Tojisha, literally translated as "those who are concerned," has been a key mobilizing concept in Japanese disability rights movement since the 1970s by defining and shaping the identity and agency of the disabled population as a collective group. Despite the criticism for its exclusive nature and its failure to account for the diversity and complexity by which membership to the community is granted / claimed, it was under the banner of tojisha that the disabled community came together and fought against oppression and discrimination to claim their rights. However, turning to hattatsu shogaisha or people with developmental disabilities (including LD, ADHD and high-functioning autism), we realize that the notion of tojisha is undergoing transition among this newly emerging group of disabled individuals. Their narratives lack the political orientation and will for active engagement in social changes that were prevalent in previous movements, and are instead characterized by a recessive tone of withdrawal into the personal realm of experience. In this paper, I closely examine the narratives of three individuals with hattatsu shogai that I interviewed over the past two years, and argue that tojisha-ness for these individuals is no longer a concept to bring people together for a collective activist project, but has evolved into a concept that indicates the dispersed yet shared experience of struggle to carve out one's positionality in society, despite various disabilities or differences.
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