Japan’s top court declares defunct forced sterilisation law unconstitutional

Japan ’s top court has ruled that a defunct eugenics law under which thousands of people were forcibly sterilised between 1948 and 1996 was unconstitutional.

People who were forcibly sterilised had filed lawsuits across the country claiming the treatment meted out to them was unconstitutional and sought state compensation.

The Eugenic Protection Law, in place for 48 years until 1996 , permitted doctors to sterilise people with mental or intellectual disabilities. The law was brought in to curb the population during food shortages after the Second World War.

In its ruling on Wednesday, the court also said the 20-year statute of limitation on compensation claims could not be applied in this case, marking a significant victory for the victims.

Regional courts had been divided on the validity of compensation claims given the statute of limitations, but the supreme court’s ruling may prompt the government to take more responsibility and address the legacy of the law.

Around 25,000 people were sterilised under the law, including some who consented under pressure, NHK Japan reported.

The government initially contended it was not liable to pay compensation because a long time had passed since the surgeries.

In 2019, however, it agreed to pay £17,700 in compensation to each of the victims.

Shinzo Abe, then the prime minister, also issued a public apology to the victims and said the eugenics law had caused “great suffering”.

As per a parliamentary report released last year, children as young as nine were among those sterilised.

Though forced sterilisation was outlawed in 1996, high school textbooks as recently as 1975 stated that Japan’s government was making efforts for the “country’s eugenics to improve and enhance the genetic predisposition of the entire public”.

“I have spent an agonising 66 years because of the government surgery. I want my life back that I was robbed of,” one victim who used the pseudonym Saburo Kita, now 81-years-old, said before the ruling.

“The ruling will hopefully pave the way for active steps to be taken by the government to eliminate the kind of eugenic mentality that it created,” Naoto Sekiya, lawyer of Mr Kita, told AFP.

Another lawyer, Yutaka Yoshiyama, who represented two of the plaintiffs, was quoted as saying by the BBC: “From here, I believe that the government must take a hard turn and move forward at full speed toward a full-fledged resolution.”

Japan is not the only country to have conducted forced sterilisations.

In 1997, records were uncovered showing Sweden sterilised 60,000 women between 1935 and 1976, some due to physical or mental disabilities, others because they were seen to be “inferior racial types”.

The government later passed legislation giving £14,250 in compensation to each of the victims of the programme.