Please join us for the next meeting of the Modern Japan History Workshop on Friday, October 18th at 6:00 pm in KIBER 110. The presenter will be Mark Bookman from the University of Pennsylvania, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.

Modern Japan History Workshop – “Envisioning the Future: How Blind People Created ‘Disability’ in Modern Japan”

Speaker: Mark Bookman (University of Pennsylvania)

Date: Friday October 18th, 2019 at 6pm

Location: Komaba Campus, University of Tokyo, Komaba International Building for Education and Research (KIBER), Room 110

In 1949, Japanese policymakers and SCAP officials created disability in Japan by drafting the Law for the Welfare of Physically Handicapped Persons. Disabled people themselves were excluded from the drafting process with the exception of five members of the Japan Federation for the Blind. How did leaders from Japan’s blind communities come to occupy this privileged position? And what were the consequences of their actions for individuals with different kinds of impairments? In this article, I take up these questions by tracing how blind people capitalized on historical contingencies and geopolitical circumstances to galvanize social movements between 1868 and 1949.