When Yasuhiko Funago was told in 2000 that he had with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a degenerative illness with no cure, he went through a period of despair.
In late July, nearly two decades later, crowds cheered as he became the first ALS patient to be elected to Japan's parliament, the Diet.
"I am full of emotions that this moment has arrived," Funago said in a speech read by his helper. "I may appear weak, but I have more guts than others as it has been a matter of life and death for me."
Funago, a member of the opposition group Reiwa Shinsengumi, is one of two lawmakers who use wheelchairs to win seats in the upper house in elections on July 21, along with Eiko Kimura, who has cerebral palsy and is paralyzed from the neck down.
Pepole with disabilities are 7.4% of Japan's population, but Funago and Kimura will be the only two of the Diet's 713 members in wheelchairs. Only a handful of people with disabilities have ever won seats. (The 535 members of the U.S. Congress, by contrast, include at least four people who have lost arms, legs or an eye, among other disabilities.)
"Japanese politics is still centered around able-bodied men," said Jun Ishikawa, head of a government commission on disabilities.
The authorities tend to hide people with disabilities in institutions, secluded from the rest of society. Students with special needs usually attend special schools. "Japan has focused more on creating segregated institutions than integrating the disabled into local communities," said Ishikawa. This has bred stigma and isolation.
The government has been slow to acknowledge the problem. It took seven years to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, making it the 140th country to do so. It did not agree until this year to pay compensation to thousands of people with disabilities who were forcibly sterilized under a eugenics law that was only repealed in 1996.
