g in k r o W to
change Japan
Para-athletes will be forced to wait the longest to realise their Tokyo 2020 dreams, but the Games will not just be about sporting prowess. Geoff Berkeley discovers that the event may be crucial to transforming Japanese society for the better.
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ive years may have passed since the Sagamihara massacre rocked Japan, but the scars have yet to heal within the country’s disabled community. Wielding a knife, Satoshi Uematsu killed nine men and 10 women, and injured 26 others, at a care home for disabled people in July 2016. Residents were targeted in their sleep by Uematsu, a former employee at the Tsukui Yamayuri En facility in Sagamihara - situated 31 miles south-west of Tokyo. It was a harrowing incident, and one of the worst mass killings in Japan since the Second
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World War. Japanese people are still hurting. “I cannot explain exactly what I felt that day,” Junichi Kawai, President of the Japan Paralympic Committee, told insidethegames. “Various emotions were in my mind. I was so disappointed and sad. It was a terrible incident.” According to reports, Uematsu claimed that people with disabilities were unable to communicate well, had no human rights, and that killing them would be good for society. Uematsu was sentenced to death by hanging last year but his heinous crime sparked a debate over the treatment of
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disabled people in Japan. A survey conducted by the Japanese Government in 2017 found that 84 per cent of people felt there was discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities. During the Uematsu trial, it was agreed by the Yokohama District Court that the names of those who had been killed or injured would not be revealed, on the request of family members who feared the victims or themselves would be discriminated against. “The image of people with a disability in Japan was that they cannot do things, so it was a negative one,” said Kawai.
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