Daisuke Tenbata
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Chuo University

Before each outing, after washing my face and changing my clothes, my helper stands in front of ten different pairs of glasses and always asks me the same question.

“Daisuke, which glasses do you want to wear today? The round ones? The black-rimmed ones? The green ones? ...”

By choosing a pair of glasses according to my mood that day or to match my outfit, I have fun dressing up. I have a distinctive visual impairment. This visual impairment, which makes three-dimensional objects appear blurred and means I cannot see two-dimensional letters or pictures, is very rare in the world. However, the glasses I own have not been specially made to correct this impairment. They are non-prescription glasses for dressing up - what are known as “fashion glasses”. 

Why, then, do I always choose a pair of glasses to wear, even though they are not tools for correcting my eyesight? It is because, to me, these glasses are tools to connect with people.

 In addition to my distinctive visual impairment, I have quadriplegia and a speech impairment. My speech impairment means that I can make a sound, “Aah”, but I cannot communicate at all in words. For this reason, I use a special communication method called the “a-ka-sa-ta-na speech method” to communicate what I want to say. For example, if I want to say “Date megane” (“fashion glasses”), my helper takes my arm and says the first syllable in each column of the Japanese alphabet in turn, “a-ka-sa-ta-na...” When my helper reaches the “ta” column, I pull their arm to move it at the appropriate time. Next, my helper recites the syllables in the “ta” column, “ta-chi-tsu-te-to”. When my helper says “ta”, I pull their arm to move it. In this way, by piecing the words together a syllable at a time, we arrive at “tate megane”. Long vowels, voiced consonants, semi-voiced consonants, double consonants, and contracted sounds (all of which modify the syllables) are added later, checking with me, after understanding the syllables. Only by doing this can I communicate “Date megane”.

I think that people who meet me for the first time, without knowing about such disabilities or the “a-ka-sa-ta-na speech method”, may wonder whether I have difficulty in grasping the situation, since I do not say “Hello! Nice to meet you”. However, sentences that I have no way of communicating to the other person, such as “Hello, I’m Daisuke Tenbata!” are bubbling up inside my head, one after another.

For me, my communication disability is not being unable to verbalize things; it is being unable to output what I have verbalized. And I believe that these glasses are a very important tool in overcoming this communication disability.

My glasses are an important tool for communication

When my helper is listening and understanding my words, the person to whom I am talking looks first at my helper, and then looks hard at my face. Is this really what Daisuke is saying? How does this mysterious communication method work? At that time, these glasses actually bring the blurred picture between me and the other person rapidly into focus. What this means is that these glasses make me look intelligent, and provide an opportunity for the conversation to develop.

“Those are great glasses!” “No, no… they’re actually fashion glasses…” The joke is always the same, but it gives the other person the clear message that even though I have a severe disability, I have a sense of humour and a cheerful and positive attitude to life, and that I can communicate with them using language.

The glasses which are my trademark

I always fervently wish that the words which are formed continually inside my head, but to which I can never give voice, could reach the other person. I also hope that they reply directly to me. This is perhaps what I continue to seek, inside the loneliness and accompanying fear which are my speech impairment. 

I would like to think about this topic in a slightly broader sense, that of dressing up as a whole. I said that dressing up, for me, exists in large part because of the characteristics of my disability and in order to achieve the communication via language that I seek. This is certainly not incorrect. My pet theory is that a man’s three main ways of showing off are his watch, his shoes, and his glasses, and I am no exception – this is where I concentrate my efforts. I do my best to wear good-quality, well-chosen items.

However, I have also noticed the existence of a dilemma hovering in the gap between “disabled-ness” and “able-bodied-ness”. This way of charming people makes me realize that I adjust my own sense of identity and value judgments on a daily basis to fit in with those of able-bodied people, rather than people with disabilities. On the other hand, there are actually also situations in which I deliberately present myself as a “super-person with disabilities”. I think this is the manifestation of a desire to appeal to people as someone who is independent and lives an admirable life while contributing to society, all at the same time as coping with a severe disability.

I experience a conflict between “able-bodied-ness”, where I want to be the same as able-bodied people, and “disabled-ness”, where I try rather to show myself as a person with a disability. These two qualities seem at first glance to be complete opposites, but the fact that my conflict contains a meritocratic, eugenics-based way of thinking makes my dilemma even more profound. The reason for this is that both wanting to get closer to being an able-bodied person and trying to be a super-person with disabilities have at their root the desire to gain approval as being better than anyone else, and it is hard to say that this is a way of thinking which affirms all lives just the way they are.

For me, while dressing up is something glittering that allows a person to expand their possibilities, there is a flip side to it. When I think deeply about the meaning of dressing up, it is impossible to avoid confronting the inherent prejudiced thinking based on lookism or the meritocratic way of thinking which derives from this. 

As a matter of fact, I recently tried signing up for a matchmaking app. This was purely because I wanted to meet women. However, I experienced an indescribable boost to my self-esteem when I got a “like” (from a woman who liked the look of my profile). To be honest, I derived a great deal of pleasure and self-confidence from other people’s evaluations of my external appearance.

Do you think appearances are important? My question is perhaps one that rocks the foundations of this issue’s featured topic. We often say “looks matter”, but what kind of thinking is actually behind this? Surely we need to pause here for a moment and think about it.

Communicating with my helper