Today, I would like to speak on deafblind people and communication, particularly, the importance of communication for deafblind people. I will speak first on my own experience and then will outline the history and current situation of support services for deafblind people in Japan, with focus on communication support services provided by interpreters. Lastly, I would like to share with you my recent thoughts in relation to communication.

I lost my sight at the age of nine, hearing at the age of 18 and became totally deafblind just two decades ago in 1981. Though I had led the life with total blindness for nine years prior to losing hearing, I could not imagine the serious impact deafblindness can bring. Only when I became totally deaf, I realized how qualitatively different it is to be deafblind.

When I became blind with my hearing intact at the age of nine, I was not too shocked. It was because the world of "sound" was still left to me even if I had lost my sight. Using "sound", I could expose myself to various experiences as well as to enjoy my life. But, at the age of 18, when I shifted from the state of total blindness to total deafblindness, an enormous shock overtook me. In other words, I felt as if I was snatched away from this real world and transferred into a different world all alone. It was an experience of absolute solitude.

Why was I hit by such enormous shock when I became deafblind? Was it because I could no longer cherish the beautiful scenery of the starlit sky or the sea at sunset? Or, was it because I could no longer awake in the morning to the song of the birds that comes afloat through the open window or delight to the beautiful melody of Bach and Mozart that comes forth from the audio system?

I would answer "NO" to either one of these questions. Needless to say, I do miss the "scenery" and "music" that I could no longer enjoy. However, what gave me the greatest pain was not the loss of sight and hearing itself but the vanishment of communication with others.

I was taken aback. Till then, I had never thought of communication as having an importance as such. I meditated amidst the fathomless solitude and distress. "Perhaps a man may live without sight and hearing. But, can a man ever live deprived of communication?" Thus, I was left in a state of despair. However, the time had come to liberate me from the jail of darkness and silence. There were three stages in this process of liberation. The first stage was the acquisition of a new communication method. In my case, it was the discovery of a new method. It was discovered by my mother and was named the"finger braille." With it, I have regained communication with others. After a three-month convalescent period spent at home, I returned to the high school department of the school for the blind where I was enrolled thattime. My classmates seemed to be shocked to find me deafblind. However, as soon as they learned of the new conversation method, friends after friends approached to talk to me.

"What were you doing the past three months? You know, we were all looking forward to your return." A female classmate spoke to me on my fingers gently.

We are going out of the dorm tonight to have fun at a pub." A male dorm-mate talked to me a bit like a conspirator but very reassuringly and patted me on my shoulder.

Furthermore, another friend who is a Christian said thus to me. "There awaits for you the act of contemplation. I believe that God has granted you a life different from what it had been, a life to be abound with fertile contemplation."

My friends quickly became familiar with the new method, finger braille, and talked to me one after another. Here, I entered upon the second stage of liberation. It was the stage whereupon "actual communication with others" was realized. Even if I had acquired a communication method, should there be no one nearby to communicate with, my solitude could not have been relieved.

It was after a few months following my return to the school when I stepped into the third stage of liberation. It was the stage where the service of "interpretation" was provided. Even though I had acquired a new communication method and had many friends who learned this method to talk to me, I could not have felt I made a true return to this world had I not received the service of "interpretation." A conversation is usually carried out only when one wants to talk with someone else, perhaps on some topics he/she is interested in. However, talking to a deafblind person only when one wants to is not at all enough to support his/ her communication.

The act of "interpretation" is indispensable to support, in the truest sense, the communication of a deafblind person. Interpretation is an act which helps realize the interaction between a deafblind individual and individuals around him/her and which transmits to the deafblind individual such information as what is being conversed among others and what the situation is like, as well as how it is changing, in his/her surrounding environment. It is a work needed to provide prerequisite conditions for the deafblind individual so that he/she can have access to the surrounding environment and take actions in the environment. Ever since I had received this support of interpretation, I have begun to feel that I had entered upon the third stage, that is, the final stage of liberation from the solitude of the deafblind.

