Disability in Modern & Contemporary Japan
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Asaka,Junko 安積純子, Okahara, Masayuki 岡原正幸, Onaka, Fumiya尾中文哉, Tateiwa, Shinya, 立岩真也. Sei no gihō 生の技法 (ars vivendi). Tokyo: Fujiwara shoten, 1990
Bookman, Mark. "The Coronavirus Crisis: Disability Politics and Activism in Contemporary Japan," Japan Focus: The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 18 No. 3 (2020), pp. 1–13.
Bookman, Mark. "Creating 'Disability Publics' in Postwar Japan (1937–1957)", Journal of Japanese Studies 49, no. 2 (2023).
Bookman, Mark. "Politics And Prosthetics: 150 Years Of Disability In Japan." PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. 2021.
Bookman, Mark. "A Recent History of Activism for Accessibility in Japan (1981–2006)," Disability Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (2023) (Accepted for Publication).
Bookman, Mark and Celeste L. Arrington. "Policy Change in the Shadow of the Paralympics: Disability Activism and Accessibility Reforms in Japan," Japanese Studies 43, no. 1 (2023) (Accepted for Publication).
Frost, Dennis J. More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021.
Hirose, Kōjirō 広瀬 浩二郎. Shōgaisha no shūkyō minzokugaku 障害者の宗教民俗学 (Religious anthropology of disabled people). Tokyo: Akashi, 1997.
Hirose, Kōjirō 広瀬 浩二郎, Ningen kaihō no fukushiron : Deguchi Onisaburō to kindai Nihon. 人間解放の福祉論 : 出口王仁三郎と近代日本. (A theory of welfare based on human liberation Deguchi Onisaburō and modern Japan). Osaka: Kaihō shuppansha, 2001.
Hoshika, Ryōji 星加良司. Shōgai towa nanika: disuabiriti no shakai riron ni mukete 障害とは何か:ディスアビリティの社会理論に向けて (What is disability: toward the social theory of disability). Tokyo: Seikatsu shoin, 2007
Ishikawa, Jun石川准and Kuramoto, Tomoaki 倉本智明. Shōgaigaku no shutyō 障害学の主張 (assertion of disability studies). Tokyo: Akashi shoten. 2002
Ishikawa, Jun 石川准 and Nagase, Osamu 長瀬修. Shōgaigaku e no shōtai 障害学への招待 (An invitation to disability studies). Tokyo : Akashi shoten, 1999.
Kuramoto, Tomoaki 倉本智明. Temanaku Frīku: Bunka to hyōgen no shōgaigaku 手招くフリーク：文化と表現の障害学 (inviting freak: disability studies of culture and representation). Tokyo: Seikatsu shoin 2010.
Mithout, Anne-Lise. Le coeur et le droit: les personnes handicapées dans la société japonaise (The hear and the law: disabled people in Japanese society). Paris: Editions Hermann, 2024 (forthcoming)
Nakamura, Kenryū 中邑賢龍 and Satoshi Fukushima 福島智. Baria furii konfurikuto バリアフリーコンフリクト (Barrier-free concrete). Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 2012.
Ri, Yoshiaki 李 義昭. Nihon no kindaika to shōgaisha 日本の近代化と障害者 (The modernization of Japan and disabled people). Tokyo: Koyo shobo, 2013.
Stevens, Carolyn. Disability in Japan. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.
Sugino, Akihiro 杉野昭博. Shōgaigaku: riron keisei to shatei 障害学：理論形成と射程（Disability Studies: theoretical issues, background, and scope). Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppan kai, 2007
Tateiwa, Shinya 立岩真也. Shiteki Shoyūron 私的所有論 (On private property). Tokyo Tokyo: Keisō shobō, 1997
Ueno, Chizuko 上野千鶴子. "Fukugō sabetsu ron" 複合差別論 (A theory of multiple discriminations). Iwanami kōza gendai shakai gaku 岩波講座現代社会学, volume 15, 1996, p.203–232.
Yamada, Akira 山田 明. Nihon no shōgaisha – Meiji Taishō Shōwa 日本の障害者 明治大正昭和 (Disabled people in Japan – Meiji, Taishō, Shōwa). Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2013.
Categories of Disability
Blindness Studies
Arai, Takako 新井たか子. Aijō no niwa 愛情の庭 (The garden of love). Ounkai, 2014 (first publication : 1942).
Awazu, Kiyo 粟津 キヨ. Hikari ni mukatte sake 光に向かって咲け (Flourish towards the light). Tokyo : Iwanami shoten, 1986.
