Yoshihiko Sasagawa
Chairperson, Tokyo Association for the Welfare of the Blind

My vision declined little by little, and I lost my sight completely in 1950. By chance, my homeroom teacher had experience of schools for the blind, and advised me to enroll in one immediately. However, I did not feel at all like doing so, and spent two years going from one doctor to another. In those anguished days, my only pleasure was listening to the radio.

One day, I learned from an NHK broadcast that the students of a school for the blind were doing judo. I liked sports better than studying, and so without a second thought, I enrolled in the Fukuoka Prefectural School for the Blind. When the interviewer asked me during the entrance examination to choose between the acupuncture, moxibustion, and massage course and the music course, I replied that I wanted to study on the music course. “You can’t make a living through music”, I was told, so I ended up on the acupuncture, moxibustion, and massage course without any real choice in the matter. Most of the students lived in dormitories or boarding houses, and I was surprised to find that there were students from the elementary level all the way to the senior high and advanced course levels. Moreover, almost half of the students were what is known as partially sighted, and they looked after the completely blind students well. 

The first thing which I attempted was Braille. Braille, which was created in an extremely logical way, has been adapted to Japanese, and so I was able to master it in about a week; but it has to be read with the fingertips, letter by letter, which was very hard for me.

After five years at the school, I somehow managed to obtain a license to practice acupuncture, moxibustion, and massage. I had also gained a certain level of skill through part-time work, so I thought that this was something I could do.

In 1958, I moved to Tokyo and looked for a job in order to improve my skills but, because I was completely blind, I was unable to find employment, and so I had no choice but to open my own business, visiting clients’ homes. However, there are many able-bodied people in my business in Tokyo, and so things were very hard for me. During this time, I had the opportunity to participate in a general meeting of the Tokyo Association for the Welfare of the Blind (known as “Tomoukyou”) in 1960 thanks to an invitation by someone in the same line of work, and so I learned about organisations of blind people. Furthermore, in the following year, 1961, I was able to found an organisation of visually impaired people in Setagaya Ward, together with a few comrades. I felt that there was a big gap between people with and without disabilities, and hoped to be able to close this gap even a little.

In 1963, I was nominated to become head of the youth division of Tomoukyou, which also entailed sitting on its board. Alongside tasks such as petitioning the Diet, I also began to play an active role in welfare activities. When our parent organisation, the Japan Federation of the Blind (now the Japan Federation of the Visually Impaired) went to the Diet, the person in charge used a pejorative term with the connotation of “deformity”, and the then Chairperson got extremely angry and forced a revision of this comment. Moreover, we strongly pushed for detailed provisions in the Act for Employment Promotion of Persons with Physical Disabilities according to the type and degree of disability, but these recommendations were not incorporated at all, leaving me feeling extremely frustrated and disappointed.

Competition was fierce in my core area of work, providing treatment, and the situation continued to be tough. However, I set my hand to having acupuncture, moxibustion, and massage – which, as low-cost options, tended to be kept at arm’s length in that period – covered by public health insurance. With a letter of consent from a neighbourhood doctor, I started treating patients with ongoing conditions such as strokes or Parkinson’s disease. So I treated my ongoing patients in the mornings, carried out welfare activities in the afternoons, and treated regular patients in the evenings – those were very busy days.  

