Campaigners in Japan have reacted angrily to a government report revealing that children as young as nine were among thousands of people who were forcibly sterilized under a eugenics law that was not repealed until the 1990s.
The 1,400-page report, submitted to parliament this week, details how, between 1948 and 1996, about 16,500 people were operated on without their consent under the law, which aimed to “prevent the birth of poor-quality descendants … and to protect the life and health of the mother”. Most of the victims were women.
Another 8,000 other people gave their consent – almost certainly under pressure – while almost 60,000 women had abortions because of hereditary illnesses.
The two nine-year-olds who were sterilized were a boy and a girl, the report said.
The victims’ long campaign for redress has highlighted the Japanese state’s mistreatment of people with disabilities and chronic conditions in the period after the second world war.
Compensation for victims
In 2019, MPs passed legislation offering each victim government compensation of ¥3.2m ($22,800) – an amount campaigners have said does not reflect the suffering the victims had experienced. The application deadline for the payment is due to expire in April 2024, but to date, only 1,049 have received the sum, according to media reports.
Victims of the sterilization programme have campaigned for decades seeking financial damages and recognition of the physical and mental anguish they endured.
So far, four courts have awarded damages to victims, but others have sided with the government, saying that the 20-year statute of limitations had passed. Lawyers have argued that the victims learned of the nature of their surgery too late to meet the legal deadline to seek redress.
Germany and Sweden had similar measures in place, but have since apologized to victims and provided compensation. Both countries’ laws were repealed decades before Japan’s were.
Earlier this month, a high court rejected demands for damages from two women, including Junko Iizuka, who was 16 when she was taken to a clinic in north-east Japan and forced to have a mystery operation that, she later discovered, would prevent her from ever having children.
Shattered dreams
“Eugenics surgery deprived me of all of my modest dreams of a happy marriage and children,” Iizuka, 77, told reporters this week.
Iizuka, who goes by a pseudonym and disguises her face with a hat and mask in public, said the procedure had destroyed her most important relationships.
“As soon as I told my husband, whom I trusted, that I had had surgery and was unable to have children, he left me and demanded a divorce,” she said. “I became mentally ill and was unable to work. I have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Eugenics surgery turned my life upside down.”
After the report’s publication, the chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, said the government “sincerely reflects on and deeply apologizes” for the “tremendous pain” victims suffered through forced sterilization.
The report noted that sterilization under the now defunct eugenics law – which allowed authorities to carry out the procedure on people with intellectual disabilities, mental illness, or hereditary disorders to prevent the birth of “inferior” children – was a requirement for admission to some welfare facilities or for marriage.
Koji Niisato, a lawyer representing the victims, praised the report for revealing the full horror of forced sterilization but said it left important questions unanswered. “The report did not reveal why the law was created, why it took 48 years to amend it, or why the victims were never compensated,” Niisato said, according to the Kyodo news agency.
Iizuka, who will appeal against the ruling in her compensation case, said she was still suffering from trauma more than six decades after she was sterilized without her consent.
“I and the other victims are getting old, and some have died,” she said. “I’m sick and often have to go to hospital. But we must not allow the harm that was inflicted on us to remain hidden in the darkness.”
