ABSTRACT
On 26 July 1978, the evening editions of Japan's major newspapers reported on the front page that a British medical team had succeeded in delivering the worlds first test-tube baby, named Louise Brown, through in vitro fertilisation. In response to the successful implementation of this reproductive technology, the editorial of the Asahi Shimbun commented on the following day that the long-held belief that babies are gifts from gods, or sazu-kari-mono in Japanese, was shattered; babies are now something we can do away with or "make" at will — tsuku-ru in Japanese.
