Inclusion through Communication: Support Activities for the Learning-Disabled and Autistics in Tama, Tokyo

In Japan people are encouraged to include the disabled in such places as regular workplaces and schools as in some other countries. However, even now, one third of adults with learning disability and autism are placed in facilities for the mentally-handicapped, because many persons concerned do not altogether consent to the idea of inclusion as such, particularly when the learning-disabled and autistics inflict harm on things and people in the community.

This paper is based upon my research conducted in Tama District, the most populated suburban area in Tokyo, to see how those who attend on the learning-disabled and autistics in the district act in response when they are exposed to a variety of such harm in the community. The attendants are apt to assume that harmful doings by the learning-disabled and autistics are connected with what was done by others, including the attendants themselves. Thereupon, they attempt to unravel an unexpected harmful doing in terms of the relationship of the learning-disabled and autistics with other persons, trying to see what caused each individual with learning disability and autism to turn to be harmful. This attempt leads to their attaching importance to painstaking communication with him/her as a measure to include him/her in the community.

     I will discuss this way of dealing with the problem in the light of the concept of double contingency first advocated by Talcott Parsons and later modified by Niklas Luhmann, believing that it can empirically be applied.