Akutagawa Prize Winning Author with Disabilities, Saou Ichikawa, Offers View on ‘Co-existence’ in Japan

By Barrier Free Japan

September 14 2025

TOKYO – Saou Ichikawa was born in 1979. Diagnosed in childhood with congenital myopathy, a rare disease that causes muscle weakness, and has used a ventilator since age 14. Graduated in March 2023 from Waseda University’s School of Human Sciences correspondence program. Her thesis “The Reciprocal Influence Between the Representation of Disabled People and Real Society” won the Ono Azusa Memorial Academic Prize. Her debut novel “Hunchback” won the 169th Akutagawa Prize in July 2023. Her most recent book, to be published in September 2025 is “A Girl’s Spine”.

In the autumn of 2024, Ichikawa attended the ‘Asahi Global Conference’ organized by the Asahi Shimbun Company. On September 12th 2025, The Asahi Shimbun published some of her thoughts about the event.

“ ‘Exploring the Future of Coexistence through Dialogue’

This was the theme of the Asahi Global Conference 2024, a major event sponsored by the Asahi Shimbun Company, held at the Yaesu Conference in Tokyo Midtown last fall. After seeing a post announcing a speaker from an author I follow on social media, I checked the event’s official website and was pleasantly surprised. “The Asahi Global Conference will join us in thinking about a sustainable Earth and society where everyone can live comfortably, without leaving anyone behind.” Following the brilliant concept, the nearly 70 speakers introduced were all energetic. Not a single one was a person with a disability, their family member, or a supporter. Including the 10 high school and university student guests, that’s a total of zero out of 76 speakers. Of the more than 20 program (session) themes, not a single one related to people with disabilities. So, when I asked the secretariat about accessibility for participants at the venue, I was told that neither sign language interpretation nor simultaneous subtitles would be available for any of the sessions.

“Exploring the Future of Coexistence through Dialogue” gathered 76 able-bodied people with homogeneous intelligence and no difficulty moving or speaking, and showed no intention of ensuring hearing or cognitive accessibility for the audience. Who and what exactly does the Asahi Shimbun intend to coexist with?

…Bears?

“Coexistence” is a word used in a variety of contexts, including the global environment, living things, and different cultures, but as a simple search for “coexistence society” reveals, in Japan it is a word that should primarily be used to consider the inclusion of people with disabilities. Japan, in particular, is the country where the horrific Sagamihara Massacre, a mass murder of disabled people, took place. If the meaning and obligation of using the word “symbiosis” in our country since that incident never crossed the minds of the planners and approvers of the Asahi Earth Conference 2024, then beyond feeling disappointed, I’m left with the suspicion that some more serious issue lies between “me” and you. By “me,” I mean Ichikawa Sao, a citizen, a person with a disability, and a subscriber to the Asahi Shimbun Digital newspaper:

We are not making unreasonable demands regarding accessibility. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s “International Conference Connecting Everyone through Culture,” held at the Tokyo International Forum around the same time, not only provided sign language interpretation, simultaneous subtitles, and text pamphlets, but also clearly stated this accessibility support information on the homepage of its official website. People with disabilities are already fatigued by the need to do research and make advance contact wherever they go. In the first place, they probably wouldn’t go out of their way to go to a place where they don’t know if the doors will be open. Creating a closed, able-bodied-first forum and then pretending there’s no need for support is, how can that be considered “exploring the future of coexistence through dialogue”? I know I’m nitpicking, but as of the end of August, the official “Asahi Earth Conference” account doesn’t even include ALT (alternative text) on the images it posts.

Just to be clear, I’m not criticizing a lack of consideration for people with disabilities. I’m questioning the incompleteness of thinking surrounding the term “coexistence.”

