Hardship Continues for Ishikawa’s Workers with Disabilities as Earthquake Damage to Companies Hits Facilities

From The Chunichi Shimbun

November 2 2025

ISHIKAWA – Since the Noto Peninsula earthquake last year, work opportunities for people with disabilities in the Noto region of Ishikawa Prefecture have been decreasing. This is due to local companies, which had either been purchasing products made at employment support facilities or outsourcing simple assembly tasks to them, suffering damage in the disaster.

In the midst of this situation, some facilities are working hard to create new types of jobs, seeking ways to promote social participation and a sense of purpose for people with disabilities.

At Minorien, a welfare workshop in Kokubumachi, Nanao City, five users and two staff members were busily making their main product, natto (fermented soybeans), in late October. They sprinkled natto bacteria over steaming black soybeans and carefully packed them by hand. Although the product does not come with sauce, its “additive-free, simple flavor” has become popular among local supermarkets and individual customers.

Minorien is the only employment support facility in the prefecture that produces natto as its own original product.

However, the impact of last year’s Noto Peninsula earthquake has weighed heavily on the region’s disabled-worker employment situation. Local companies that used to be buyers of these facility-produced goods or that outsourced home-working tasks to people with disabilities were among those hit by the disaster. This has meant fewer contracts and fewer jobs for people with disabilities in the Noto area of Ishikawa Prefecture.

In response, some of the facilities are working to find new types of tasks, for example grass‐cutting or leaflet distribution, to create opportunities for people with disabilities to participate in society and gain meaningful work.