Japan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled unconstitutional a now-defunct law that led to the forced sterilization of thousands of people in the Japanese archipelago, a major victory for victims.
Japan’s top court also ruled that a 20-year statute of limitations for victims’ compensation claims could not be applied.
“For the State to shirk its responsibility for paying damages would be grossly unjust and absolutely intolerable,” the Supreme Court insisted in its decision.
“The government’s invocation of the statute of limitations constitutes an unforgivable abuse of power,” it added.
The Japanese government has acknowledged that approximately 16,500 people were sterilized under the eugenics law, which was in effect in Japan between 1948 and 1996.
During this period, the law allowed doctors to do this with people with hereditary intellectual disabilities in order to “prevent the generation of poor quality offspring.”
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the government would “promptly pay the damages based on the final judgment” and would discuss “new ways in which victims could be compensated.”
The government “sincerely apologizes” for this policy that “trampled on human dignity,” Kishida added, specifying that he would meet with victims in the coming weeks to listen “face to face to their stories of suffering.”
The victims, for their part, were “rejoiced at everything” [leur] heart” of this Supreme Court decision.
“We cannot forgive the government’s irresponsibility and disrespect for human rights, and the fact that what is now described as the largest human rights violation in Japan’s postwar history has gone unaddressed for so long,” a victims’ group said in a statement.
Japanese authorities say an additional 8,500 people were sterilized with their consent, although lawyers say they were likely “de facto forced” due to the pressure they were under.
“I spent 66 agonizing years because of this government surgery. I want to get back the life that was stolen from me,” said Saburo Kita (the pseudonym he uses), who at age 14 underwent a vasectomy while in a facility for troubled children.
When he married years later, he could not bring himself to tell his wife, confiding in her only shortly before his death in 2013.
“Only when the government faces up to its actions and takes responsibility can I accept my life, even if only a little bit,” Mr. Kita, now 81, insisted at a news conference last year.
“Eugenicist mentality”
The number of operations had declined to a minimum in the 1980s and 1990s before the law was finally repealed in 1996.
This dark period in Japanese history was thrust back into the spotlight when a woman in her 60s sued the government in 2018 over an operation she underwent when she was 15, paving the way for similar lawsuits.
In 2019, a law was passed providing for a lump sum compensation of 3.2 million yen (about 27,000 Canadian dollars today) per victim.
But survivors say the amount is too small for the severity of their suffering and have taken their fight to court.
In recent years, local courts have mostly recognized that the eugenics law violates Japan’s constitution.
The judges were, however, divided on the validity of the proceedings beyond a 20-year limitation period.
“If the Supreme Court rules that the statute of limitations does not apply, then all plaintiffs in subsequent cases, as well as victims who have not yet filed a lawsuit or are not even aware of the harm they have suffered, can benefit from it,” Kita’s lawyer Naoto Sekiya told AFP ahead of the ruling.