Wartime Sexual Slavery

Wartime sex slaves lose appeal

"BEIJING, Nov. 22 -- A Japanese court has rejected compensation appeals by 10 Chinese women forced into sexual slavery during Japan's occupation of China.

The women, from North China's Shanxi Province, originally filed their suit in 1998, seeking 20 million yen (US$167,600) compensation for their suffering.

In its verdict on Saturday, Japan's Higher Court rejected the appeal as a 20-year statute of limitations on such cases has expired.

The appeal was also turned down on the grounds that individuals cannot file suits against a country.

However, the court did acknowledge the brutality of the treatment towards the women and accepted they had suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the ordeal.

Representing the women, Zhang Shuangbin was disappointed by the verdict.

"It's unfair that these women who suffered so much when they were young cannot be compensated," Zhang said.

According to Zhang, the women are also seeking "official apologies" from the Japanese Government for their treatment.

The women will present a further suit to Japan's Supreme Court in a final attempt to win a favourable ruling for compensation and apology, Zhang said.

In March this year Japan's Supreme Court rejected compensation appeals from Guo Xicui and Hou Qiaolian, who were repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers during the country's occupation of China.

They also came from Shanxi Province.

At the time, Guo was 15 and Hou was just 13.

Research suggests that at least 200,000 Chinese women were forced to become sex slaves during Japan's occupation of parts of China in the 1930s and '40s.

During World War II, the Japanese military also forced women from Korea, the Philippines, the Netherlands and other nations into sexual slavery..."

China View, Novemember 22nd, 2005

Nicotine Addiction Treatment

Japanese government to help smokers quit

TOKYO, Japan (UPI) -- Japanese nicotine addicts will soon be able to quit smoking under a new plan promoted by the government and paid for by public health insurance.

Those receiving the treatment will pay only 30 percent of the medical costs, while those aged 70 or older will pay only 10 to 20 percent, the Asahi Shimbun reported Wednesday.

Health ministry officials said Tuesday that although initial medical costs would rise, the long-term effects would greatly benefit Japanese society.

Officials estimated that the smoking rate among men would drop from 47 percent in 2003 to 26 percent by 2020, and the rate among women would fall from 11 percent to 9 percent.

By 2020, officials estimated, the government will have saved about $1.57 billion in medical expenditures on smoking-related illnesses.

Insurance would cover nicotine addicts willing to enter a smoking cessation program under the guidance of doctors. The program would include counseling sessions, the wearing of nicotine patches, and a total of five hospital visits over three months..."

United Press International, November 9, 2005

Nationwide Suicide Support

Suicide support groups set up nationwide network

"A nationwide network to support people who have lost family members to suicide was unveiled Saturday in an attempt to combat the problem, which has been on the rise in recent years.

There were more than 30,000 suicides reported in the country for each of the past seven years, according to government statistics. With every one of the families affected consisting of more than five members, more than 1 million people suffered from a relative taking their own life during the period.

Tadayuki Fujii, vice president of Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Grief Care Support Plaza, said it was no longer possible to trivialize problems concerning those who have lost family members to suicide.

Many people who have lost a family member to suicide suffer from depression because they have a difficult time psychologically accepting the death and fail to seek counseling, according to Fujii. In some extreme cases, they are driven to taking their own lives.

There are about 25 active family support groups across the country. The organizations sponsor events where those with similar experiences can meet and talk with each other, offer counseling for those in need, and many also publish newsletters containing useful information.

The groups tend to be organized by people who have lost family members to suicide and wish to use their experiences to help others.

But in some cases this backfires, with the organizers discontinuing their activities after being forced to relive their traumatic experiences.

A woman in her 50s whose university-student daughter killed herself joined one of the groups, but physical and mental fatigue caused her to harangue her clients for their lack of hardship.

Situations such as these have forced some groups to suspend their activities.

The Association for Death Study and Bereavement Support, a Tokyo-based nonprofit organization, is trying to deal with the problem by periodically holding meetings for staff members to air their feelings and to talk with a clinical psychotherapist.

A spokesman for the group said, "We want to share this idea with other such groups so that they might benefit as well."

The nationwide network is made up of about 700 members of support groups. The network will organize workshops to train group members and develop stronger ties with local medical institutions and municipalities.

The mental health and welfare division of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said: "We truly appreciate the private sector's move. We hope to work together with public and private sector groups to strengthen efforts to improve care for those who have lost a family member to suicide."

