<\/p>\n
The law also legalized a non-lethal but still violent and eugenicist practice: forced sterilization. This aspect of post-war Japanese life confirms the connections, so familiar to defenders of life, between ableism and violence.<\/p>\n As she did with the history of abortion legalization, Tiana Norgren describes the history of forced sterilization in Japan in her work Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan<\/em>. Legal forced sterilization largely didn\u2019t exist in Japan before the war\u2019s end. Official government ideology favored increasing the country\u2019s population and discouraged measures that might prevent births. Contraception and abortion were severely restricted during the 1930s and much of the 1940s.<\/p>\n Eugenicists made multiple attempts to pass a sterilization law during this period, partly inspired by Nazi Germany\u2019s policy. These efforts failed in the Diet, however, in the face of opposition from people of different ideological bents. Some opposed sterilization because they favored the state\u2019s official \u201cGive Birth and Multiply\u201d stance, and others opposed it because they thought limiting population would distract from redistributing resources within the society.<\/p>\n The eugenicists came close to victory in 1940, when the Diet passed the National Eugenics Law. The law allowed sterilization for people who had various broadly defined illnesses or disabilities and whose children were likely to have these conditions. The law also allowed people judged not of sound mind to be sterilized on the consent of their parents or spouse\u2014and contained a general clause allowing for sterilization without \u201cthe necessary consents\u201d if such an operation was necessary \u201cfor the public good.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet this general involuntary sterilization clause was never enforced during the remaining war years. Only about 500 voluntary sterilizations were carried out during the remaining war years and immediate post-war years.<\/p>\n The economic hardships of the post-war years increased Japanese politicians\u2019 interest in population control. The Eugenic Protection Law of 1948 made forced sterilization fully a reality. The law allowed for voluntary sterilization under broader conditions than the wartime legislation, and also included crucial new provisions. Under the new law, applications for sterilization could be made not only by those desiring the procedure for themselves but by physicians who found someone has certain conditions and judge \u201cthat in order to prevent hereditary transmission of the disease it is necessary, for the public good, to perform a eugenic operation.\u201d<\/p>\n The conditions that could qualify someone for sterilization fell into five categories:<\/p>\n 1) \u201chereditary mental illnesses\u201d;<\/p>\n 2) \u201chereditary mental deficiency\u201d;<\/p>\n 3) \u201cserious hereditary psychopathic disorders\u201d;<\/p>\n 4) \u201cserious hereditary physical ailments\u201d; and<\/p>\n 5) \u201cextreme hereditary deformities.\u201d<\/p>\n Hereditary mental illnesses were defined as schizophrenia, manic-depression, and epilepsy. Hereditary mental deficiency was defined by vague concepts such as \u201cseriously abnormal sexual desires\u201d and \u201cserious criminal tendencies.\u201d Serious hereditary physical ailments included conditions such as progressive muscular dystrophy and hereditary deafness or hearing impairment.<\/p>\n \u00a9ILO\/Yoshihumi Ibata, Creative Commons license<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n The Eugenic Protection Law also had a general provision that a physician could apply to have someone with an unspecified mental illness or \u201cdeficiency\u201d sterilized as long as the person\u2019s spouse, parent, or other guardian consented.<\/p>\n A \u201cEugenic Protection Commission\u201d with jurisdiction in a particular area would decide whether to grant the physician\u2019s application to have someone sterilized. If the Commission granted the application, the person targeted for sterilization had two weeks after notification by the Commission to appeal the decision. However, an objection by the targeted person didn\u2019t guarantee the sterilization wouldn\u2019t be carried out.<\/p>\n The eugenic philosophy in the 1948 law \u00a0bothered the American occupation authorities, several of whom voiced their concerns. Two years before the law\u2019s passage, one occupation researcher expressed his alarm at eugenic ideas within Japan, which he claimed was \u201cevidence of the profound hold that tribal racism still exerts over the Japanese people.\u201d<\/p>\n The Americans could hardly throw stones, however: forced sterilization had been legally practiced in the United States for far longer than in Japan: in the 20th<\/sup> century, over 30 American states would allow forced sterilization<\/a>. Over 60,000 people were forcibly sterilized in the United States between 1907 and 1964. People of color were overrepresented among the victims of this practice<\/a>.<\/p>\n Whether because of the ambivalent American relationship with eugenics and sterilization, concern for population control, or a general desire not to interfere in Japanese politics, the American occupation authorities didn\u2019t prevent the Eugenic Protection Law and its sterilization provisions from being adopted.<\/p>\n Thousands of forced sterilizations were carried out in Japan<\/a> in the following decades, peaking in the mid-1950s. Roughly 16,500 people were subjected to such sterilizations during the years the law was in effect. Another 8,500 ill or disabled people were sterilized supposedly with their own consent, although subtle coercion may have played a role.