午夜剧场

The work for which I received the 午夜剧场 Award this time is a book on historical demography titled Prudence and Pressure: Reproduction and Human Agency in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900, published by MIT Press in 2010. My main research themes are fertility and the family in postwar developed countries, and I am still "studying" history.

My encounter with historical demography dates back to the early 1980s, when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the United States. There, I took a series of courses on quantitative analysis methods and had the opportunity to learn various estimation techniques developed using historical demographic data. At that time, I was also a research assistant at the university's Population Research Center, where I participated in a study on the US population during the frontier period and received my first instruction in historical demographic analysis.

The aforementioned book, Prudence and Pressure, attempts to elucidate demographic reproduction in pre-industrial Eurasian societies and the influence of regional economies and household structures by comparatively analyzing northeastern Japan, northeastern China, northern Italy, southern Sweden, and eastern Belgium during the 18th and 19th centuries. Five research teams, each responsible for a country or region, were involved in this study. They constructed a vast historical demographic and economic database and conducted a comparative analysis using the same analytical model. I was responsible for the analysis of Japan and, as the book's first author, compiled the overall research findings. It took more than 10 years from the start of this international comparative study to the book's publication, and through this experience, I learned the importance of patience and open-mindedness (having a flexible mind not bound by precedent).

From an analytical perspective, historical demographic data is incomplete, and you cannot ask the individuals involved for missing information. It is also often difficult to obtain information about the society and economy of the time, so it is necessary to make the most of the available data through creativity and ingenuity. The analysis of historical demographic data is a time-consuming task that requires long-term perseverance.

Unlike data from modern demographic surveys, which collect data from living people and households (meaning data can only be collected from survivors), historical demographic data records the births and deaths/dissolutions of individuals and households, as well as the various events that occur in between. I believe the endless appeal of historical demography research lies in the fact that while analyzing this data can lead to new discoveries and unexpected results, it also allows us to truly feel the universality of human behavior.

Amid rapid technological innovation, it has become dramatically easier to obtain various kinds of information, and complex tasks that once took a great deal of time can now be done easily. In this environment, I feel there is a growing tendency among students to try to obtain maximum output (results) with minimum input (effort). However, the importance and value of things are often proportional to the difficulty of achieving them, and it is important not to spare the effort required. Rather than aiming to earn credits with minimal effort, I hope that through university lectures and seminars, you will cultivate the "intellectual stamina" necessary to enrich your life both materially and spiritually.

(Interviewed in December 2014)

*Profile and position are as of the time of the interview.