SocietyJapan’s ‘leprosy island’: The dark history of Nagashima

In the 1930s, Japanese authorities responded to the spread of leprosy by confining patients in sanatoriums, including facilities on Nagashima. The disease attacks nerves and can deform the body. Although treatments emerged in the late 1940s, the government did not end forced confinement until 1996. By then, many patients had been cured for decades but remained separated from society under the policy.