Dr. Wanhong Zhang, a respected teacher,
I will call you Wang Hong, as I have always called you.
My name is Nagase Osamu. I am a senior researcher at the Institute of Ars Vivendi, Ritsumeikan University, and the chair of the International Committee of the Japan Society for Disability Studies. I would like to say farewell to you as an individual.
I never dreamed that I would see you for the last time when we met at Wuhan in the fall of 2019 for the East Asia Disability Studies Forum that we have developed together. You and your team hosted the Forum so grandly in Wuhan. You kindly invited us to your home and I remember your kindness, charm, and mastery of hospitality. My sincere condolences to your family, friends and colleagues.
Wang Hong, I first met you in Wuhan in August 2013. Wuhan was very lively in the middle of summer and I was impressed that the Wuhan Declaration on Inclusive Education was issued by purely non-governmental organizations of persons with disabilities at a meeting hosted by your group. I was also pleased to see that there was a training camp for young people with disabilities and the participation of people with intellectual disabilities as I was a board member of Inclusion International.
When you graciously welcomed me into your office for our first meeting, I was surprised to see the calligraphy of the President of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations on the wall. At the time, Japan-China relations were strained by territorial disputes, but I remember very well how warmly we were welcomed.
Already since that time, you have been surrounded by many people working on disability rights. I know that those who have been trained by you are now active as leaders not only in China but also in Africa, Korea, and Europe. I sincerely respect you for having nurtured so many such human resources.
Our interaction deepened when the Wuhan group you led began attending the East Asia Disability Studies Forum in 2016. Your international network is truly impressive, and you have taken advantage of it to become active on a global scale. You invited me to join international conferences that you organize and in 2017 I went to Wuhan with Tateiwa Shinya and Kao Yayu. You also gave an intensive lecture on the rights of people with disabilities at Ritsumeikan University in 2021. It was very powerful even online.
We developed a close friendship not only in our professional lives but also in our personal lives: when you visited Japan again in 2017, you not only stayed at our home in Yokohama, but also visited together my hometown, Aomori, on the northern tip of Honshu. I will never forget our visits to my mother's family's public bathhouse together and staying at my aunt's house in the rural area of my father's family. I vividly remember the scene of you, through my interpretation, talking with my relatives about many things, including the Senkaku Islands, and we also visited Nikko together in 2019. These pleasant memories are my treasures.
You continued the very important and at the same time very difficult work of defending the human rights of people with disabilities based in China. I was also very aware that the work was getting more and more difficult, and it now seems like a dream to me that civil society organizations were able to issue a declaration in 2013. The training camp for people with disabilities could no longer be held after Guangzhou in 2015.
Your position also became increasingly difficult. I felt through your writings that it had become difficult to maintain a pure position as a researcher, and I was even forced to make a critical comment on your report to an international organization in 2022. Did you think, "You are in a comfortable position, what a selfish thing to say"? Or did you understand that my comments were necessary?
Wang Hong, I had hoped to speak with you one day freely and as a friend about such difficulties. However, that opportunity has been lost. I do not doubt for a moment that you have truly and courageously taken up the challenge for the human rights of people with disabilities in the midst of a difficult environment. And the barriers you faced are barriers that we must also challenge.
I was very much looking forward to seeing you for the first time since Wuhan at the very successful East Asia Disability Studies Forum 2023 held in Korea last year, but unfortunately you were unable to come due to illness.
And the profound poem you contributed to the memorial meeting for Tateiwa Shinya held in Kyoto in January this year, which again you were unable to attend due to illness, deeply moved me. At the same time, I felt uneasy. Reading your poem dedicated to Tateiwa, I felt anxious because I could sense your own determination as well.
That was why I was so happy to learn in March that you were running for the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I thought that your health had improved. I felt that the UN Committee whose members cannot be involved in the examination of their own countries, was the right place for you to make your international mark. I took the liberty of writing a letter of recommendation and sending it to you, even though you did not ask me to do so and it was not necessary. So, I felt very uncertain when I learnt that your candidacy was cancelled just before the election in June.
In your last e-mail to me, received on June 10, you wrote that " I look forward to the opportunity to meet you in Japan or Wuhan, as well as more opportunities to contribute to the East Asian disability cooperation and exchange”.
We would like to carry on that desire of yours in East Asia. The more difficult the environment around us becomes, the more meaningful and stronger our cooperation, exchange, and solidarity become. I am convinced that this has significance beyond the disability field. This East Asia Disability Studies Forum is an important part of such efforts.
My dear friend Wang Hong, I wanted to learn more from you. I wanted to talk to you more. I never thought that I would be mourning you at this Forum.
But I am so glad I met you. I am so glad you were there. I will cherish the memories of the past eleven years and keep them alive. Thank you so much. Now please rest in peace.