How cure was justified: rhetorical strategies for the treatment of colour vision deficiency in the 1970s and 1980s in Japan

Abstract

As colour vision deficiency (CVD) is hereditary and incurable, it is widely known that people with CVD do not need treatment, but rather appropriate social accommodation. Regardless, some practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine have attempted to treat CVD. By investigating the rhetorical strategies of these therapists who allegedly treated CVD in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s, this study analyses how they justified treating CVD despite the widespread prevalence of social accommodation. These therapists argued that treatment alone could remove the ‘dirty’ vision of people with CVD, even though it was clear that any trouble because of CVD can be mitigated through social accommodation. This finding has implications for understanding the history of the emancipation of people with CVD, enhancing the disability rights movement to refute the medical model that discounts the effects of social accommodation, and identifying how it demarcates itself from social accommodation.