A total of 18,709 people with dementia were reported missing in 2022, up 6.1% from the previous year, making it the highest number on record. The number of dementia-related cases has increased every year since the agency began keeping count in 2012, when 9,607 cases were reported.
By Barrier Free Japan June 23 2023 JAPAN – The audio in this podcast is a short extract from ‘TheContinue Reading
On June 21, an interview with the Hokkaido prefectural government revealed that a person with a mental disability who wished to get married or live together at a group home run by Asunaro Fukushikai, a social welfare corporation in Esashi, Hokkaido (Hidetoshi Higuchi, president), stated that he “felt as if he was forced to do so” when asked by the prefectural government about the sterilization procedures being performed on him.
Referring to findings in the Diet report, an 80-year-old victim of forced sterilization at age 14, said it showed the government “had been doing terrible things by deceiving children.”
“I would like the state not to shroud the issue in the darkness but take our sufferings seriously soon,” the victim, who goes by the pseudonym of Saburo Kita, said at a news conference.
Sixty-two cases in which My Number personal identification numbers were mistakenly linked with certificates for people with disabilities have been confirmed in the central Japan prefecture of Shizuoka, it was learned Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the health ministry asked local governments across the country to report by July 20 on how procedures for linking My Numbers with certificates for people with physical disabilities, for people with intellectual disabilities and for people with mental disorders are carried out and report by Sept. 29 whether there are any linkage errors.
Dozens of cases in which My Number personal identification numbers were mistakenly linked with certificates for people with disabilities have been confirmed in the central Japan prefecture of Shizuoka, the health ministry said Tuesday.
They are the first linkage mistakes involving disability certificate information that came to light in the country.
A report on forced sterilizations of people with disabilities carried out under the now-defunct eugenic protection law was submitted to the chiefs of both chambers of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, on Monday.
According to the report, there were cases in which sterilization operations were carried out under false pretenses, as well as those conducted without the holding of necessary screening panel meetings.
Authorities are considering ordering a mental evaluation for an 18-year-old Ground Self-Defense Force recruit after he shot dead two instructors and injured another in central Japan last week, investigative sources said Monday.
The authorities aim to assess the male recruit’s mental state at the time of the attack on the three men during a live-fire training exercise at an indoor firing range in Gifu Prefecture, central Japan, as he has claimed no personal animosity toward the victims.
About 14.4 percent of municipalities in Japan had cases in which mothers were denied care after giving birth, a survey recently showed, underscoring the country’s need to address the issue as it tries to reverse its declining birthrate.
The rate of rejection for reasons including a shortage of care facilities was even higher in municipalities with a population of 200,000 or more at 43.0 percent, according to the survey commissioned by the government and conducted last fall by Nomura Research Institute.
Japanese authorities have drawn up a draft investigative report shedding light on how thousands of people were forcibly sterilized under the now-defunct Eugenic Protection Law.
National statistics show that roughly 25,000 people underwent sterilization under the eugenics law, including those who did give their consent for the surgery. The law had authorized surgery without consent on people with mental or genetic disabilities to prevent the birth of what the law called “inferior descendants”. It was scrapped in 1996.
Barrier Free Japan