The movie “Moon,” modelled on the Sagamihara Massacre has opened nationwide in Japan and today I watched it. Here are my initial thoughts, given almost right after watching the movie.
The film ‘Moon’ is set in a facility for the severely disabled, where the disabled are repeatedly subjected to heartless treatment and violence. The story depicts an employee with an irrationally amplified sense of justice and mission as he approaches the incident.
In June of last year, the users of “AGALA” (Arita City, Wakayama Prefecture), a facility that supports the employment of people with disabilities, were offered the chance to appear in a movie.
The Sagamihara stabbings were committed on 26 July 2016 in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture. Nineteen people were killed and twenty-six others were injured, thirteen severely, at a care home for disabled people.
The movie “Moon,” modeled on the incident, has opened nationwide.
In the film, disabled people play the roles of disabled people.
At the Kanagawa Prefectural Assembly on September 12, Governor Kuroiwa announced his intention to transfer three of the prefectural support facilities for people with disabilities to the private sector.
Shinya Tateiwa, a sociologist and professor at Ritsumeikan University, who was known for his essays on the disabled and euthanasia, including a critique of the murder case at a facility for people with disabilities in Sagamihara, passed away at 1:33 p.m. on July 31 at a hospital in Sakyo-ku, Kyoto City due to a malignant lymphoma. He was 62 years old.
Yukari Okutsu (54), who has lived in the facility since before the attack, told the gathering at the ceremony that she tries to ease the anxiety of her fellow residents by talking to them when they are in trouble. She went on to say, “My 19 friends, please continue watching over us from heaven.” Okutsu gave the first memorial speech by a resident of the facility.
Yukari Okutsu, who has lived in the facility since before the attack, told the gathering that she tries to ease the anxiety of her fellow residents by talking to them when they are in trouble. She went on to say, “My 19 friends, please continue watching over us from heaven.” Okutsu gave the first memorial speech by a resident of the facility.
July 26th 2023 will mark seven years since the ‘Sagamihara Massacre’, when, in the small hours of July 26, 2016, Satoshi Uematsu, a former worker at a care facility for people with disabilities in Sagamihara City in Kanagawa Prefecture, broke into his former place of employment and killed 19 residents aged between 19 and 70 with a knife and injured 26 others, specifically 24 residents and two employees.
Satoshi Uematsu’s death sentence was finalized in March 2020.
The draft report compiled by the city’s human rights policy council will include two proposals on penalties on hate speech: one that imposes an administrative fine for malicious acts, and the other in which a criminal penalty or an administrative fine will be imposed for such acts. The council will later meet again to go over the details and propose the final report to the Sagamihara Municipal Government.
“I was forced to swing the hands of the clock back. Are you still swinging?” The family members of the victims of the Sagamihara Stabbings are upset over the fact that the former employee, Satoshi Uematsu, a 32-year-old prisoner who had been sentenced to death in the trial of the Tsukui Yamayurien case and withdrew his appeal, filed a retrial request with the Yokohama District Court.”
Barrier Free Japan