Bouchy, Anne. Les oracles de Shirataka ou La sibylle d'Ôsaka: Vie d'une femme spécialiste de la possession dans le Japon du XXe siècle (Shirataka's oracles or the seer of Osaka: life of a female specialist of possession in 20th century Japan). Editions Philippe Picquier. 1992.
Fukushima, Satoshi 福島智. Mōrōsha toshite ikite 盲ろう者として生きて (Living as a blind and deaf person). Tokyo: Akashi. 2011.
Hirose, Kōjirō 広瀬 浩二郎. Bannin no tame no tenjiryoku nyūmon : sawaru moji kara sawaru bunka e 万人のための点字力入門 : さわる文字から、さわる文化へ (Introduction to Braille for everyone : from tactile letters to tactile culture). Tokyo: Seikatsu shoin, 2010.
Hirose, Kōjirō 広瀬 浩二郎. Sawaru kado ni wa fuku kitaru : zatōichi-ryū fīrudo wākā ga yuku!. 触る門には福来たる : 座頭市流フィールドワーカーが行く! (Happiness comes when you touch the door – a Zatōichi-style fieldworker). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2004.
Hirose, Kōjirō 広瀬 浩二郎. Me ni mienai sekai o aruku : "zenmō" no fīrudowāku. 目に見えない世界を步く : 「全盲」のフィールドワーク (Walking through the unseeable world : a fieldwork of "complete blindness"). Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2017.
Hirose, Kōjirō 広瀬 浩二郎. Sawatte tanoshimu hakubutsukan : yunibāsaru myūjiamu no kanōsei さわって楽しむ博物館 : ユニバーサル・ミュージアムの可能性 (A museum to enjoy by touching : the possibility of a universal museum). Tokyo: Seikyusha, 2012.
Hirose, Kojiro. "Research on Methods of "Touching the World" ―The Aim of the Exhibit Area of Tactile Learning in Japan's National Museum of Ethnology." Disability studies quarterly, 2013, Vol.33 (3). 2013.
Hirose, Kojiro. "Reconsidering Japanese Religious History: The Aum Incident and Blind Culture in Modern Japan." Journal of the International Institute, 2003, Vol.10 (3). 2003.
Mithout, Anne-Lise. Compétences pédagogiques et besoins éducatifs particuliers : les écoles d'aveugles à l'heure de l'inclusion. Perspective franco-japonaise" (Pedagogical skills and special educational needs; schools for the Blind in times of inclusion. A French-Japanese comparison). PhD dissertation, Université Paris-Dauphine. 2015.
Deaf Studies
Fedorowicz, Steven C. “The Embodiment of the Deaf in Japan: A Set of Heuristic Models for Identity, Belonging and Sign Language Use.” In Anthropology through the Experience of the Physical Body, edited by K. Fushiki and R. Sakurada. Singapore: Springer, 2023. DOI: 10.1007/978-981-99-5724-8_4.
Fedorowicz, Steven C. “Barrier-Free Communication for the Deaf in Japan: A Local Initiative for Medical Interpretation Services in Japanese Sign Language.” Journal of Inquiry and Research 11 (2021): 319-337.
Fedorowicz, Steven C. “Performance, Sign Language, and Deaf Identity in Japan.” Anthropology News website, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1182.
Fedorowicz, Steven C. “How to Play Deaf in Japan.” The Journal of Intercultural Studies 38 (2013): 17-25.
Fedorowicz, Steven C. “Living Partial Truths: HIV/AIDS in the Japanese Deaf World.” Deaf Worlds 22, no. 1 (2006) Special Focused Edition: HIV/AIDS and Deaf Communities, edited by C. Schmaling and L. Monaghan): 197-221.
Gendai shisō henshūbu 現代思想編集部. Rō bunka ろう文化 (Deaf culture). Tokyo : Seidosha, 2000.
Katō, Kosei 加藤晃生. Minikomi shi 'D' ni okeru shuwaka ronsō ミニコミ紙「D」における手話歌論争" (The debate on signed poetry in the mini-magazine 'D'). Ōyō shakaigaku kenkyū 応用社会学研究, 51, 93. 2009.
Mori, Soya and Atsubumi Sugimoto. “Progress and Problems in the Campaign for Sign Language Recognition in Japan.” In The Legal Recognition of Sign Languages, edited by M. De Meulder , J. J. Murray and R.L. McKeep. Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2019. DOI: 10.21832/9781788924016-008.
Saitō, Hiromi 斎藤ひろみ. Shuwa wo ikiru 手話を生きる (Living sign language). Tokyo : Misuzu shoten, 2016.
