Photo/Illutration Sumiko Nishi, right, reads out her thoughts on her lawsuit at a news conference in Tokyo on Sept. 26. (Yuri Murakami)

Six more victims of a forced sterilization program are suing the central government, claiming that the operations performed under the former Eugenic Protection Law were unconstitutional. 

Sumiko Nishi, 75, filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court on Sept. 26, while Toshiji Chiba, 72, and two others in their 60s did the same in the Sendai District Court.

A female victim and her husband, both in their 70s, also initiated a lawsuit with the Nagoya District Court the same day.

The plaintiffs said they suffered from “indescribable mental agonies” after the victims had a hysterectomy or other sterilization operations in their teens or 20s under the Eugenic Protection Law, which were aimed at “preventing the birth of inferior offspring” and were performed on people with various disabilities.

The plaintiffs are seeking 13.2 million to 33 million yen ($91,400 to $228,500) each in compensation. They are also urging the courts not to reject their compensation claims on the grounds that the 20-year statute of limitations had expired.

The latest lawsuits brought the total number of plaintiffs of the similar cases across Japan to 31, while five of them died after filing their lawsuits.

A member of the legal team for the six plaintiffs called for a need to raise awareness of the issue because some victims learned of the extent of the damage and the option to sue the government only after the media reported on the lawsuits.

Seven rulings, including appeal court decisions, on similar lawsuits have found the eugenics law to be unconstitutional.

Although many rulings have rejected the plaintiffs’ compensation requests because the statute of limitations had expired, the Osaka High Court in February, as well as the Tokyo High Court in March, ordered the government to pay compensation to plaintiffs. The government appealed the decisions.

Under the eugenics law, which took effect in 1948, about 16,500 sterilization operations had been performed without the consent of the people with disabilities until 1996, when the law was revised to delete the forced sterilization provisions and renamed the Maternal Health Law.

The first lawsuit seeking redress for forced sterilization was filed in 2018. The government enacted a law in 2019 to provide a lump-sum compensation payment of 3.2 million yen to each victim, but only 1,013 of them had been recognized as eligible for the relief as of the end of August.

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