I MENTIONED recently how Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley, had written a large number of books on population control and that given the health crisis we have been experiencing since the so-called ‘pandemic’ it would be foolish to underestimate this fact in light of his son’s transparent efforts to feign concern for the citizens of the British Isles. It would be equally unwise to assume that population control itself relates merely to reducing the actual size of a population. The word ‘control’ has far more sinister connotations and whilst culling the sick and infirm is one thing, the manipulation of the living is another.

One example of population control in action, relates to the 1603-1868 Edo period when feudal Japan was ruled by the powerful Tokugawa shogunate and, by way of the daimyō, divided among 300 separate lords. Between the 1720s and 1820s, population growth in Japan remained at zero and although this was partly due to a combination of abortion, infanticide and child-slavery, it was also the result of systematic repression. Indeed, governmental officials made it their business to interfere in the lives of ordinary people to such an incredible extent that they were forcibly confined to certain areas and this involved having to remain in the village of one’s birth. Although this may seem preferable to the kind of rampant globalisation that we have today, the consequences of such measures inevitably led to a loss of personal freedom. Behind all this, as you would expect, one finds the usual economic motives. Although the Japanese were concerned about foreign influence and the kind of unhealthy industrialisation that was taking place in Europe, by shackling people to a repressive agrarian system it led to both mass starvation and a total lack of mobility.

It is now emerging that the Covid-19 debacle was an attempt to reorganise or streamline the Western economy, but perhaps – without becoming overly dramatic – we would do well to emulate the the 27,000 Shimabara rōnin who launched an anti-tax rebellion against the Tokugawa Shogunate between December 1637 and April 1638. In the words of their sixteen year-old leader, Amakusa Shirō, “the true warrior’s spirit will not suffer to be hidden”.