In the meantime, a group of volunteers was organized in Tokyo to support me in November 1981. The activities of this volunteer group consisted of securing, training and dispatching interpreters to support me study for matriculation exam and for studies after matriculation. With the support provided by finger braille interpreters dispatched by this group, in 1983, I turned out to be the first deafblind person in Japan to study in a university. I majored in pedagogy for deafblind children and continued my studies in graduate school. After working as a teacher at a number of universities, I have come to hold the job I have now.

Thus, after I had experienced the bottom of solitude as a deafblind person, the past two decades unfolded itself as a gradual process of liberation from the jail of solitude through three different stages.

Let me now briefly report on the history and current situation of support services for deafblind persons in Japan. Actually, my personal experience which I have just presented is inseparably knit into the development of support services for the deafblind in Japan.

The activities of the volunteer group organized twenty years ago in Tokyo to support me made a continued progress and began to exert gradual influence upon Japanese society. Two years after my enrollment into a university, another deafblind university student came forth in Japan in the city of Osaka. His name is Shin'ichiro Kadokawa. A group of volunteers to support him was also organized with the help from the group organized for my support. The activities of these two volunteer groups gradually expanded to reach out to many deafblind persons other than Shin'ichiro and me.

Public provisions designed specifically to support deafblind people did not exist in Japan at that time and services by non-governmental organizations barely existed also. Therefore, the training and dispatching of interpreters for deafblind persons provided by these two volunteer groups must have given a great stimulation and inspiration to many deafblind persons and the people concerned.

Ten years after I became deafblind, in 1991, Japan Deafblind Association (JDBA) was established as the social welfare corporation dedicated to promoting independence and social participation of deafblind persons. The volunteer group of Tokyo served as the parent body for the establishment of JDBA. The revenue of JDBA consists of government subsidies and private contributions. In the same year, parallel to this development, local deafblind clubs were organized in Tokyo and Osaka.

When we look back over our history since 1981, the first and the second decade take on a very different aspect concerning support activities for the deafblind. The first decade centered on supporting specific deafblind individuals such as Shin'ichiro and me. However, in the decade after 1991, a great leap forward was made in both governmental and non-governmental service provisions to support deafblind population in general. In the second decade, Shin'ichiro and I have been serving in the board of trustees and board of directors of JDBA, respectively, as well as taking active roles in the activities of the local clubs.

A big change has taken place in the last ten years. At the time of establishment, JDBA had got hold of only some tens of deafblind persons.

However, as of March 2001, there are 560 deafblind persons registered to JDBA. In the same way, the interpreter dispatching project which JDBA started with a minimal number of interpreters now counts 1700 registered interpreters bearing an annual result of more than 7000 dispatches.

The local deafblind clubs are also spreading out steadily and we can now find 31 of them, inclusive of provisional ones soon to be organized into clubs, in different prefectures. Japan is divided administratively into 47 prefectures, so in 2/3 of those prefectures, there exists now a base at which activities of and for deafblind persons can be developed. Furthermore, workshops for deafblind persons are now being established f deafblind persons.

On the other hand, due to its unstable revenue, we have come to think that the projects of JDBA alone would not be sufficient to fully support the independence and social participation of deafblind persons. It has been our wish to have the project of training and dispatching interpreters promoted into a purely public service funded by government budget because we consider it the fundamental right of living for a deafblind person to receive support services from interpreters.

Toward this end, we have first set our goal to have local governments initiate services for deafblind persons uniquely in respective localities by acquiring subsidies from the national government. We made a continued effort to work on the national government and, as a consequence, the national government included in its list of subsidies to local governments the interpreter training service in 1999 and the interpreter dispatching service in 2000. As of 2001, 23 local governments are carrying out interpreter training service and 11 local governments interpreter dispatching service. As an increase in local governments initiating these services is well anticipated, I am expecting that, in five to ten years, all the local governments in Japan would be providing these two services.

