Disability Prestige and Perceived Disability Disadvantage: Intersubjective Structure of Disability as a Social Disadvantage in the Japanese Metropolitan Area

Abstract This paper explores disability disadvantage in Japanese society by analyzing the structure of people’s perceptions. Following in part the occupational prestige ranking, a random-sampled postal survey conducted in 2018 in the Southern Kanto District of Japan measured the extent to which respondents thought 33 different bodily conditions were an impediment to aspects of social life (e.g. work, school, and marriage) on a six-point scale. There were 248 valid cases (24.8%) out of the sample of 1,000 persons. Based on the mean scores for each bodily condition, physical and sensory conditions ranked high, psychiatric conditions ranked in the intermediate range, and disfigurements ranked low, as confirmed by multidimensional scaling using Euclidean distance. Alternatively, based on correlations of response patterns as similarity, some clusters of disability types emerged: physical/mental incapacity, mental/physical disorders, and disfigurement. These results indicate the residual social disadvantage for some disability types according to perception in Japan, while suggesting diversity among disabilities both quantitatively and qualitatively. The latter point also implies different corporal meanings attached to different aspects of body function and structure.