W HEN YASUHIKO FUNAGO was diagnosed in 2000 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( ALS ), better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative illness with no cure, he went through a period of complete despair. In late July, nearly two decades later, crowds cheered as he became the first ALS patient to be elected to Japan’s parliament, the Diet. “I am full of emotions that this moment has arrived,” Mr Funago said in a speech read out by his helper. “I may appear weak, but I have more guts than others as it has been a matter of life and death for me.”

Mr Funago, a member of the opposition group Reiwa Shinsengumi, is one of two wheelchair-bound lawmakers to win seats in the upper house in elections on July 21st, along with Eiko Kimura, who is paralysed from the neck down. Disabled people are 7.4% of Japan’s population, but Mr Funago and Ms Kimura will be the only two of the Diet’s 713 members in wheelchairs. Only a handful of disabled people have ever won seats. (The 535 members of America’s current Congress, by contrast, include at least four people who have lost arms, legs or an eye, among other disabilities.)

“Japanese politics is still centred around able-bodied men,” says Jun Ishikawa, head of a government commission on disabilities. Political parties do not field many disabled candidates. The authorities tend to hide people with disabilities away in institutions, secluded from the rest of society. Students with special needs usually attend special schools. “Japan has focused more on creating segregated institutions than integrating the disabled into local communities,” says Mr Ishikawa. This has bred stigma and isolation.

The government has been slow to admit the problem. It took seven years to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, making it the 140th country to do so. It did not agree until this year to pay compensation to thousands of people with disabilities who were forcibly sterilised under a eugenics law that was only repealed in 1996. Last year several government agencies were found to have falsified the number of disabled people they employ, in some cases for decades, to meet official targets, instead of just hiring more. Prejudice against the disabled has also turned violent. Nineteen people at a care facility in Sagamihara, south of Tokyo, were fatally stabbed in 2016 by a man who “wanted disabled people to disappear”.