This article analyzes the twenty-first-century adoption of the hormonal contraceptive pill in Japan, where it was not legalized until 1999. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, this research combines close readings of popular health media with ethnographic analysis to argue that in the context of a society suffering from low fertility, reproductive health actors, including pharmaceutical representatives, medical experts, and the government, construct the Pill as an everyday therapeutic that rehabilitates women’s reproductive systems so that they may have children in the future. In a society experiencing growing labor insecurity and accelerating inequality, reproductive health professionals present women’s reproductive systems as having become damaged through overwork and stress. As such, the Pill’s new appeal lies in its identity as a therapeutic for hormonal regulation. By eliminating the contingencies of menstruation that interfere with women’s workplace productivity while keeping their reproductive systems healthy, the Pill, I argue, extends women’s productive and reproductive labor. Advancing material approaches to gender analysis through a feminist technoscience studies perspective, this research shows how the Pill’s uses as a multipurpose drug beyond merely birth control disciplines women’s bodies on a molecular level according to new gendered expectations that women must both work and reproduce.

中文翻译：

---

“让你的卵巢休息”：日本新经济中的病态激素

本文分析了 21 世纪日本采用激素避孕药的情况，该药直到 1999 年才合法化。这项研究利用在东京进行的实地调查，结合对流行健康媒体的仔细阅读和民族志分析，认为在在生育率低下的社会背景下，包括制药代表、医学专家和政府在内的生殖健康参与者将避孕药构建为一种日常治疗方法，可以恢复女性的生殖系统，以便她们将来可以生育孩子。在一个劳动力不安全和不平等加剧的社会中，生殖健康专业人员认为女性的生殖系统因过度工作和压力而受损。像这样，该药丸的新吸引力在于其作为激素调节治疗剂的身份。我认为，通过消除影响女性工作场所生产力的月经突发事件，同时保持她们的生殖系统健康，避孕药扩大了女性的生产和再生产劳动。通过女权主义技术科学研究的观点推进性别分析的物质方法，这项研究表明，根据女性必须工作和生育的新性别期望，避孕药如何作为一种多用途药物而不仅仅是节育，从而在分子水平上对女性身体进行训练。扩大妇女的生产和再生产劳动。通过女权主义技术科学研究的观点推进性别分析的物质方法，这项研究表明，根据女性必须工作和生育的新性别期望，避孕药如何作为一种多用途药物而不仅仅是节育，从而在分子水平上对女性身体进行训练。扩大妇女的生产和再生产劳动。通过女权主义技术科学研究的观点推进性别分析的物质方法，这项研究表明，根据女性必须工作和生育的新性别期望，避孕药如何作为一种多用途药物而不仅仅是节育，从而在分子水平上对女性身体进行训练。