In December 2022 Mark R. Bookman, a Disability Studies scholar and postgraduate fellow at Tokyo College at the University of Tokyo died. On 1st March an article he was co-authoring with Prof. Carolyn S. Stevens of Monash University about the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan and Australia was published open-access by Ritsumeikan University.
In November 2022, hearings for a damages lawsuit after a girl with impaired hearing was killed in a traffic accident in Osaka in 2018, estimating lost wages have become a key point of contention.
Kyodo News conducted a survey of people with intellectual disabilities and their families nationwide regarding the problem of people with intellectual disabilities being sterilized or treated at a group home in Hokkaido, it was found on February 26 that approximately one in five (19%) people in their 20s or older have experienced opposition or restrictions from those around them regarding love, marriage or childbirth.
At approximately 6PM on September 25th, 2007, 25-year-old Kenta Yasunaga was cycling home from a workshop he regularly attended in Saga Prefecture, southwestern Japan, when police officers attempted to stop him, believing him to be acting suspiciously.
However, Kenta Yasunaga had difficulties in communicating due to his autism. Kenta Yasunaga would later die at the hospital to which he was taken and his cause of death was found to be acute cardiac arrest.
February 24th marks one year since the war in Ukraine began and a survey about awareness of disability discrimination produced by Japan’s Cabinet Office has been released.
A survey by the Hokkaido prefectural government found that there are at least nine towns and villages in the prefecture that prohibit people with intellectual disabilities from sitting on the council through bylaws or regulations. The prefecture is calling for action, such as considering amendments to the ‘Act for the Elimination of Disability Discrimination’, on the grounds that this may be in violation of the Act.
In the last few days, there were two incidents involving both suspected theft and fraud at facilities for people with disabilities in Japan.
The Tokyo police have arrested the head of a Yokohama-based nonprofit organization on suspicion of arranging organs for transplants without government permission.
In January this year, a woman who lives in Ota Ward, Tokyo, who has cerebral palsy, a speech impediment palsy and uses home visiting care contracted a new variant of the coronavirus and requested to be admitted to a metropolitan hospital, but was refused.
Kyoto District Court on Tuesday sentenced former doctor Naoki Yamamoto, 45, to 13 years in prison for killing his father in 2011, against 20 years sought by the prosecution. Yamamoto had previously been arrested and charged by the Kyoto District Public Prosecutors Office on Thursday August 13th 2020 for allegedly killing Yuri Hayashi, a woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an intractable disease, at the victim’s request.
Barrier Free Japan