The Yomiuri Newspaper, November 20, 2005

Leprosy Compensation

Leprosy compensation

Leprosy compensation

"Last month, the Tokyo District Court handed down contradictory rulings in two separate compensation suits filed by former Taiwanese and South Korean leprosy patients who were locked up in special isolation facilities during Japanese colonial rule. One judge ruled that the Taiwanese plaintiffs were entitled to compensation, but the other judge rejected the case for South Koreans.

In both cases, the plaintiffs were seeking redress under Japan's Hansen's disease compensation law. Although the state and the plaintiffs appealed the rulings, respectively, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has begun to consider comprehensive relief for Taiwanese and South Korean victims of Japan's previous leprosy policy under a new framework. We welcome the decision to find a way to provide relief for these overseas victims. The question now is what would be an appropriate settlement."



Both court cases involve fundamental human rights. The former patients in South Korea and Taiwan should be treated the same as former Japanese patients and paid the same level of compensation. The central government should act swiftly to help these now elderly people.

The Hansen's disease compensation law was enacted in 2001 following the finalization of a Kumamoto District Court ruling that declared the government's isolation policy unconstitutional. The preamble to the law says the government takes the grim facts seriously with "repentance" and "remorse."

During Diet deliberations on the bill it was agreed that compensation should be paid not only to leprosy sufferers incarcerated in state-operated sanatoriums after the end of World War II but also to patients isolated at private facilities and those who were kept behind closed doors during the pre-war period.

In response to a proposal that patients confined to sanatoriums in the Korean Peninsula should be treated equally, the vice health minister at the time said the issue would be discussed at a committee to be set up to assess what happened at such facilities.

A special fact-finding panel was created to study this issue. The panel's report recognized that sanatoriums in the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan were "treated equally" with similar state-run facilities in Japan. As evidence, the report pointed out that the Japanese heads of the sanatoriums in the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan attended a health ministry meeting of chiefs of state-operated sanatoriums in Japan that was held in July 1941.

The panel's findings argue strongly for equal compensation for both domestic and overseas victims. The former patients from South Korea and Taiwan are seeking 8 million yen each. This is the lowest of the four amounts set by the compensation law on the basis of the length of incarceration. They are trying to hold the Japanese government accountable for policies that were in place until the end of Japan's colonial rule in 1945. The government should not attempt to strike a bargain on what sum is appropriate.

The leprosy suits filed against the Japanese government provoked considerable soul-searching in South Korea and Taiwan over the violations of human rights of former patients. If Japan admits its past mistakes candidly and compensates all victims on an equal footing, that would in great measure improve Japan's image overseas.

Besides the matter of compensation, there is another important issue that needs to be addressed in working out a new relief program for overseas victims. It is the eligibility of the people isolated at facilities in the Pacific islands that were once ruled by Japan.

If the circumstances are the same, these people should also be eligible for compensation. The government should not wait until research into the situation at these places is over. It should quickly start paying compensation to the victims in South Korea and Taiwan, whose stories are already known. The average age of the former patients is already over 80. There is little time left.

The fastest way to rescue the overseas sufferers would be to revise the health ministry's official notice about the law. If that is difficult, the government can consider amending the compensation law or even enacting new legislation. What is most important is to compensate the neglected overseas victims quickly and equally with their domestic counterparts. The health ministry should not forget this principle when it works on the new relief program.

Gender Discrimination

Tokyo to tighten gender law

"TOKYO, Fri: Japan plans to toughen its gender equality law in an effort to encourage women to stay in the workforce as the population begins to shrink, a government official said today.

The Health and Welfare Ministry will propose an amendment to the 1986 law that would ban employers from treating women unfavourably because they are pregnant or have young children, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said.

Employers would also be prevented from firing a woman who was pregnant, or who had a child under a year old, unless they could prove that the employeeﾕs family situation was not the reason, the paper said.

ﾒWith the population falling, we need to create the kind of environment where talented people can make the best use of their abilities,ﾓ the official at the Health and Welfare Ministry said."

Reuters, November 19 2005

Dementia Treatment

Now old textbooks treat senility

Dementia Treatment

"TOKYO: Special reprinted editions of primary school textbooks on Japanese language and other subjects are being increasingly used in Japan to treat dementia.

The utilisation of old textbooks for the treatment of patients suffering from senility was introduced in the United States in the early 1960s as a means to stir their memories of their earlier life in hope of stimulating brain activity.ﾊ A growing number of care facilities in Japan are adopting such material to look after the elderly psychologically.

The textbook on language was used to teach first grade children in primary school the ﾒkatakanaﾓ square form syllabary from 1904 to the end of World War II in 1945.ﾊ It contains well-known phrases such as, ﾒsaita saita sakuraga saitaﾓ (the cherry trees are in bloom).

