A thread titled “Were there fewer disabled children back in the Showa era?” appeared on 5ch’s Hello! Project board, drawing a flood of memories about schools and neighborhoods from that time. Posters recalled how special-needs classes handled things, alongside memories of drug-injury victims like thalidomide children and disabled war veterans, while others pointed out that the Eugenic Protection Law and the Leprosy Prevention Law both remained on the books until 1996. Opinions split between “with more women having children later in life, there’s definitely more now” and the gut feeling that “you used to see them around town more often” — leaving it unclear whether statistics or personal impressions come closer to the truth.
What people said
4AnonymousAug 31, 2026 20:56
Because back then, if a midwife realized right at birth that the baby was disabled, she'd strangle it on the spot.
5AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:01
If anything, you saw them around town more back in the day.
Actually, the further along we've gone, the fewer 'odd' people you see out in public.
Where did they all go?
6AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:02
By today's standards, Nobita (from Doraemon) would easily count as having a disability.
7AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:02
The kids in the special-needs class were basically punching bags.
People would stomp their school backpacks (randoseru) flat.
89AnonymousAug 31, 2026 22:59
Re: #7
Guess karma explains where you ended up in life today.
10AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:04
That said, there were also genius artists like Kiyoshi Yamashita.
12AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:04
It's not that depression didn't exist — it probably did — but back then, if you showed it, a teacher would literally slap you and tell you to quit being a spoiled brat.
54AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:44
Re: #12
Junior high was brutally strict. Teachers slapping students was just an everyday thing. If something went wrong, the whole grade had to kneel seiza-style in the gym. You'd close your eyes, raise your hand, and just sit there shaking, listening to the sound of kids getting slapped.
13AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:06
One time during recess, the whole class snuck off school grounds together to go look for someone.
14AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:06
Back then they were seen as useless mouths to feed, but in a wealthy democratic welfare society it gets reframed as 'individuality.' Though if things get poor and tight again, we'll probably slide right back.
19AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:10
My elementary school had a special-needs class, and we shared just the music class with them. There was an intellectually disabled girl, and the same girl from our class would walk her to and from class every time, so there wasn't really any bullying.
21AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:11
It's just that the internet is loud about it now — there were way more of them back in the day. Most of them probably just… died, I guess.
24AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:13
During swim class, kids from the special-needs class would sometimes wander into the girls' changing room.
26AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:14
With more women having children later in life, there are definitely more now.
28AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:15
There were about one or two per grade.
30AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:17
Re: #28
Wouldn't you need to check enrollment numbers at special-needs schools, schools for the blind, schools for the deaf, and so on to actually know that?
29AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:16
Midwives only killed the ones where it was obvious just from looking.
31AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:18
I don't know if it counts as a disability, but is it really fine that kids today wander the halls and bathrooms so much during class? Is that 'individuality' too? Hope it works out into a life where they can put it to good use.
32AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:19
Nobody's calling out the image in Re: #1, lol.
Just goes to show the Ookami board (5ch's Hello! Project fan board) is a den of postwar old men, lol.
34AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:20
Re: #32
So how would you call it out, then?
88AnonymousAug 31, 2026 22:56
Re: #32
It goes back to the Eugenic Protection Law. It wasn't until 1996 that it was finally recognized as discrimination against the disabled and revised into the Maternal Body Protection Law — the Health Minister overseeing that was Naoto Kan. While he was getting mocked for that radish-sprout-eating publicity stunt, he was also doing important work.
33AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:20
They said 'don't let it be born,' but this was an era without prenatal diagnosis.
35AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:20
I bet some of them just get folded into the truancy statistics these days. Not literally locked away in a back room, but something like that.
36AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:21
There were four or five deaf kids in my neighborhood. Maybe kids like that just don't come outside these days.
37AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:22
A lot of disabled children back in the Showa era died young, but now medicine can keep them alive much longer.
38AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:24
You'd think our parents' generation was even more chaotic, but you don't really hear about it.
41AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:27
In 4th grade I had a classmate I used to run around and play-wrestle with. By partway through 5th grade he was in a wheelchair, and he died before we graduated. I remember it being Hansen's disease or something — does that count as a disabled child?
55AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:44
Re: #41
Saying 'Hansen' right after pro wrestling is confusing, lol. (Stan Hansen was a famous wrestler)
90AnonymousAug 31, 2026 23:00
Re: #41
The Leprosy Prevention Law was also abolished in 1996, again under Naoto Kan.
91AnonymousAug 31, 2026 23:02
Re: #41
For the record, Hansen's disease is an infection caused by the leprosy bacterium — it's not a disability.
45AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:30
There were disabled war veterans around when I was a kid. At some festival or another, about five of them would sit there in old military uniforms. Missing a leg, missing an arm — it was unusual, so I kept staring, and one of them absolutely lost it at me.
99AnonymousSep 1, 2026 00:23
Re: #45
That guy was 100% a scammer. There were tons of those back then. Actual disabled veterans received a military pension, so they had no need to do that.
47AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:37
It was the age of industrial pollution, so I remember seeing things like deformed fetuses preserved in formaldehyde. Kids with thalidomide-shortened arms showed up on TV a lot too. Also kids with microcephaly.
57AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:47
Re: #47
There were the conjoined twins Viet and Duc, right? They got separated — what ever happened to the other one?
53AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:44
Apparently thalidomide gets used to treat things like bone cancer these days.
59AnonymousAug 31, 2026 21:48
Re: #53
Yeah, exactly. Even versions with a slightly different structure that were supposed to be safe apparently still change once inside the body, so in practice it's still treated as an absolute no-go for pregnant women.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The Eugenic Protection Law took effect in 1948, legalizing forced sterilization and abortion on the grounds of disability, and it remained in force until it was revised into the Maternal Body Protection Law in 1996. That same year also saw the abolition of the Leprosy Prevention Law, which had been used to isolate patients with Hansen’s disease — meaning the systems mentioned in this thread all persisted into relatively recent times. The sense that “there were fewer disabled children in the Showa era” is tangled up with several factors, including differences in neonatal medicine and the way special-needs education infrastructure gradually developed after schools for children with disabilities became mandatory in 1979. It likely has less to do with an actual change in numbers than with a shift in how visible disability was. It’s worth noting that while the rise in later-in-life pregnancies is a known factor that raises the risk of chromosomal abnormalities, that alone doesn’t make for a simple apples-to-apples comparison with the Showa era.
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