One Year from Major Murder on Disabled

Mostly one year has passed from a horrible murder in a nursery facility for disabled persons, Yamayuri-en, in which a former nursery worker, Satoshi Uematsu, killed 19 residents and injured 27. The incident left a number of lessons to consider, including how to separate potential murderer from society. It is still unclear whether Japan can avoid another incident like in Yamayuri-en.

Uematsu worked for Yamayuri-en for three years and embraced firm belief that disabled people do not worth living. He sneaked into the facility before a dawn and stabbed the residents on beds with knives one after another. After being arrested, Uematsu explained his motivation that he thought it was necessary for him to do that, because the government did not allow mercy killing for the disabled people and their unhappy families.

Mental Health Welfare Act allows the government coercively hospitalizing a person with mental disease who is likely to injure oneself or others. Uematsu was hospitalized according to the law for a week or two five months before the murder, after he revealed his intention to kill the disabled residents in Yamayuri-en. The law could not work for deterring the murder.

After the incident, the national government made a policy to increase professional workers for mental health and welfare. Mainichi Shimbun reported that there were only 23 additional workers for the purpose, in spite of introduction of new budget for it. Uematsu was dropped from the watch list of local government even after he had been released from the hospital. Government is powerless for watching possible murderer after coerced hospitalization.

Since Yamayuri-en was closed after the incident, other survived residents are waiting for the place to go. While the local government made a plan to rebuild new large facility in a rural place, the residents requested rather small ones in local communities. It is international trend to respect decisions of heavily disabled people. But, there still remains a belief in Japanese society that disabled people would be happy to be separated from society.

To avoid the same kind of tragedy, there is an argument to set more security cameras in the streets. But the incident was not the case of indiscriminate murder, but the one with firm intention. Camera could not have deterred the crime. Distorted belief of Uematsu is paralleled with eugenic ideology of Nazis. Unilateral politics of Shinzo Abe administration, in which Minister of Finance once indicated introduction of Nazi method, might have affected to such a narrow belief as that disabled people did not worth living. Social education matters.