The reprinted version is printed on coarse paper to give the elderly the same rough touch of the original textbook when they were young. The illustrations are also printed in the light tones of the initial textbook.

A woman aged 101 said the republished textbook gave her a nostalgic feeling and she recited a sentence she remembered: ﾒA pigeon, beans, a measuring cup...Thereﾕs a crow in front (of us)...and a sparrow, too.ﾓ

Yukiko Kurokawa, a clinical psychologist and the director of Keisei-Kai Institute of Gerontology, got together with five persons aged 98 to 104 and, using the old textbook as a subject of discussion, heard what they had to say about when they were in primary school.ﾊ They reminisced, saying such things as, ﾒThe textbook I studied was even older than this.ﾓ ﾒThe textbook was not free and I bought mine.ﾓ ﾒI used an empty ﾔmikanﾕ (tangerine) box because there werenﾕt enough desks.ﾓ

Kurokawa, 49, said that even persons with perceptual disturbance find it easy to remember things they learned in the early stage of their life or those which they learned by rote. ﾒTextbooks they read repeatedly at the age of six or seven perfectly meet the conditionsﾓ for old people to remember something they learned during their childhood, she said."

Daily News and Analysis, India, November 16, 2005

Mental Stress Court Case

JR West workers sue over mental stress caused by 're-education

"OSAKA -- Four West Japan Railway Co. (JR West) workers who were forced to undergo long periods of "re-education" at the company after making small mistakes launched a lawsuit Thursday against the firm and their bosses for the mental stress they suffered.
The four filed the lawsuit in the Osaka District Court along with members of JR West's labor union, seeking a total of 9.9 million yen in compensation.

After the deadly JR West railway disaster that occurred in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, in April, the company received criticism for its re-education program, which was described as "vindictive and unreasonable," and the firm was prompted to introduce reforms. The lawsuit is the first questioning the legality of the education.

The lawsuit said one driver was forced to undergo 71 days of re-education after overrunning a siding track connected to main track on a railway line by 2 meters in June 2003. He was accused of being late in reporting the incident to the firm. At the time officials allegedly heaped abuse on him, saying, "Perhaps you were asleep," and, "How about taking a trip to the hospital?"

In April 2004, an official in charge of handling train carriages saw what appeared to be a stone on the tracks while he was moving a train and applied the emergency brakes, but the object turned out to be a sparrow. When radioing a report, he said, "A sparrow obstructed the way." Afterwards, JR West forced him to undergo one month of re-education without giving him a chance to explain himself, on the grounds that the words he used were not official radio terms, the lawsuit said.

In an account of the incident, the worker was reportedly made to write, "Reporting a simple sparrow as an 'obstruction' was inappropriate." He was also allegedly made to pull out weeds as part of the re-education.

"(Workers) were forced to undergo the re-education as if they were being accused without cause, and were simply subjected to abuse and harassment, which was illegal," a representative for the plaintiffs said.

JR officials said they had not examined the suit and could not comment on it..."

Mainichi Newspaper, November 10, 2005

Comfort Women

Comfort Woman Continues Quest For Compensation

"... Up to 200,000 females -- mostly teenagers -- were enslaved for rape by Japan's military in China, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, according to London-based Amnesty International.

The human rights organization recently brought Ms. Lee and another so-called "comfort woman" to Bangkok, to emphasize the launch of Amnesty International's new report titled, "Still Waiting After 60 Years: Justice for Survivors of Japan's Military Sexual Slavery System".

Ms. Lee's one-and-a-half years as a sex slave is merely a haunting slice of Japan's various war crimes.

But Tokyo continues to shrug off international demands for official compensation to its rape victims.

"I was 15, in my home in southern Korea, when a Japanese man came behind me at night, put his hand over my mouth and kidnapped me," said Ms. Lee, now a 70-year-old South Korean, recalling her ordeal in an interview.

In the autumn of 1944, the innocent girl was taken to Pyongyang, now in North Korea, and put on a ship where she was tortured, threatened, and forced to submit.

"There were five of us girls, with 300 soldiers, on the ship and we were repeatedly raped on the journey which took maybe two months from North Korea to Taiwan," she said, speaking in Korean language.

"There was a 'comfort station' in Taiwan where I then received pilots who belonged to the kamikaze, a special suicide brigade."

One of Japanese kamikaze pilots, who repeatedly raped her in Taiwan, told Ms. Lee that she was his first love.

"That Japanese soldier gave me a Japanese nick-name, 'Toshiko'. And the kamikaze pilot taught me a song. He made up a song, because he was afraid he would die when he finally had to fly.

"It's in Japanese," Ms. Lee said, and then she softly sang the lilting tune which she never forgot.

