The now defunct Eugenic Protection Law had the effect of encouraging discrimination against and prejudice toward people with disabilities. The actual extent of the harm caused must be accurately understood and steps must be taken to provide relief to people affected.
Based on this law, which was intended to "prevent the birth of inferior offspring," patients with hereditary diseases and people with intellectual disabilities underwent sterilization surgery. It is thought as many as about 25,000 people had these operations, and about 16,500 of them did not give their consent.
In January, a woman in her 60s, who was forcibly sterilized when she was 15, filed a lawsuit in the Sendai District Court to demand compensation from the government. This is the first suit challenging the constitutionality of the now defunct law. The woman's claim that she "was stripped of the right to decide for herself whether to give birth and raise children" is serious.
The law came into force in 1948. It continued the prewar National Eugenic Law, which was modeled on a sterilization law introduced in Nazi Germany. The Japanese law came against a backdrop of food shortages as the population increased after World War II. At that time, policies based on eugenic thought had been adopted in many nations.
In Japan, many forced sterilization operations were conducted even after the nation entered the period of high economic growth. It appears one major factor in the continuation of this system was an absence of understanding and indifference to it by society as a whole, a factor similarly found in the forced segregation policy imposed on Hansen's disease patients.
The now defunct law was eventually replaced by the Maternal Health Law in 1996, due to the view that the Eugenic Protection Law "was tantamount to discrimination against people with disabilities." Provisions relating to forced sterilization based on eugenic thought were deleted.
Govt must clarify facts
Since the lawsuit was filed, many documents compiled by the prefectural screening panels that decided whether the surgeries were advisable or not have been disclosed. These materials are bringing to light the true extent of what happened, including girls as young as 9 and 11 being forced to have operations and active efforts to increase the number of people who would be sterilized.
Before anything else, steps must be taken to prevent documents pertaining to the operations from being scattered and lost.
The people who underwent these operations are increasingly elderly. There are high hurdles to filing a lawsuit in cases where surgical records no longer exist. Relief should quickly be given to these people, separate from any redress that could arise through court cases.
In the Diet, a suprapartisan group of lawmakers for this issue will soon be established. It is said this group will consider a framework for providing relief, such as through lawmaker-initiated legislation. This step should be welcomed. The government's handling of relief given to people who were confined at Hansen's disease sanatoriums could be a helpful reference.
The governments of Germany and Sweden, where forced sterilization operations were performed, have apologized and paid compensation. The U.N. Human Rights Committee and other entities have recommended that Japan's government conduct a fact-finding investigation and provide relief to the victims.
The government had been faint-hearted even about conducting such an investigation into what it says were "lawful operations at the time." The government should rethink its backward-looking stance on this issue and take the initiative by working hard to grasp a full picture of what happened.
Sincerely facing up to mistakes of the past -- this responsibility lies not only with the government, but with Japanese society as a whole.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, March 1, 2018)
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