In this period, the office of Tomoukyou was in a narrow room under the stairs of the Tokyo Helen Keller Association. There were no administrative staff, and the officers carried out their activities on a voluntary basis. But in 1964, the office of the Japan Federation of the Blind moved from Osaka to Tokyo, and came to share the tiny Tomoukyou office with us. There was one member of staff, and we helped each other out. Tomoukyou’s role became bigger and bigger, and the laws relating to people with disabilities became gradually more substantial. International exchanges also became active, with flourishing interactions with the WBU (World Blind Union) and East Asia-Pacific Regional Council; we began to participate actively in international meetings. I also had the honour of attending, and was able to take part in an international meeting where an exchange of opinions about the American education system took place. I had thought for a while that the only way to resolve the issue of the gap between people with and without disabilities was to bring about integrated education, and had advocated for this at every opportunity, but unfortunately, we had been unable to make it happen in our country. At the meeting to exchange opinions, educational issues happened to be taken up. A child with a visual impairment was present together with their mother. When asked by the committee whether they wanted to attend a normal school or a school for the blind, they answered clearly that they preferred the normal school. The mother agreed, and it was decided that they would study at a normal school. Witnessing this scene, I felt “You’ve hit the nail on the head.” At that time, in Japan, the wishes of the student concerned or their parents about which school to enter were less important than the opinion of the Board of Education, so if a student’s eyesight was poor, they automatically received a special education. After people had been kept apart and given separate educations until adulthood, even if they were then told to understand one another once they entered the workforce, there was no way that this could work out well. Even in this country, the conservative Ministry of Education finally began to work towards inclusive education. I look forward to seeing how things change over the next 100 years.

On another topic, when I was working as the Chairperson of the Japan Federation of the Blind, I was told by the bureau chief that white canes were going to be downgraded from their status as “assistive devices” to “tools for daily activities”. I went alone, without invitation, to the Ministry of Health, proclaiming their necessity in a loud voice, and strongly protesting against the simplistic thinking of the person in charge. As a result, it was decided that white canes would continue to be assistive devices, but I keenly felt that even the people in charge were still not fully aware of the importance of assistive devices.

One of the reasons why I was able to engage in a wide range of activities is because I was able to walk around by myself. In our day, there was no training at all in how to walk around. As a result, I have experienced falling from station platforms four times so far, being hit by vehicles on pedestrian crossings, falling into a construction site, and falling into a river with no fence. The cause of these accidents is that I did not receive proper training in walking with a white cane. In other words, my use of a white cane is completely self-taught.

As I wrote above, when I lost my sight, I was unable to do anything and lived an anguished life. Perhaps seeing this, a local landowner brought me the job of shelling peanuts, saying “You should be able to manage this.” In those days, peanuts were shelled by hand. I became absorbed in the task, shelling peanuts all day long. After a few days had passed, I realized that blisters had formed and then burst on the tips of my thumbs. As this was seasonal work, I could not do it all year long, but I experienced the joy of working for myself, and learned that labour is the essence of human life.

During my 60 years of activities, with the understanding and collaboration of all our members, as well as the support of the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation (now the Nippon Foundation), the Japan Bicycle Racing Association (now the JKA), and the business community, I have been involved with the foundation of the Japan Centre for the Welfare of the Blind (now the Japan Centre for the Visually Impaired) and the Tokyo Centre for the Welfare of the Blind. In 2002, a plot of land became vacant next to the grounds of the Tokyo Centre for the Welfare of the Blind. We took the plunge, obtained a loan, and built an annex to the Centre. The aim was to set up an employment support office, allowing visually impaired people who wanted to work but did not have anywhere to do so the opportunity to feel “the joy of working” which I had experienced. Fortunately, we obtained the cooperation of many people, and we were able to establish the “Pioneer Type B Support Office for Finding and Continuing in Employment”. Although small, it was the realization of my dearest wish. Currently, 22 people are experiencing for themselves the joy of working, albeit for low wages.

There are many visually impaired people who want to work at Pioneer, so there is always a waiting list, but because the premises are so small, there is nothing we can do. As a result, we end up causing suffering to the visually impaired people who have to wait. Working is core to human life. This is the same for people with and without disabilities. I hope that as inclusive education becomes established from now on, students will gain a deeper understanding of people with disabilities during elementary, junior high, and senior high school, and will offer powerful support. We hear the term “inclusive society”, but sadly, I feel that it is still a long way off.

Finally, whichever society we live in, we are in the midst of a falling birthrate and ageing population, and so the development of successors and of the next generation has become an issue. We must work in consistency with the philosophy and beliefs of our organization’s activities, but I strongly feel that at the same time that our generation clearly tell the next generation about our experiences of success and failure so far, we must be proactive in introducing the values and ways of thinking of the younger generation, embracing diversity. Then, as the younger generation proactively take on roles of their own accord, take responsibility, and get involved with the work, I believe that we can look forward to further growth.