TOKYO - Ten years ago, the Tsukui Yamayuri En care home was the scene of the worst mass killing of people with disabilities in postwar Japan. At a memorial gathering soon after, a member of one of the victims' families appealed to the crowd.
"In this country, eugenic thinking runs deep and it is not taken for granted that every life has value simply by existing," the family member said. The remark seemed to cut to the heart of the case. The ideology of Satoshi Uematsu, the perpetrator who killed 19 and injured 26 in July 2016, was not the only problem.
Whether society has truly accepted the value of the lives of people with disabilities as unconditional also came into question.
Uematsu had once worked at the facility in Sagamihara as a care worker. Why did an employee who was supposed to support people with disabilities end up killing residents there? That is the question that should be reconsidered now, a decade on.
I, too, once worked at the facility as a care worker. The residents I met there each had music they liked, favorite foods and relationships with people important to them. As is obvious, each person was living a life uniquely their own.
At the same time, another way of seeing can creep into support settings: a tendency to view people through categories such as "severely disabled," "autistic," or "people with behavioral disorders." It is, of course, necessary to understand disability-related characteristics but when the attribute of disability comes to the fore more than a person's life, the person comes to be seen not as an individual but as a "recipient of support."
Support always involves an asymmetrical relationship: those who support and those who are supported, those who decide and those who are decided for. That is why the phrase "for the person's own good" carries such force as placing restrictions on them for their sake, managing for their sake, deciding what is best for them for their sake -- and there is goodwill in it.
Yet goodwill has a dangerous nature. The first step in support turning into violence is not failing to understand the person being supported. Rather, it is the moment one thinks, "I understand this person," or "I know what is best for this person."
After the incident, Yamayuri En came to place greater emphasis on "decision-making support," which respects the person's will and wishes and helps them make their own choices, instead of having supporters decide matters of daily life on their behalf.
I don't even remember how many times I said "for the person's own good" when I worked in support settings. Sometimes the phrase is necessary but each time we say it, we must keep asking whether we are truly accepting the person's will or merely prioritizing our own judgment. Even if systems are put in place, if supporters lose the stance of questioning their own righteousness, support can easily turn into control and beyond that may even produce violence.
There is no single correct answer in support work. A person's will can clash with safety and a family's wishes can diverge from the person's hopes. Each time, supporters need to make a judgment, but their judgment is never perfect.
Ten years after the incident, it is not enough for us merely to criticize eugenic thinking. What is support? What does "for the person's own good" mean? And from where can support turn into violence? There may be no final answers but the attitude of never stopping the questioning is necessary for us living in the aftermath of the incident.
(Junji Nishikado, born in 1965, was a certified social worker. He worked at Tsukui Yamayuri En from 2001 to 2005 and was a lecturer at Senshu University specializing in the history of social thought.)
(NOTE: Mr. Nishikado died on Aug. 5 after the original Japanese version was published late July. Kyodo is releasing the English translation with his family's consent.)
