From ‘Leper Villages' to Leprosaria

Today in Japan there exists a system of thirteen national leprosaria where more than 5,000 patients reside, most of whom are elderly and infirm. ¹ Some of them have spent five or more decades within the leprosaria, the largest of which once housed more than 1,900 people. The course of their lives was determined by the passage in 1931 of the ‘lifetime confinement’ law that required the forcible segregation until death of all those diagnosed with leprosy. It was not until 1996 that this law was finally repealed, after a prolonged debate that centred on the question of whether leprosy ‘still’ constituted a threat to public health. Since then, controversy surrounding the leprosaria has continued: hundreds of patients have filed suit in several district courts asking for compensation on the grounds that their human rights were violated by the confinement law.