nation of 97 million, Japan has very little land. Most Japanese now live in towns and cities the crowded, fast-growing centers of modern Japan. Tokyo is the biggest city in history with more than ten million people (it has grown by 6 million in the past 20 years.) In the nations cities and towns the old is giving way to the new. Change is the rule. To illustrate the new, the program focuses on Kenji and Kazuko Kawashima, a young couple married two years with no children. They are waiting until Kanjis income increases before having children. Cameras follow both Kanji and Kazuko from their modern apartment to their jobs. He works in a printing shop; she is a skilled typist. The program then turns its attention to Kenjis father, Mr. Kawashima, who objects to the haste and disorder of modern life. Cameras follow Mr. Kawashima to the print gallery in which he works, a gallery infused with the spirit of the past. Over a fast-moving blend of prints in the gallery, narrator Karl Weber traces the history of Japan from the Tokugawa era a feudal dynasty established in 1603 to the war in 1894 that yielded Formosa and the Pescadores to the Japanese military machine. Through a series of film clips the program then traces Japanese military conquests to 1945 when Japans dreams of empire ended on the deck of the battleship Missouri. Throughout this historical section of the program, the narrator continuously traces the history of Japans struggle with population pressures. The end of dreams of empire marked the beginnings of an era of change for Japan. The nations revised constitution of 1947 was the first step. Full post-war recovery was stimulated by the Korean War throughout which Japan was the key supply center for U.N. forces. With post-war baby booms, population soared. But in 1948 and 1949 the birth rate dropped slightly and then in the 1950s, sharply. By 1957 the birth rate was half that of ten years before. Mr. Weber notes, In a single decade the Japanese people completed their demographic transition the changeover from the high birth and death rates of the past to the low birth and death rates which characterize todays most modern nations. The program then turns its attention to how the Japanese accomplished their demographic transition: Legalized abortion has been Japans chief means of preventing births; Large industries have taken a deep interest in the problems of abortion and fertility control. Cameras cover a meeting of young mothers of the New Life Movement of the Nippon Kokan steel works outside Tokyo. At these informal meetings for the wives of employees, practical nurses, nutritionist, home economists, and birth control experts talk to the wives. The narrator notes, One of the chief aims of the New Life Movement is to convince the ladies to substitute contraception for abortion; Japanese people are marrying later than ever before in the nations history. The program documents the advantages that the balanced population provides Japans citizens: better educational systems, more food, better housing, and greater opportunity. The narrator sums the documentary report up in this way: In China, India, most of Asia, population is expected to double by the end of this country. This will not happen in Japan The Japanese experience has shown that once population growth has been brought under control all programs can be speeded up creating greater opportunities for the individual and a fuller life for everyone.
- Broadcast Date
- 1968-10-13
- Asset type
- Episode
- Genres
- Documentary
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Credits
-
-
Director: Ingram, Daniel
Editor: Sommerschield, Bengt
Executive Producer: Hollyman, Tom
Executive Producer: Vaughan, Charles
Interviewee: Kawashima, Kenji
Interviewee: Kawashima, Kazuko
Narrator: Weber, Karl
Producing Organization: National Educational Television and Radio Center
Producing Organization: United States Productions
Story Editor: Blay, John S.
Writer: Burke, David
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
Thirteen - New York Public Media (WNET)
Identifier: wnet_aacip_2624 (WNET Archive)
Format: 16mm film
Duration: 00:58:57?
-
Thirteen - New York Public Media (WNET)
Identifier: wnet_aacip_2625 (WNET Archive)
Format: 16mm film
Duration: 00:58:57?
-
Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive
Identifier: [request film based on title] (Indiana University)
Format: 16mm film
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- Citations
- Chicago: “The Population Problem; 3; Japan: The Answer in the Orient,” 1968-10-13, Thirteen WNET, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed April 26, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-02c86779.
- MLA: “The Population Problem; 3; Japan: The Answer in the Orient.” 1968-10-13. Thirteen WNET, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. April 26, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-02c86779>.
- APA: The Population Problem; 3; Japan: The Answer in the Orient. Boston, MA: Thirteen WNET, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-02c86779