Hello. Welcome to the eugenics podcast.
I'm Patrick Merricks.
I'm Marius Turda.
In today's topic we're talking about
disability and Japan's Eugenic
Protection Law.
So recently we've seen in the news a
growing movement in Japan
to recognize past abuses to
the population including force
sterilization and abortion.
Marius what can you tell us about this?
It's very interesting that we are
finally
hearing more about what's happening in
Japan under the
eugenic laws and what happened to the
victims of eugenic sterilization there.
This is one of Japan's best best kept
secrets, I suppose.
And now we finally, since 1997,
the debate has started, but now we
finally hear victims coming forward and
the Japanese government
agreeing to pay compensation to victims
of forced sterilization.
So let's look at the history behind this
discussion.
The Japanese eugenics movement has
origins
in imperial Japan. So
what sort of movement was this?
This is the law that was repelled in
1996, the eugenic protection law
was introduced in 1948, but it actually
replaced
an earlier law introduced in 1940
the national eugenics law.
There were two laws introduced in
1940: one was about eugenics,
the other one was about
physical fitness. So Japan tried
to combine both positive and negative
eugenics;
they tried to combine attempts to
improve the quality
and the quantity of the population. We're
talking about the Second World War,
we're talking about the war against
China, we're talking about a period when
Japan is
really expanding; there's an empire. So it
was not just about the quality of the
population, it wasn't just about combatting, fighting
degeneration, but it was equally about
pro-natalism, increasing the number of
births,
increasing the number of Japanese people.
So although they were very concerned
with race
and as you can see the Association of
Race Hygiene,
ultimately it was a combination of
both positive and negative eugenics.
So, race hygiene: was there a
connection with the German movement
because this was a popular phrase over there.
It was indeed and that one of the
important Japanese eugenicist Nagai
Hisomu, we mentioned here in the slide was
training in Germany
and it was very attuned to
developments in Germany and in Europe, more broadly,
and he adopted
a German-style eugenic
thinking and practices. In fact, the
national eugenics law
promulgate in may 1940 duplicates
to some extent the Nazi sterilization law
of 1933.
So German eugenic movement and in general the racial hygiene movement was quite important to at least
this generation of Japanese eugenicists.
So the the law that's being debated
today which had its roots in the interwar period and Second World War.
It passed in 1948 and article 1
stipulates that the law is in place 'to
prevent
birth of inferior descendants from the
eugenic point of view
and to protect life and health of the
mother as well'.
What does this mean? The law was
introduced in '48 at a very important
moment in Japanese history, after the
Second World War. Japan was reduced
in size and they confronted
the problem of overpopulation, so
unwanted pregnancies
was something that the
government tried to sort out.
It was also a period they were under
American occupation,
so they addressed this issue by
introducing this eugenic protection
law replacing the 1940 one. 
We could see that the the language of
interwar eugenics still survives:
we have the prevention of birth of
'inferior' people;
so this is a way to tackle degeneration,
but you have also the other concern
which is the protection of life,
of health and mothers, so this is a
discussion about abortion
that becomes very prominent and then
here we can see
what the eugenic protection law actually
refers to:
it is both about abortion and
sterilization.
So this it's quite interesting.
There are several different aspects that
I'd like you to sort of explain further:
so we have the hereditary
focus talking about hereditary disease;
we also have this reference to the
genealogy,
but also there are specifically
non-hereditary sort of conditions to
this eugenic law.
So could you expand on this a bit, please?
The law is a clear example of what we
may call 'negative' eugenics:
it's about cleansing the gene pool of
the population, so it takes a very
drastic hereditarian perspective
onto disease and
transmission of disease, so that's one
aspect of it. Secondly,
when it was introduced in 1948, of course, Japan
was still facing severe economic
problems
and the economic factors and non-
hereditary medical factors were
considered as important.
That economic reason was later
on, in the 1970s,
eliminated from the law because by then,
of course, there were no economic reasons
to worry about in Japan. So that's
one aspect. The other one is, of course,
the focus on disability.
So that's very powerful because the
1940
law is not about disability,
while the 1948 law, the one that survived
until 1996,
is about disability, so a lot of people
were sterilized because they
had various forms of disability.
So we've talked briefly about the
victims but let's look at some
specific individuals here. So
here we have one of them Kikuo Kojima,
pictured here in 2018. Now he was
sterilized
under Japan's eugenic law.
This was following a diagnosis of
schizophrenia
So what would the rationale be behind
carrying out this
operation on Kikuo?
Kikuo Kojima came forward and told his wife and then
it was a big discussion in 2018 about
his case
because it happened long time ago, so
he's one of the
the most well-known early victims
of this law. He was committed to a
psychiatric
hospital when he was 18 and then he was
told by a physician that
he suffers from schizophrenia and then
he should not have children
and he was sterilized against his will.
And it's quite a poignant case: it
describes very
forcefully what happened to him and how
much infliction and pain
he suffered. It is something to
keep
in mind when we discuss the story of
sterilization and he's a powerful
image of that.
So many, many people were coerced and
even
forced into undergoing sterilization,
not having
children at all, due to this
um eugenic law which was almost half a
century
that it ran for, so we have this
growing sort of movement moving from
individuals to a much bigger thing. So what can
you tell us about the
movement in Japan and perhaps even the
global movement?
We now have, you know, a
more or less clear idea how many victims
there were, so we know that
if under the 1940 law there were over
500 victims of sterilization
under the 1948 law is over 25000.
So we're talking about a number of
people who would come forward.
We have some examples here but
more would probably come forward
and and and tell us their stories, so
the Japanese government
has agreed to pay compensation and
there is a big debate not only in Japan
but across the world
about the victims of eugenic
sterillization
and that continues. And it's good that
finally we move away
from the Euro-American
discussion and we look at other cases
and Japan is one of the most poignant
cases, as you pointed out.
It is the longest eugenic law by name
in history.
That's a very important point and
I think it's very
good that we're we're talking about
sort of these countries
which are not necessarily known
for eugenics and they're not spoken
about much in sort of eugenic
history sort of so far but hopefully
we're doing something to correct this.
So, I'd like to thank you for joining
me today, Marius and also thank everyone for
for viewing and listening to this.
So, once again, thank you Marius
and I'll see you next time
Thank you, Patrick. Until next time.