"The song goes like this," she added, translating the Japanese into Korean, which was then rendered into English by a translator during the interview:

"The fighting planes are taking off / Taiwan is disappearing far below / Clouds appear / Nobody is saying goodbye to me / One person who can cry for me is Toshiko / We will fight in Okinawa / If I die, I will guide you to your mother / So please don't cry, because you will go back to your mother."

That shred of hope, amid their mutual doom and suffering, at least allowed Ms. Lee to believe she might survive.

"I think he is my savior. I still thank him," she said, clarifying that she felt no romance for him.

"He came to me many times. That soldier told me I was his first love."
Occasionally weeping while telling her tale, Ms. Lee said the kamikaze pilot "gave me all his soap, and other things for taking care of myself, because he said he was leaving tomorrow to die."

Ms. Lee never married.

"I returned home to Korea in May 1946, after more than one-and-a-half years" of sexual abuse.

Today, she continues to demand justice from Tokyo, despite Japan's official dismissal of any current legal responsibility for its military abusing "comfort women" during the war.

Ms. Lee and other victims of sexual slavery under the Japanese during World War II are demanding "a full package of reparations that requires rehabilitation, compensation for the victims, restoration of lost homes,property, and livelihood, and guarantee of non-repetition," said Dr. Purna Sen, Amnesty International's director for the Asia-Pacific Program.

"Before and during World War II, up to 200,000 women were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial army, [some] as young as 12. They were held by the army in so-called 'comfort stations' for months, and some for many years," said Dr. Sen, who accompanied Ms. Lee in Bangkok.

"Some were shackled together for long periods of time. They were forced to have sex with 40 to 50 men a day. The women and girls came from China, Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Holland, East Timor and Japan.

"The 'comfort stations' were set up by the army in China, Taiwan, Borneo, the Philippines, the Pacific islands, Singapore, Malaya, Burma and Indonesia," Dr. Sen said.

"For 60 years, these women have waited for justice..."

Scoop Independent News, Thursday, 3 November 2005

Light Therapy

How Light Therapy Works in the Body

"... Bright light is known to affect the body and its internal "clock," and Japanese scientists may have partly figured out how that happens.

When they exposed mice to bright light, the mice experienced a wave of hormones called glucocorticoids. These hormones are responsible for many bodily processes including metabolism, response to stress, inflammation, and immunity.

Atsushi Ishida and colleagues report their findings in Cell Metabolism. Ishida works in Kobe, Japan, in the brain science department of Kobe University's medical school.

The study doesn't change the use of light therapy in people for conditions including sleep disorders and some types of depression, such as seasonal affective disorder (SAD)seasonal affective disorder (SAD). But it might explain one aspect of how light therapy works..."

Web Md Health, November 8, 2005

Leprosy Policy Victims

Japan appeals compensation for ex-leprosy patients


"TOKYO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The Japanese government has appealed a court ruling ordering it to pay compensation to former leprosy patients from Taiwan who were incarcerated under Japanese colonial rule, the Health and Welfare ministry said on Tuesday.

Separately, however, the government said it would consider some form of relief for the now elderly victims in Taiwan, South Korea and some Pacific islands of Japan's policy to isolate leprosy patients in territories it occupied until the end of World War Two.

"Our understanding of the compensation law is that it does not apply to people outside Japan," Health and Welfare Minister Jiro Kawasaki told reporters.

Leprosy is curable and not easily communicated. But under a Japanese law in force until 1996, patients with leprosy -- now known as Hansen's disease -- were forcibly confined to isolation centres.

The patients, some as young as 7, were made to leave their families and enter the centres. Patients who wanted to marry had to be sterilised, and those who became pregnant were forced to undergo abortions.

A Japanese court last month supported a claim from the Taiwanese plaintiffs that a law mandating compensation for former leprosy patients who were incarcerated in Japan also applied to its former colonies.

Plaintiffs condemned the government's decision to appeal the court ruling as discriminatory.

"It is a terrible shame," one Taiwanese plaintiff quoted by NHK television said of the government's appeal. "I am filled with anger and despair. Japanese ex-leprosy patients are being compensated, so I cannot forgive this discriminatory treatment."

A separate ruling on the same day in the same court, but under a different judge, rejected a similar case brought by South Korean plaintiffs. Those plaintiffs have already appealed that decision.

"The court case is purely about the interpretation of the current law," a ministry official said. "We don't see any contradiction between the appeal and separate consideration of other methods of compensation."

In one of the first big surprises of his premiership, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi decided in 2001 not to appeal a court ruling that the government should compensate Japanese leprosy patients who were confined..."

