The city of Kashiwa in Chiba Prefecture, with a population of 435,000, is quiet for its size. Lying less than an hour’s train ride northeast of mega-metropolis Tokyo, Kashiwa – home to many commuters and their families – presents a quiet contrast to the hectic pace of its big-city neighbour. Politics in Kashiwa is also more lenient.
Tokyo is not just an urban giant, with all the political cut and thrust that comes with millions of competing interests. It is also the political capital of Japan, a fact intensified by Japan’s close relationship with the United States and the geopolitical complexity this entails. When we talk about politics in Tokyo, we talk about intrigues with international resonance.
When someone is talking about politics in Kashiwa, someone is talking about building playgrounds and keeping fire departments properly funded. But because Kashiwa is much less visible than Tokyo, and much freer from narrow partisan outfits, there is room for those who practice a politics of purpose over a high-profile act of national and international performance.
In the relative calm of Chiba, Hiroki Uchidaa member of the Kashiwa City Council, spends his days fighting not to be seen, but to be heard. He also speaks for others whose voices are often silenced in the political arena. I recently spoke with Uchida about his political work. What I found was a man who puts human dignity above party politics.
Q: Please tell me a little about your background.
Answer: I was born not far from Kashiwa in Noda, Chiba Prefecture, in 1971. I was born with a visual impairment, completely blind in my right eye, but able to distinguish some visual information, albeit very weakly, with my left eye. Now, however, I have no sight in either eye.
I had perfect attendance in my third year as an elementary student, but as a fourth year student I was severely bullied by my teacher. This bullying continued through most of my time in elementary school. Because I was often out of class, my teacher would hold a kind of funeral for me, putting my picture on my classroom desk and burning incense in front of it as if I had died.
As a result, I stopped going to school – except for the days when we had music lessons. I was very fond of music.
I had a few friends in high school, but as the high school entrance exams approached, they got busy studying and we drifted apart. Sometimes I thought about suicide, and I also attempted suicide.
I was also studying, however, and I was able to enter high school. There I met other visually impaired people like me. I have also met people with hearing impairments, people with psychological conditions, people from foreign countries and others who may have been bullied like I was.
I went to high school in 1985. The next year, 1986, there was a nuclear accident in Chernobyl, in the Soviet Union, in what is now the country of Ukraine. My friends and I started working to ensure that there would be no such accidents in Japan and that Japan would use renewable energy sources in the country.
We also fought against discrimination, often as part of the disability liberation movements of the time, and on behalf of hisabetsu burakumin (descendants of hereditary expellees), women, people of African descent and other groups facing social exclusion. I found that the problem of discrimination, at its root, lay in the social structure.
When I finished high school I started working in rehabilitation at a hospital. In addition, I volunteered at a night school started by a friend, helping twice a week with students with various disabilities and from various disadvantaged social backgrounds.
It was at this time that I decided to work in a more dedicated way towards the elimination of discrimination in society. And, I discovered the great danger that discrimination presents to society. To fight for one’s rights is to fight for one’s survival.
Q: Sadly, this has proven true in recent years.
A: Yes. Ten years ago, in July 2016, Satoshi Uematsu, an employee of the Tsukui Yamayuri En care home in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, killed nineteen disabled people who were residents there. The killer said that the lives of such people had no value.
Q: You work as a politician in Kashiwa. Please tell me about the history of discrimination here in our part of Chiba Prefecture.
Answer: A very unfortunate historical example from here in Kashiwa also illustrates the dangers of discrimination. This is the Fukudamura incident from more than a century ago. This incident was the culmination of many different types of discrimination, most notably against people thought to be from the Korean peninsula.
of The Fukudamura incident it occurred on September 6, 1923, five days after the Kanto earthquake on September 1 of that year. Shortly after that natural disaster, while fires were raging in Tokyo, an unfounded rumor began to circulate that the Koreans had poisoned wells. Chiba Prefecture was partially placed under martial law on September 4.
At Fukudamura, a village near the Tone River, later included in the city of Noda—adjacent to present-day Kashiwa—a group of fifteen medicine sellers traveling from Kagawa Prefecture to Shikoku had stopped to rest before crossing the Tone and continuing into Ibaraki Prefecture.
The improvised militias formed after the earthquake were on high alert. Militants from Fukudamura and Tanakamura, later part of Kashiwa City, rounded up the vendors on the suspicion that they were Koreans who had poisoned wells, as was rumored.
However, the sellers were not Korean, but hisabetsu burakumin. Discrimination against them meant they were often unable to find work other than traveling sales. That’s why they were in Chiba at the time, away from Kagawa.
But because they spoke a dialect of Japanese very different from that spoken in Chiba, some of the militia members jumped to the conclusion that they were Koreans. Of the fifteen people in the group, the guards killed nine. Three of those killed were small children. Eight people drowned after jumping into the Tone River, while a ninth, also thrown into the river, was cut after he managed to swim to shore.
These killings stemmed entirely from discrimination—against Koreans, against hisabetsu burakumin, and against traveling salesmen.
Q: I believe one of the women killed was pregnant, so her unborn child would be the tenth person killed. It appears that the people who killed the traveling salesmen from Kagawa were prosecuted, but were later pardoned and released from prison. One of the killers became the head of Tanakamura Village, and later a member of the Kashiwa City Council. He had killed people thought to be Koreans, and because of this he was lionized by some in Kashiwa.
A: It is a very dark chapter in Chiba’s history.
Q: How has the Fukudamura incident affected your political career?
A: I do my political work in Kashiwa today, rooted in the lessons to be learned from this history. I think everyone who works in politics in Kashiwa, and all of us who live here too, should learn these lessons. People with disabilities, people from foreign countries – there are many today whose rights and dignity are violated by discrimination.
I probably wouldn’t have known about the Fukudamura incident if I hadn’t experienced discrimination. Even if I had learned about it, I wouldn’t have seen it the way I do if I hadn’t been discriminated against.
Today, Kashiwa has developed into a large and prosperous city. It is precisely for this reason that I think the Fukudamura incident should not be forgotten. As immigrants come to Kashiwa, especially from neighboring countries in Asia, discrimination comes to the fore again here. This is reminiscent not only of the Fukudamura incident, but also of the eugenic ideology that was used to justify discrimination against the disabled and others in the post-war period. We must remember that eugenics has had an impact on Japan and the world. We must never forget it.
I want to continue fighting so that no one, for any reason, is discriminated against in Kashiwa. Peace and human rights are always a bundle, and we cannot have one without the other.
Jason Morgan is associate professor of global studies at Reitaku University, Kashiwa, Japan.