Ogata, Eiaki 緒方英秋. Watashi, watashi: rōsha de seidō issei shōgai 27 sai no kokoro no kattō. 私、わたし―ろう者で性同一性障害 ２７歳の心の葛藤 (I, I am deaf and transgender – the struggle of a 27 year-old heart). Tokyo : Kōdansha, 2002.
Nakamura, Karen. Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Nasu, Hideaki. Shuwa ga ai no tobira o hiraita 手話が愛の扉をひらいた (Sign language opened the doors of love). Tokyo: Ozora Shuppan, 1996.
Mondelli, Frank. "Beautiful Sounds, Beautiful Life: Cultivating Musical Listening through Hearing Aids in 1950s Japan," Technology and Culture, 63 (4), 2022, 1057–1077.
Mondelli, Frank. "Visible Vowels and Listening Limbs: Visual and Tactile Assistive Technologies in Japanese Deaf Schools,2 Osiris, 39, 2023.
United Nations Economic and Social Commission For Asia and the Pacific. Sign Language, What Is It? An ESCAP Guide towards Legal Recognition of Sign Languages in Asia and the Pacific. Bangkok: United Nations, 2023.
Developmental Disability (Hattatsu shōgai)
Teruyama, Junko. "Envisioning diversity: Politics of the Hattatsu Shōgai movement in Japan," CARLS Series of Advanced Study of Logic and Sensibility, 3, 2009, 299–303.
Teruyama, Junko. Japan's new minority: Persons with hattatsu shōgai (developmental disability). Doctoral dissertation, Michigan University, 2014.
Mental Illness
Kim, Yumi. "Seeing Cages: Home Confinement in Early Twentieth-Century Japan," The Journal of Asian Studies, 77 (3), 2018, 635–658.
Nakamura, Karen. A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013.
Wounded Veterans
Shimizu, Hiroshi 清水 寬. Nihon Teikoku Rikugun to seishin shōgai heishi 日本帝国陸軍と精神障害兵士 (The Japanese imperial army and soldiers with mental disorders). Tokyo: Fuji shuppan, 2006.
Pennington, Lee. Casualties of History: Wounded Japanese Servicemen and the Second World War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015
Tsuboi, Yoshiko 坪井 良子. Nihon ni okeru gishi sōchakusha no seikatsu engo shi kenkyū 日本における義肢装着者の生活援護史研究 (Research on the daily life support provided to people living with limb prostheses in Japan). Tokyo: Kazama shoten, 2002.
Themes
Disability Rights Movement
Arai, Yūki. 荒井 裕樹. Rintoshite tomoru 凜として灯る (Burn as cold). Tokyo : Gendai Shokan, 2021.
Asaka, Yūho 安積遊歩. Iyashi no sekushī torippu 癒しのセクシー・トリップ (A therapeutic sexy trip). Tokyo: Tarōjirōsha, 1993.
Hayashi, Reiko and Okuhira, Masako. "The disability rights movement in Japan: Past, present and future". Disability & Society, 16(6), 2001, 855–869.
Hori, Tomohisa 堀 智久. Shōgaigaku no aidentiti – Nihon ni okeru shōgaisha undō no rekishi kara 障害学のアイデンティティ – 日本における障害者運動の歴史から (The identity of disability studies – from the history of the disability rights movement in Japan), Tokyo: Seikatsu shoin. 2014.
Mithout, Anne-Lise. "Récupérer le sexe qui m'a été volé : la sexualité comme affirmation de soi chez Asaka Yūho" ('Getting back the sex I was robbed of' : sexuality as self-assertion in Asaka Yūho's writings). Genre, sexualité et société, 19, 2018.
Mithout, Anne-Lise. "Aoi shiba no kai : Un mouvement de personnes handicapées face à l'eugénisme" (Aoi shiba no kai : a group of people with disabilities fighting eugenics). Cipango – Cahiers d'études japonaises, 24, 2021, 129–162.
Education
Arakawa, Isamu. 荒川勇, Ōi Seikichi 大井 清吉, Nakano Yoshitatsu 中野 善達, Nihon shōgaiji kyōiku shi 日本障害児教育史 (History of education for children with disabilities in Japan). Tokyo : Fukumura shuppan, 1976.
Kishi, Hiromi 岸 博実. Shikaku shōgai kyōiku no genryū o tadoru – Kyōtō Mōain monogatari 視覚障害教育の源流をたどる 京都盲啞院モノがたり (Tracing the source of education for visually impaired children : the story of Kyoto school for the Blind). Tokyo : Akashi shoten, 2018.
Mithout, Anne-Lise. "Children with Disabilities in Japanese Schools: Between Assistive Technologies and Social Barriers". ASIEN, 140, 2016, 36–55.
