National Sanatorium Kikuchi Keifuen | |
Location: | 3790, Koshi, Kumamoto |
Country: | Japan |
Healthcare: | HealthCare of those who had leprosy |
Type: | National hospital run by Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan) |
Speciality: | Internal medicine, Psychiatry, Surgery, Orthopedics, Dermatology, Ophthalmoloty, Otorhinolaryngology, Dentistry |
Beds: | 877(Japanese law on health and medicine in 2008), 412(in-patients) |
Founded: | 1909 |
Website: | http://www.hosp.go.jp/~keifuen/ |
Kikuchi Keifuen Sanatorium or National Sanatorium Kikuchi Keifuen is a sanatorium for leprosy patients or ex-leprosy patients at Kohshi-shi, Kumamoto-ken, Japan founded in 1909. The mean age of residents (ex-patients) is about eighty.
The Japanese Government promulgated the first leprosy prevention law on March 19, 1907, but did not come into effect until April 1, 1909, because of financial constraints. Under this law, patients who did not have family to support them were forcibly treated in public leprosaria. Japan was divided into five areas, the fifth of which included Nagasaki-ken, Fukuoka Prefecture, Ooita Prefecture, Saga Prefecture, Kumamoto Prefecture, Miyazaki Prefecture and Kagoshima Prefecture. In this area, Kumamoto was selected as the site of the sanatorium.[1]
The two main reasons for the leprosy prevention law were that foreigners visiting Japan after the Meiji Restoration (1868) were very much surprised to find leprosy sufferers wandering at large and claimed that something should be done about it and the Japanese Government was worried about a large number of people with the condition among those who were examined for the draft at age 20.
See main article: Forced Hospitalization at Honmyoji.
Year | Number of In-patients | |
---|---|---|
1909 | 115 | |
1920 | 226 | |
1930 | 654 | |
1940 | 1093 | |
1950 | 1111 | |
1958* | 1734* | |
1960 | 1635 | |
1970 | 1463 | |
1980 | 1250 | |
1990 | 988 | |
2000 | 683 | |
2003 | 592 | |
2004 | 557 | |
2005 | 552 | |
2006 | 483 | |
2007 | 456 | |
2008 | 426 |
Teacher of tanka (short poems).
(1892-2001) Japanese physician, who treated leprosy patients and studied leprosy.
See main article: Forced Hospitalization at Honmyoji. On July 9, 1940, 157 patients living around Honmyoji temple were forcibly hospitalized and sent to other sanatoriums. This incident was also called the Honmyoji incident. This was considered to be one of the "no leprosy patients in our prefecture" movements.
Matsuo Fujimoto was considered to have received unfair treatments in two trials because he was a leprosy patient.
Children born from patients with leprosy were denied schooling at Kurokami primary school in 1954. There were strikes, riots and no schooling for some time. After one year, three children finally attended the school from the house of Mr. Takahashi, the President of Kumamoto College of Commerce.See also Tatsudaryo Incident
Also called the Aisutaa incident, because of the name of the hotel. The hotel building was destroyed by the hotel administration.