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efore June ended, the Grand Bench of Japan’s Supreme Court was expected to complete hearings of testimonies from victims of the country’s infamous and now-defunct Eugenic Protection Law. The final verdict, expected in early July, has raised hopes for survivors who had waited decades for justice to be served.
The law had allowed the forced sterilization of thousands of Japanese with physical and mental disability. Many had not understood what had happened to them even years after. Referring to the upcoming ruling, a man who had a forced vasectomy when he was 14 told the press: “Please write a judgment that gives relief to the rest of the lives of the victims.”
Born with his hearing impaired, the man, who has not made his name public, is now 81 years old. He is among 12 eugenics law victims who had filed five separate lawsuits that finally reached the High Courts this year.
All of them were already in their twilight years when they decided to sue the government for a state apology and compensation.
“We fought against appeal after appeal from the government that argued our claims were not legal even after some District Courts and High Courts in the past had ruled in our favor,” says a 78-year-old using the pseudonym Junko Iizuka. At 16, Iizuka was forcibly sterilized after being diagnosed as having a slight intellectual impairment.
She had been the first among the 12 to file a case, in 2018. But the Sendai High Court dismissed Iizuka’s claim for compensation just this May, making her the only plaintiff among the 12 to lose.
Last May 30, four High Courts across Japan ordered compensation for the eugenics law’s victims, stating that the state`s vaunted statute of limitations that rejects the right of individuals to claim damages after a lapse of 20 years has “flagrantly violated the principles of justice and fairness.”
But the government promptly appealed, bringing the issue before the Supreme Court, from which it now awaits a verdict that will mark the end of an arduous process that critics regard as an indelible blot in Japan’s human-rights record.
‘Planned breeding’
Japan’s Eugenic Protection Act was passed by the postwar government in 1948 to prevent a possible surge in the country’s population, as well as to stop the birth of “defective descendants from the eugenic point of view.” It took 48 years before it was repealed in 1996.
According to the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, eugenics is “the scientifically erroneous and immoral theory of ‘racial improvement’ and ‘planned breeding,’ which gained popularity during the early 20th century.”
The American Association of Psychology, meanwhile, says, “The eugenic position is groundless and scientifically naive, in that many conditions associated with disability or disorders, such as syndromes that increase risk of intellectual developmental disorder, are inherited recessively and occur unpredictably.”
Aside from Japan, there were other countries that had eugenics policies or laws, among them Nazi Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.
Today there are still places in the United States where forced sterilization of people with disabilities is allowed, as well as in many European Union member-countries. China has also been criticized for allegedly targeting Uyghurs for mass sterilization.
Immediately after World War II, Japan found itself facing poverty and devastation. Its government at the time, bracing for the influx of returnees from Japanese former colonies – including physically and mentally affected soldiers – passed the eugenics law by depicting it as essential to the country’s economic development.
A report released by the Japanese Diet last year asserted, however, that the law ran counter to the country’s postwar Constitution, which respects equal rights.
The Japanese Diet report, which contained the results of investigations by the legislature’s staff, confirmed that the human fallout from the controversial law was immense. Nearly 25,000 people recognized as having some physical or mental disability were forcibly operated on to render them infertile. Of these, at least two – a girl and a boy – were just 9 years old.
The majority were from the impoverished northern areas of Japan; the female victims outnumbered the males. Many were taken against their will, and then were strapped to beds and anesthetized so that they could be operated on. Many were also not informed that the surgeries they had undergone ended their reproduction capacity.
Sorry, not sorry
At the 1994 Cairo International Population Congress, Japan’s eugenics law came under discussion and highlighted the serious rights violations by the Japanese government. Two years later, Japan replaced the law with the Maternal Health Act, which upholds reproduction rights including access to abortion, but with spousal consent.
It took some years before victims began filing cases against the government for compensation and an apology. In response, the state enacted the 2019 “Act on Lump-sum Payments to Persons who underwent Eugenic Surgery or other operations in accordance with the Eugenics Act.”
