Japan Times
Readers in Council
March 25, 2001
The Supreme Court’s rejection of a naturalized Japanese citizen’s claim to receive disability benefits is a national embarrassment. Regardless of the reasoning of the court and the Osaka government, to deny disability benefits to a blind and elderly woman who has spent all her life in Japan on account of what it seems to be a legal technicality is absurd.
The judges of the courts and the bureaucrats of the government may be the elite of the land and may have received the highest caliber education available. However, when it comes to showing a human face, these so-called elite, whose purpose is to first and foremost serve the people, must learn something about showing compassion to their fellow human beings.
I wonder if one of these Supreme Court judges would have given the same decision in this case if the blind and elderly woman was his or her own mother?
KO UNOKI
Fujisawa, Kanagawa
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