Reuters Alernet, 8 November, 2005

Abortion

Japan's falling abortion rate

"... the number of abortions in Japan continues to decline.

Abortion has been included in government health statistics for the past three years. In 2004, there were 301,673 reported abortions in Japan, 18,157 fewer than the year before. The rate of abortions per 1,000 people has also dropped across women of all child-bearing age groups.

What is happening in Japan?

Nowhere in the world are statistics on abortion as meticulously kept as in Japan, though I do have my doubts about whether they are all being reported. Nonetheless, stigmas preventing abortion such as religion and legal status do not play a part here as they may in other countries, which makes it easier for public bodies in Japan to assemble data.

Why there has been a decline in the number and rate of abortions is impossible to pinpoint. However, I have a few theories of my own, at least as far as concerns minors; that is, those aged 20 or under.

1. Fewer kids are experiencing sex.
2. Women are starting to choose to give birth rather than abort pregnancies.
3. Information about birth control is starting to filter through the media and schools and awareness of the practice has been raised.
4. It has become easier to gain access to emergency contraception measures used as a last resort to end pregnancies.
5. A growing number of women are using the Pill, a contraception measure that women can take at their own discretion.
6. Others

Sweden offers a good example of how the proliferation of the Pill has reduced abortion rates. When the first AIDS patient was discovered in the United States in 1981, there was a sudden and rapid movement in Sweden to encourage people to use condoms as a means of avoiding the disease. What had been widespread use of the Pill became less frequent and instead condoms became the preferred method of birth control. The belief was that condoms would prevent both AIDS and unwanted pregnancies. The reality was different. As the number of people using the Pill declined, there was a rapid rise in the abortion rate.

In 1987, the surprised World Health Organization and International Planned Parenthood Federation issued a warning not to discard the Pill as a birth control device, but to continue to use condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.

In response, the number of women on the Pill began to rise again and, after about a year or so, the abortion rate went down once more.

History tells us that it is important to select safe and reliable methods of contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies. It has been my life work to prevent unwanted pregnancies in this country and it is a long-cherished dream of mine to see the Japanese experience mimic that of Sweden in the '80s.

Let me remind you -- women should regard the Pill as the prime form of contraception that puts the choice in their hands and condoms should be used as a means of preventing sexually transmitted diseases... "

From a regular column written in the Mainichi by Dr Kunio Kitamura. Dr Kitamura is head of the Japan Family Planning Association. He specializes in dealing with issues such as sex, birth control, abortion, puberty worries, sexually transmitted diseases, child-raising (he is a father of five), general gynecology and domestic violence.

Mainich Newspaper, November 6, 2005

Abuse of Elderly Law

Japan moves to protect the elderly

"Japan yesterday passed its first law to prevent abuse of the elderly following alarm at the problem in a nation which traditionally venerates the old.

The law, approved unanimously by parliament's upper house, aims to prevent the mistreatment of elderly people in homes as well as those living with relatives.

Elder abuse covers physical assaults but also verbal abuse, abandonment, neglect and mismanagement of property and, in a society which is ageing rapidly, it is seen as an increasingly serious problem.

From next April suspected cases must be reported to local authorities, which will have to investigate them with the police.

The country was shocked last year by a study showing almost 2,000 known cases of elder abuse. Experts believe the real figure may be several times higher.

In one reported incident, a 78-year-old woman died after being left for months in her bed at her son's home north of Tokyo. Her bedding was never changed and food merely left at her bedside, though she needed help to eat.

Though the problem is much worse in the West, the statistics shocked a country whose veneration of the elderly even includes the celebrating a bank holiday called Respect for the Aged day.

Sons are expected to take care of their parents in the home and to have "three generations under one roof" was once considered a symbol of happiness and fortune.

However, the authorities have also historically interfered little in domestic affairs and only now is the scale of spousal, child and elder abuse being acknowledged.

According to one survey, a third of cases of elder abuse are committed by the son and a fifth by his wife, who is often the prime carer.

There have even been cases of elderly men abused by their wives. In one, reported on television, a man was kept on a chain by his wife and fed only scraps.

A common problem is that of men resolving to die and killing the rest of their household first. Traditionally this was considered "family suicide" rather than murder and suicide.

However, it is now recognised as a crime in which elderly women are commonly the victim, killed by sons exhausted by the need to support them or husbands who are depressed or ill.

Under the new law, local authorities must also improve their care of the elderly to ease the burden on families.

It is believed that some incidents of elder abuse may be connected to what is called "care exhaustion" when families are unable to cope with senile and seriously ill relatives.."

Telegraph, November 2, 2005