A new experiential facility, Densho Aisei-kan, has opened in Setouchi, Okayama, allowing visitors to relive the isolated lives of leprosy patients quarantined on an island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea. It aims to preserve the history of the National Sanatorium Nagashima Aisei-en, Japan's first such institution, amid the aging of its residents. The site seeks to educate on past human rights violations to prevent their repetition.
The National Sanatorium Nagashima Aisei-en, Japan's first facility for isolating leprosy patients, opened in 1930 on Nagashima Island in the Seto Inland Sea, now part of Setouchi in Okayama Prefecture. It housed around 2,000 people in the 1940s, with approximately 7,000 admitted over its history. November marked its 95th anniversary.
The newly opened Densho Aisei-kan complements the sanatorium's historical museum, established in 2003, by offering immersive experiences of residents' lives. With the average age of the 67 current residents over 89, direct testimonies are fading; 91-year-old residents' association head Shinji Nakao is now the sole storyteller in ongoing programs.
At the entrance, a large photo panel of the Seto Inland Sea prompts reflection. Nakao said, “It was a long time before I could think it was beautiful.” Curator Tomohisa Tamura added, “It looks beautiful at first glance, but we want visitors to understand that this sea was also a huge ‘wall’ preventing the residents from returning to their hometowns.”
Visitors pass into the “Room of beginnings,” recreating the initial confinement and disinfection area, where they create a “registration name” on a tagged admission form—evoking the choice between pseudonyms to avoid stigma or real names to affirm dignity.
A highlight is the “VR theater: A family’s story,” projecting animated footage in three rooms from the perspectives of a boy with leprosy, his family, and bystanders, showing diagnosis, discrimination, and quarantine without headgear for a first-person view.
Other spaces feature residents' video testimonies and the broader history of infectious diseases. Tamura noted, “Discrimination has repeated itself even during the COVID-19 pandemic. We want visitors to learn in a three-dimensional way about the social structures that give rise to prejudice and discrimination beyond leprosy.”
The facility underscores the era's severe stigma, where families were compelled to send children away, and society shunned patients out of infection fears, aiming to pass on these lessons.