The Asahi Shimbun secretariat informed me that the contents of each session (without subtitles) will be featured in print and on Asahi Shimbun Digital at a later date, so I read the abstracts. This left me with even more doubts about the Asahi Shimbun’s understanding of the current situation. The “8-year society” that the newspaper coined and is focusing on is a social crisis in which 80% of the working generation supporting society now accounts for the current societal crisis, leading to a serious labor shortage in various industries. The agenda items set for the Asahi Earth Conference in response to this issue are far removed from the reality that people with disabilities currently face in society. The Asahi Shimbun’s focus seems to be on whether we can accept and enjoy a future in which productivity and services shrink, resulting in fewer clothing and luxury options. Is the concern the Asahi Shimbun is seeking to bring together intellectuals to discuss merely the abundance or scarcity of luxury options, and whether or not we can enjoy them? For over a decade now, bedridden people at home have been walking a tightrope, not knowing whether they’ll be able to take a bath this week because no one can come to visit them.

It’s all too common for the difficulties and challenges raised by minorities to be supplanted by the concerns of the majority, drowned out by the small, weak voices of others. This has even been called the usurpation of minority movements. But why, of all things, do they usurp the word “coexistence”? Don’t you think it’s a shameful usurpation to exclude people with disabilities from dialogue (sessions) and to trivialize, from the perspective of able-bodied people, the concerns about daily life and tomorrow caused by labor shortages, and the sense of crisis about a future where even the right to life may be uncertain, into a matter of luxury choices?

A sustainable Earth and society — the SDGs. Climate change, natural disasters, environmental destruction, pandemics, AI, war, food crises, and an aging population with a declining birthrate — that’s all well and good. These are big, inevitable themes. However, (and this may seem like preaching to the choir to the Asahi Shimbun) it is the vulnerable, especially the physically vulnerable, who are always the first to be negatively affected by these changing circumstances. So why are we discussing these issues without including the physically vulnerable?

I repeat: other countries may be different, but Japan is the country where the rare disability hate crime, the Sagamihara Disability Facility Massacre, occurred. Do you remember how many people were killed and injured on that day, July 26, 2016? If we had remembered that accurately, wouldn’t the Asahi Earth Conference 2024 session structure have been impossible, which degraded the word “symbiosis” to a mere flashy word for high-minded woke people, without any thought or imagination for the physically vulnerable? Or perhaps there’s a more serious issue of perception — “That said, our “general society” and the world of people with disabilities like Yamayurien are completely different things…” — such a psychological gap may lie between you and me. This is what I wanted to convey to you in this article.

A gap that cannot be overcome even with the word “symbiosis.”

The hardships that have befallen people with disabilities, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Difficulty receiving medical care, discrimination by medical professionals, visitation restrictions, public indifference, being left behind by a normalizing society. One parent of a severely disabled person described it as being left behind in a parallel world (“New and Expanded Edition: What Parents of Disabled Children Experience During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Seikatsu Shoin). Some feel that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the existing disconnect has become more blatant and obvious, deepening. Perhaps society has already chosen to discard us, and perhaps, through the extraordinary experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have acquired the heart to not feel pained by doing so.

I personally am an optimist and have a somewhat firm trust in Japanese society, so I hadn’t really thought of it this way until now, but when I saw the composition of the Asahi Earth Conference 2024, I thought for the first time, “Ah… that might be true.” It is estimated that people with physical disabilities make up around 3.5% of the population in Japan, and with 76 people, it would be unnatural if there weren’t two or three. And yet, even the quality paper Asahi Shimbun’s idea of ​​”coexistence” completely excludes people with disabilities, no matter what kind of disability they have – even wheelchair users who have no communication problems and can chat happily are not included in the lineup. It seems they no longer even have any intention of creating an alibi that they’ve allowed people to participate in a diverse society.

In other words, I thought this was a declaration that only those who can adapt to and survive in an “8-year-old society” will survive.”

Even a search of Asahi Shimbun Digital using the keyword “8-year-old society” turns up no articles covering the concerns of people with disabilities, so this conviction must be correct. Even I, who spends most of my time confined to my house, receive information about the plight of people with disabilities. It’s inevitable that the eyes and ears of newspaper reporters who work on the road don’t receive more information. If that’s the case, there must be some kind of bias in the selection and prioritization of information and interests. People with the same attributes, similar experiences, issues I can relate to, voices I find easy to listen to, people I find easy to talk to. On the other hand, people with disabilities are, as always, ignored and erased from the circle of “coexistence.” I no longer have the energy to look forward to the future.”