In the trial of a man believed to have Hansen’s disease, the judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys all wore white lab coats and rubber gloves, and chopsticks were used to pick up and display exhibits.

And for the stated purpose of preventing contagion, the trial took place, not in a regular court, but in a “special courtroom” that was set up in a sanatorium or some clinical institution in accordance with the government’s policy of segregation against those suffering from leprosy.

The man in question was arrested in 1952 for murder in a remote village in Kumamoto Prefecture. The case has since come to be known as the “Kikuchi incident” after the current name of........

© The Asahi Shimbun