<\/p>\n In one case<\/a>, a 16-year-old woman working as a housekeeper was suspected of having a mental disability and was sterilized in 1963\u2014not only without her consent, but even without her knowledge of what the operation was. When she discovered she had been sterilized, she recounts that \u201cI went to Tokyo to see if I could get the operation reversed but I was told it wouldn\u2019t be possible\u2026 They stole my life away.\u201d<\/p>\n In another case, a 15-year-old woman, who may have suffered brain damage because of excessive anesthesia during surgery, was diagnosed with \u201chereditary feeble-mindedness\u201d and forcibly sterilized in 1972. The woman\u2019s sister-in-law commented that \u201cWhen she was about 22 or 23 there was talk of marriage, but then when she said that she couldn\u2019t have children then the person who had proposed to her said that they didn\u2019t want to marry her.\u201d<\/p>\n As draconian as the law was, doctors and officials occasionally went beyond it. Proper procedures for approving sterilizations weren\u2019t always followed. The medical condition of the person being sterilized was sometimes falsified to fit the Eugenic Protection Law\u2019s provisions. In an infamous 1965 case, a doctor castrated an institutionalized mentally ill boy without his parents\u2019 permission.<\/p>\n Moreover, ableism could go beyond forced sterilization to forced abortion: about 60,000 disabled women might have been subjected to this practice because of the view that the disabled shouldn\u2019t have children.<\/p>\n UN Photo\/Jan Corash<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n Over the post-war decades, eugenics and forced sterilization provoked organized opposition from Japanese disability rights activists. These activists and feminists spoke out against the Eugenic Protection Law at United Nations conferences such the 1994 Cairo population conference and 1995 Beijing women\u2019s conference, generating international publicity and pressure on the Japanese government.<\/p>\n Lawmakers set about reforming the law, consulting disability rights activists about the reform. These activists saw their efforts prevail in 1996 when the eugenic, coercive elements were finally removed from the Eugenic Protection Law\u2014which was renamed the Maternal Protection Law.<\/p>\n Under the reformed law, sterilization required the consent of the person undergoing the operation and that person\u2019s spouse, if any. The acceptable grounds for sterilization now became a threat to the mother\u2019s life from childbearing or, if she already had multiple children, a threat to her health from child bearing. (Sterilization was also permitted if the person to be sterilized or the spouse had leprosy and was likely to pass it on to children\u2014stigma and persecution of those with leprosy<\/a> being a long-standing problem in Japan.)<\/p>\n Disability rights activists won a further victory later in the 1990s. Nichibo, a professional association of ob-gyns, intended to lobby for reforming the law to allow abortion in cases of \u201cincurable and fatal\u201d prenatal illness. Protests from disability rights groups led Nichibo to drop this idea.<\/p>\n Although the Eugenic Protection Law is now gone, the Japanese still deal with its legacy. Whether the government owes compensation to victims of forced sterilization has been the subject of recent debates and lawsuits. The woman mentioned above who was sterilized in 1972 sued the government this year<\/a>, arguing that the Eugenic Protection Law violated the Japanese constitution. Other lawsuits have followed, and the Diet is currently working on a compensation package<\/a> for forced sterilization victims, to be considered next year.<\/p>\n Whether the Eugenic Protection law will ultimately be judged to have been unconstitutional from the start remains to be seen. We can hope, however, that survivors of this injustice and disability rights activists will continue to overcome the ableism that made these injustices possible.<\/p>\n We should also, in studying this history, contemplate that Japan, which resisted eugenically motivated sterilization and abortion even when it was a militarist state allied with Nazi Germany, embraced it in the aftermath of wartime defeat and occupation by the United States.<\/p>\n ======================================<\/p>\n See Part 1:\u00a0 <\/i>The Wages of War: How Abortion Came to Japan<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n For more of our posts relating to disability rights, see:<\/em><\/p>\n Sterilizing the \u201cUnfit\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n How Ableism Led (and Leads) to Abortion<\/a><\/p>\n Plato\u2019s Words about Eugenics\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The Jukes and Kallikaks \u201cStudies\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Post-World War II Eugenics<\/a><\/p>\n Eugenics in Roe v. Wade<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by John Whitehead See Part 1:\u00a0 The Wages of War: How Abortion Came to Japan World War II\u2019s devastation of Japan, and the politics of the post-war American occupation, led to the Japanese Diet [parliament] passing the Eugenic Protection Law 70 years ago, in 1948. The law legalized abortion in Japan, with millions of… <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/1-blog-Diet.jpg\")
World War II\u2019s devastation of Japan, and the politics of the post-war American occupation, led to the Japanese Diet [parliament] passing the Eugenic Protection Law 70 years ago, in 1948. The law legalized abortion in Japan<\/a>, with millions of Japanese children being killed in womb over subsequent decades.<\/p>\nBefore the War<\/h3>\n
Post-War Eugenic Law<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/1-blog-300x201.jpg\")
American Reaction<\/h3>\n
Damage Done<\/h3>\n
Disability Rights Victories<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/1-blog-2-300x211.jpg\")
Conclusion<\/h3>\n