Message from Yasuyo Takayanagi about color vision

Color vision problems are problems of individual rights. To avoid discrimination, let’s use the term “color special vision”!

Many detailed studies on color vision have been published, including studies in biophysics (1987), molecular biology (1986), and the phenomenon of X chromosome inactivation in women (1961). Even so, in Japan the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (currently the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), the Japanese Ophthalmological Society, and the Japan Ophthalmologists Association continue to overrate a set of pseudoisochromatic plates developed in 1916 for use in testing men for the military draft. They have used this test as a measure of ability in daily life for the people of Japan, fostering conditions for rights abuses in society. This website was planned with several purposes in mind. The first is to help people understand color vision problems in Japan from the perspectives of public health and social medicine. The second is to release all Japanese people from the misplaced confidence in pseudoisochromatic plates. And finally we hope to help make it so that all people who misread such plates are given opportunities to have their abilities assessed in specific practical settings and can live positively and with gratitude to their ancestors, especially their mothers, without being held back by issues related to genetics.

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Books by Yasuyo Takayanagi

  • What Teachers Should Know: Common Sense about Color Vision

    Pasuteru Shobou 1999

  • Understanding Color Mates

    June 10, 2014
    Hamajima Shoten Publishers

  • Color Vision Deficiency Is Not a Disability

    Koubunken Co., Ltd., June 1996

  • Barrier-Free Color Manual: A Guide to Using Colors to Avoid Confusion in People with Color Vision Deficiency

    (Joint authorship) Pasuteru Shobou 1998

  • The Color Mate Test, a Color Vision Test for Schools

    Japan Color Research Institute
    First edition April 1995
    Third edition April 2012

  • People with Color Vision Deficiency, Stand Up and Fight!

    Shufunotomo Co., Ltd., 1988

  • “Colorblindness,” the Arbitrary Disability

    The Asahi Shimbun Company, June 2002

  • “Colorblindness,” the Arbitrary Disability (Revised Edition)

    The Asahi Shimbun Company, August 2014