A groundbreaking study of deaf identity, minority politics, and sign language, traces the history of the deaf community in Japan.

A groundbreaking study of deaf identity, minority politics, and sign language, traces the history of the deaf community in Japan.

Table of contents

"This is a terrific book―moving, clear, and compassionate. It not only illustrates the way psychiatric illness is shaped by culture, but also suggests that social environments can be used to improve the course and outcome of the illness. Well worth reading." — T. M. Luhrmann, author of Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist looks at American Psychiatry Bethel House, located in a small fishing village in northern Japan, was founded in 1984 as an intentional community for people with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Using a unique, community approach to psychosocial recovery, Bethel House focuses as much on social integration as on therapeutic work. As a centerpiece of this approach, Bethel House started its own businesses in order to create employment and socialization opportunities for its residents and to change public attitudes toward the mentally ill, but also quite unintentionally provided a significant boost to the distressed local economy. Through its work programs, communal living, and close relationship between hospital and town, Bethel has been remarkably successful in carefully reintegrating its members into Japanese society. It has become known as a model alternative to long-term institutionalization. In A Disability of the Soul, Karen Nakamura explores how the members of this unique community struggle with their lives, their illnesses, and the meaning of community. Told through engaging historical narrative, insightful ethnographic vignettes, and compelling life stories, her account of Bethel House depicts its achievements and setbacks, its promises and limitations. A Disability of the Soul is a sensitive and multidimensional portrait of what it means to live with mental illness in contemporary Japan.

Reframing Disability in Manga analyzes popular Japanese manga published from the 1990s to the present that portray the everyday lives of adults and children with disabilities in an ableist society. It focuses on five representative conditions currently classified as shōgai (disabilities) in Japan—deafness, blindness, paraplegia, autism, and gender identity disorder—and explores the complexities and sociocultural issues surrounding each. Author Yoshiko Okuyama begins by looking at preindustrial understandings of difference in Japanese myths and legends before moving on to an overview of contemporary representations of disability in popular culture, uncovering sociohistorical attitudes toward the physically, neurologically, or intellectually marked Other. She critiques how characters with disabilities have been represented in mass media, which has reinforced ableism in society and negatively influenced our understanding of human diversity in the past. Okuyama then presents fifteen case studies, each centered on a manga or manga series, that showcase how careful depictions of such characters as differently abled, rather than disabled or impaired, can influence cultural constructions of shōgai and promote social change. Informed by numerous interviews with manga authors and disability activists, Okuyama reveals positive messages of diversity embedded in manga and argues that greater awareness of disability in Japan in the last two decades is due in part to the popularity of these works, the accessibility of the medium, and the authentic stories they tell. Scholars and students in disability studies will find this book an invaluable resource as well as those with interests in Japanese cultural and media studies in general and manga and queer narrative and anti-normative discourse in Japan in particular.

Introduction to American Deaf Culture provides a fresh perspective on what it means to be Deaf in contemporary hearing society. The book offers an overview of Deaf art, literature, history, and humor, and touches on political, social and cultural themes.

With humor and devotion, Ronald M. Hirano takes us through the many adventures of his life as the Deaf son of Nikkei, Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps during World War II. Knowing that there would be no opportunities for Ron to be educated in American Sign Language in the camp, his mother made the heart-wrenching decision to send him to live with Delight Rice, who had Deaf parents. As he navigated numerous cultures-Japanese, Deaf, Hearing, and American-Ron endured racism, audism, and ignorance at school and in the workplace. It would have been easy to be discouraged by such obstacles, but Ron saw opportunities, oftentimes at the other party's expense, for memorable retorts and last laughs. A lifelong community servant for many local and national organizations, Ron and his wife Kay also traveled much of the world. Highlights from many of their trips are shared in this unique autobiography. My Journey Through Four Worlds is an inspiring, honest look at how an American-born Japanese Deaf person has manuevered decades of stereotypes, both from society and within the family, to flourish as a beloved pillar of the Deaf community.