Victims who could provide evidence of their surgeries were entitled to JPY 3.2 million (US$ 19,887 at current exchange rates) each, but the law rejected induced abortions, which were another form of eugenics.
In courts, the government argued that its initiatives such as the 2019 Act signify official apologies. But lawyer Ryusuke Kawanishi says that the government has avoided the issue of state responsibility or stating that the old law was unconstitutional, which has caused deep resentment among victims and their supporters. Kawanishi is representing two eugenics law victims from Fukuoka.
Other lawyers have pointed out that the official compensation is significantly below amounts awarded at past legal judgments. Some High Courts have ordered compensation of JPY 16.5 million (US$102,545) for each victim. More lawsuits are ongoing.
Moreover, rights advocates have noted that less than five percent of the victims have received compensation; as of end of May 2023, the number stood at 1,049. This, they said, indicates that many victims, hampered by their disabilities, continue to have a weak grasp of what had been done to them.
The government’s stance has upset many people, including members of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA), which has continued to stress the cruelty of the law even years after it was repealed. In 2017, for instance, the Federation described the law as “inhuman.”
Five years later, the JFBA remarked that the government had caused “substantial damage that became a basis for rooting the idea of eugenics in society and is still causing discrimination against people with disability.”
Iisuka’s lawyer Koji Niisato points out why the government saw it fit to file an appeal against the May 30 rulings. He says, “The government’s stance to keep rejecting responsibility for this sordid chapter in the country can only be linked to the importance of protecting Japan from lawsuits filed by victims of Japan’s former colonization.”
In the 1990s, Japanese courts received a series of cases filed by women from South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan who had been forced into sex slavery by the Japanese military in World War II. Their demands for compensation and state apologies have been rejected on the basis of Japan’s statute of limitation of 20 years.
Growing support
Kawanishi says that the result of the government’s foot-dragging has been to prolong the eugenics law victims’ quest for justice.
But the clock is ticking, and some of the victims have already passed away. Among them is Takashi Kobayaki’s wife Kimiko, who was forced to have an abortion in the 1960s because their family said their unborn child was “rotten,” and died in 2022. They had hoped for another child, but they never did.
In 2023, a High Court ruled that the government had to compensate them for what had been done to Kimiko. Unsurprisingly, the case is on appeal. The story of Takashi, who was born hearing-impaired and now 92 years old, and Kimiko has been made into a film that is currently being shown in Japan.
Kawanishi, who is representing some victims in Fukuoka, remarks, “Advances to ease the suffering of victims over the years can only be linked to the victims’ intense desire for justice. There was strong pressure exerted on the government by their supporters.”
Indeed, the fight for the victims has expanded across Japan, and now includes the support of reproduction-justice and disability-rights activists. More than 300,000 signatures have been presented to the Supreme Court in support of the plaintiffs.
Yukako Ohashi, who runs Soshiren, a grassroots organization lobbying for female reproductive rights in Japan, is among the victims’ supporters. In 2002, she launched the group “Seeking Apology for Victims of Eugenic Surgery” for victims who are dependent on help to navigate the legal-regulations labyrinth.
Says Ohashi: “What we are advocating through the lawsuits is forcing Japanese authorities to reveal the hard truths of this notorious law that has sacrificed the rights of vulnerable groups for the sake of national interests.”
Katsunori Fujii, head of the Japan Council on Disability, says that the upcoming verdict at the Supreme Court has never been more critical to promote the rights of people with disability to live equally and in freedom in Japan.
“The importance of raising awareness to create a society without discrimination cannot be more significant now,” he says, pointing to hidden biases among the Japanese against people battling mental and physical disability, as well as against a high senior population with risks of dementia.
In the meantime, victims like Junko Iizuka continue to wait. “I wonder if I will be alive to see justice,” says Iizuka, whose legal struggle has taken a toll on her in the form of mental depression and bouts of illnesses. “It is only when I have won justice that I will finally be at ease.” ◉