In the same year, leprosy patients began to line up on the road to Honmyoji, a noted temple in Kumamoto, Kyushu, Japan, for mercy.
The Meiji Period notably ushered in the beginning of widespread leprosy discrimination in Japan.
Upon seeing a miserable 30-year-old woman abandoned near a watermill, Father Testevuide became determined to establish a facility for such people.
[citation needed] In 1875, Dr. Masafumi Goto founded the Kihai Hospital in Tokyo which was specially designed to treat leprosy patients.
At the request of the King of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Dr. Masasao Goto visited Hawaii and introduced their method.
Most of the Japanese doctors who established these facilities discontinued their activities after the start of public leprosy sanatoriums.
[citation needed] Hannah Riddell established the Kaishun Hospital in 1895 in Kumamoto and her activities are mentioned elsewhere.
An important meeting was held at the Banker's Club in Tokyo, both to save her and to discuss leprosy problems facing Japan.
The Japanese government had begun to take an interest in leprosy problems since they found many patients in the drafts for military service.
Finally, the Japanese government, spurred by the events of the 1905 meeting, promulgated the first leprosy prevention law in 1907 and started five public sanatoriums in 1909.
[7] In Japanese sanatoriums, in 1945, because of food shortage, many patients died of tuberculosis in mainland Japan with a rate of 20% at the worst leprosaria.
Hiroshi Shima, Fujio Otani, Minoru Narita and Kunio Murakami were primary movers in the abolition of Japan's Leprosy Prevention Law.
The Zenkankyo (Patients' Union) staged a number of struggles against the Ministry of Welfare and they finally won the abolishment of the 1953 Leprosy Prevention Law in 1996.
[15][16] Under the law, the Japanese government acknowledged how former leprosy patients’ family members suffered great distress and hardship over many years under the nation's leprosy discrimination policy, owing to, among other things, to the difficulty of forming the types of familial relationships they desired with the patients in a context of prejudice and discrimination.
[15] The law also required the Japanese government to pay compensation to eligible family members of former leprosy patients whose family member contacted leprosy while residing in Japan, or Japanese controlled land outside Japan up to August 15, 1945 such as Taiwan, Korea, or other region.
She was interested in leprosy problems and donated money to Hannah Riddell in financial distress since 1915, and other foreigners.
Hannah Riddell (1855–1932) was an English woman who devoted her life to the salvation of Hansen's disease patients in Japan.
Mary Cornwall-Legh (May 20, 1857 – December 18, 1941) was a highly educated English woman who devoted herself, after age 50, to missionary work in Japan and especially to the welfare, education and medical care of leprosy patients in Kusatsu, Gunma Prefecture, Japan.
Keisai Aoki (April 8, 1893 – March 6, 1969) was a Japanese missionary who virtually paved the way to the establishment of Hansen's disease sanatorium Kunigami-Airakuen, Okinawa, with extraordinary difficulties.
She wrote a book, "Spring in a small island" in 1938, about her experiences in persuading leprosy patients in remote areas of Japan into hospitalization.
Masasue Suho (October 8, 1885 – June 20, 1942) was a Japanese physician, the director of the Sorok Island Sanatorium in Korea.
He completed the world's biggest leprosy facility Sorok Island Sanatorium hospitalizing 6000 patients.
Ryumyo Tsunawaki (January 24, 1876 – December 5, 1970, was a Buddhist priest who established a leprosy hospital Minobu Jinkyo-en, in Minobu-cho, Yamanashi-ken, Japan in 1906.
She was said to be "one of doctors of the Department of psychiatry of Tokyo University soon after the war", who "greatly helped the Ministry of Education and the General Headquarters as English-speaking secretary", and to be "an adviser to Empress Michiko".
The chaulmoogra oil had been the only one remedy in wide use before Guy Henry Faget proved the efficacy of promin in 1943.
Suketoshi Chujo (中條資俊 1872–1947) was a Japanese physician, a Hansen's disease researcher, the first director of Matsugaoka Hoyoen Sanatorium (1909–1947).
Kageyoshi Tada (?-1950) was a Japanese physician who worked in Miyako Nanseien Sanatorium, Okinawa Prefecture Japan between 1938 ad 1945.
In 1945, 110 in-patients died of malaria, malnutrition and as direct effects of air attacks, while his group escaped to the army shelter.
Takekichi Sugai (菅井竹吉, 1871–1944) was the first chief doctor at Sotojima Hoyoen Sanatorium (1909–1923) who wrote many papers on leprosy.
Westerners who were involved in the care of leprosy patients based partly on Modernization of Medicine and Foreigners (Souda)[18] and others