| Research Abstract |
In Japan, Leprosy Prevention Law was abolished in 1996, and that drew attention among the general public how this unjust law had been constituted a significant violation of human rights of leprosy patients.
In 1998, former patients brought a lawsuit against the state in Kumamoto District Court. In 2001, Kumamoto District Court found the State and the Diet at fault and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. For this decision, the Japanese Government gave up appealing and admitted the fact that the modern state like Japan had been kept the isolation of patients for a long time, which is quite extraordinary among other modern nations, based on the wrong view by the Japanese medical world.
In order not to repeat such an unfortunate event, we must realize why this happened, how the patients treated and how they survived under such a harsh reality.
Reading a literature written by the patients is to listen to their voices and therefore quite an effective way to know the historical background of the incident. However, up to today, only a few works of the specific authors came into the spotlight and no academic discussion had been made how the works (Hansen Literature) should be treated in the process of educational program.
In this study, after a two-year thorough analysis with the students, we raise an issue to provide the educational program to think about the Hansen's Disease through literature for both the general public and the students.
For this purpose, followings are the three key points which we think critical for the study :
(1)To challenge to express a multiple images of the patient.
(2)To realize both the possibility and limit of the literature.
(3)To reconstruct the Hansen Literature as a co-work between patients and the ordinary people.
For all cases, we introduce a viewpoint from gender study approach, which we believe is very effective tool for this study.
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