You may have wondered why we have been concentrating so much effort on the training and dispatching of interpreters in the movement to support deafblind people in Japan. There is only one answer to it. "To guarantee freedom of communication for deafblind people." Then why is it so important for a deafblind person to be guaranteed of communication? For a human being, I believe that communication is something like food or water, or even air. In other words, without communication, a human being may not be able to live. If so, it would naturally apply to a deafblind person also. Rather, because of the serious limitation imposed upon communication due to deafblindness, we may say that communication is acutely needed by deafblind persons. Without sight and hearing, communication is the only window open to the surrounding world.

Nevertheless, in modern society such pressing and acute needs of deafblind persons are not sufficiently recognized. Take, for example, a person with serious disability in his/her limbs. Nobody would raise a doubt as to his/her needs for support at toiletting, bathing and eating. On the other hand, the need for communication in a deafblind person is not readily understood as a pressing need. Such difference arises because in many cases, a deafblind person is able to take care of oneself in toiletting, bathing and eating, and there is no imminent risk of life even if communication is meager.

In short, as there is no risk of physical life, the needs of a deafblind person are not taken very seriously by people around him/her even though he/she is in agony deprived of communication in the jail of darkness and silence.

However, the lack of communication may inflict an actual and serious damage upon a deafblind person. We may say that the damage is inflicted not on the physical but mental life and, furthermore, on the spirit of the deafblind person. Viewed from the opposite side, people have the right to demand society for the provision of minimum necessary conditions for their life. If it is so, may we not say that deafblind people are entitled to have the freedom of communication guaranteed? For deafblind people, communication is like food and water. To be more concrete, we need to demand society to actualize the following measures. These measures correspond to the "three stages for liberation" I had experienced.

:
1.     Activities that help deafblind persons acquire and become proficient in communication skills
2.     Activities that create various opportunities and sites (such as local clubs) in which deafblind persons have actual chances to communicate with many people
3.     Training and dispatching of interpreters sufficient in both number and quality to guarantee freedom of communication and to support independence and social participation of deafblind persons

Such activities should not be left to private initiative alone. Instead, these should be taken over as public measures based on the responsibility of the national and local government, for receiving the services of interpreters is a fundamental right indispensable for deafblind people to live.

It is true that deafblind population is relatively small and its political pressure is far from strong. Despite these facts, I believe we deafblind people must appeal our needs to the society with pride and dignity. Because not only is it important for us deafblind but very important for the society as well. When society sets off to eliminate or exclude a part of its constituent member, the society is endangered of its own balance which may eventually lead to its collapse.

In the environment of nature there exists the ecological system. Analogously, I think there exists the "human ecological system" created by human members in the society. The ecological system in natural environment is supported by the flow of physical substance and energy and the existence of a huge number of organism and their activities. On the other hand, I think what support human ecological system are the many communication exchanged between one person and another. It may also be expressed as the "ecological system on human communication."

This system is created and sustained by the rich communication each member of the society exchanges with the people around him/her in the sphere of his/her life. If it is so, the enrichment of communication of a minority group such as deafblind people not only benefits the deafblind population but may also extend its desirable influence like ripples to the society as a whole.

It is said that the word "communicate" has its origin in the Latin word "communicare." The word communicare does not simply mean "to transmit information." It also has such meanings as "to share," "to take common counsel" or "to join with." When we think of the communication of deafblind people, I find it significant to respect the meaning of this Latin origin, communicare. To realize a rich communication for a deafblind individual, a one-sided appeal from the deafblind individual is not adequate. At the same time, a one-sided transmission of information from the interpreter is also not adequate. What is important is that the two share the distress and joy, the potentials and possibilities of the deafblind individual and join to create a new situation through mutual cooperation. Such act of communication, I believe, would contribute to the invigoration of our society, that is, the ecological system on human communication.

I would like to conclude my presentation with a small poem I wrote for this occasion.

I sat motionless, wordless.

But when your fingers touched my fingertips,
Words emerged into being,
Throwing light and invoking melodies lost.
When I communicated with you through my fingertips,
There arose a new cosmos,
And I discovered the world again.

Communication is my life.
My life is and will always be with words
Words spun out from the cosmos on my fingertips.