Mithout, Anne-Lise. "Children with disabilities in the Japanese school system: a path toward social integration?". Contemporary Japan, 28 (2), 2016, 165–184.
Mithout, Anne-Lise. "The transformations of Special Schools for the Blind in times of inclusion: A French-Japanese perspective". Ars Vivendi Journal, 8/9, 2017, 34–55.
Employment
Mithout, Anne-Lise. "From equal access to employment to equal career opportunities? Employment practices and work experiences of qualified disabled workers in Japan". Alter: European Journal of Disability Research / Revue européenne de recherche sur le handicap, 15 (4), 2021, 341–353.
Nagano, Hitomi 永野 仁美. Shōgaisha no koyō to shotoku hoshō 障害者の雇用と所得保障 (Employment and guaranteed income for people with disabilities), Tokyo: Shinzansha, 2013.
Nagano, Hitomi 永野 仁美, Hasegawa, Tamako 長谷川 珠子, Tominaga, Kōichi 富永 晃一. Shōgaisha koyō sokushin hō: arata na byōdō shakai no jitsugen ni mukete 障害者雇用促進法 : 新たな平等社会の実現に向けて (The law promoting employment for people with disabilities : towards a new equal society). Tokyo: Kōbundō, 2016.
Eugenics & Reproductive Justice
Katō, Masae. Women's Rights?: The Politics of Eugenic Abortion in Modern Japan. Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2009.
Katō, Masae. "Cultural notion of disability and prenatal testing in Japan." In Sleeboom-faulkner Margaret (dir.), Frameworks of Choice: Predictive & Genetic Testing in Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010, 125–144.
Matsubara, Yōko. "The Enactment of Japan's Sterilization Laws in the 1940s: A Prelude to Postwar Eugenic Policy". Historia Scientiarum, The History of Science Society of Japan, 8 (2), 1998, 187–201.
Matsubara, Yōko. "The eugenic border Control: organized abortions on repatriated women, 1945–1948". Japan Forum, 33(3), 2021, 318–337.
Norgren, Tiana. Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Otsubo, Sumiko. "Feminist Maternal Eugenics in Wartime Japan." U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, English Supplement, 17, 1999, 39–76.
Otsubo, Sumiko. "Emperor, Family, and Modernity: The Passage of the 1940 National Eugenics Law." In Tumultuous decade : Empire, Society, and Diplomacy in 1930s Japan, edited by Kimura Masato and Tosh Minohara. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013, 69–100.
Robertson, Jennifer. "Blood talks: Eugenic modernity and the creation of new Japanese." History and Anthropology, 12 (3), 2022, 191–216.
Sitcawich, Sumiko Otsubo. Eugenics in Imperial Japan : Some Ironies of Modernity 1883–1945. Ph. D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1998.
Takeda, Hiroko. The Political Economy of Reproduction in Japan: Between Nation-State and Everyday Life. Abingdon : Routledge Curzon, 2005.
Toshimitsu, Keiko 利光 恵子. Sengo Nihon ni okeru josei shōgaisha e no kyōseiteki na funin shujutsu 戦後日本における女性障害者の強制的な不妊手術 (Forced sterilizations of disabled women in postwar Japan). Kyoto: Ritsumeikan University Press, 2016.
Vittinghoff, Anna. "Reassessing Japanese Radical Feminism from the Vantage Point of Dis/ability". In: Micky Lee; Frank Rudy Cooper; Patricia Reeve. Dis/ability in media, law: Intersectional, embodied and socially constructed?. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022, 199–133.
Yokozuka, Kōichi 横塚晃一. Haha yo! Korosu na 母よ！殺すな (Mum! Don't kill). Tokyo: Seikatsu shoin, 2007.
Additional Readings of Interest (non-Japan)
Chen, Mel Y., Alison Kafer, Eunjung Kim, and Julie Avril Minich. Crip Genealogies. Duke University Press. 2023.
Ellcessor, Elizabeth, and Bill Kirkpatrick. Disability Media Studies. NYU Press. 2017.
Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press. 2013.
Kim, Eunjung. Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea. Duke University Press. 2017.
Mills, Mara, and Rebecca Sanchez, eds. Crip Authorship: Disability as Method. NYU Press. 2023.
Mitchell, David and Sharon Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. University of Michigan Press. 2001.
Puar, Jasbir. The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Duke University Press. 2017.
Sterne, Jonathan. Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment. Duke University Press. 2022.
Notes
The foundations of this reading list were generously provided by Anne-Lise Mithout and Nagase Osamu.
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