Another lawsuit seeking compensation from the government over forced sterilization operations was dismissed, this time by a Tokyo court Tuesday.
The 77-year-old plaintiff vowed to "fight until the end of my life."
The Tokyo District Court, following the Sendai District Court's ruling in May 2019, concluded the sterilization surgery performed under the now-defunct Eugenics Protection Law was illegal. Yet the Tokyo court dismissed the suit seeking damages against the government, saying the period of time during which compensation claims could be made had passed.
"I felt terrible and I was shaking from the strain," the plaintiff said at a press conference after the verdict, recalling the moment presiding Judge Masaharu Ito dismissed the claims.
"I never thought I'd be made to feel this way," he said.
As a boy, the plaintiff's family was poor and ran a fish shop in Miyagi Prefecture. He had a rough school life and was placed in a facility for children in the prefecture. When he was 14, he was forced to undergo the surgery without any explanation.
"It's a surgery that makes you unable to have children," he said he was told later by an older man who was in the same facility.
Later, the plaintiff worked for a transportation company in Tokyo and married at 28. He hid the sterilization surgery from his wife, who wanted a baby.
In May 2013, when his wife was on her deathbed from leukemia, he told her his secret: "I had an operation a long time ago. I'm sorry."
His wife did not blame him, he said, but only told him to eat properly. A few days later, she passed away.
The plaintiff said at the press conference that he could not sort out how to tell the truth to his wife.
"What I'm asking for is not money," he said. "I just want to say to the nation, 'Give me my original body back.'"
Though the man had no official medical record of the surgery, the ruling acknowledged that "eugenic surgery was performed" based on the surgical scars and other proof that remained on his body.
Many of plaintiffs who have filed similar lawsuits in various locations also have no official record of the surgery.
Naoto Sekiya, a lawyer with the Tokyo lawyers group for victims, said, "It was a big step in the right direction."
The Sendai District Court last year ruled that the now-defunct Eugenic Protection Law was unconstitutional, noting that it violated the "reproductive rights" of individuals to decide whether to have a child.
The Tokyo District Court, however, did not address the unconstitutionality of the law itself in the ruling on Tuesday.
Plaintiffs, who have filed similar lawsuits in various locations, criticized the ruling, calling it incomprehensible.
"I am beyond disappointed," said a 79-year-old man from Sapporo, who is filing a suit at the Sapporo District Court against the nation for forcing him to undergo the surgery when he was 19. "I wanted the judge to have thought a little more about people's feelings."
A 75-year-old man from Kumamoto Prefecture whose case is currently pending before the Kumamoto District Court said: "I feel great anger. I can't agree with the ruling."
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