ABSTRACT
Kato Shidzue described her life of the late twenties as one of emotional and economic limbo. She had permitted her husband, Baron Ishimoto Keikichi, to determine the course of their lives since the mid-twenties in the hopes of saving her marriage. Somehow Keikichi, who ten years before had insisted that Shidzue become a free and independent "new woman", had done an about face and reverted to the traditional role of feudal lord whom she could no longer love or respect. To Shidzue and other family planning activists, Japan of 1929 appeared to be hospitable to birth control as one approach to solving the recent population upsurge and the poverty which accompanied that increase. As Shidzue reported to Sanger, "The Health Department of the city of Tokyo is considering setting up birth control clinics in the Municipal Health Advice Stations, and eight have already been established in the slum districts in Tokyo.".
