This paper begins by providing a history of Japanese law pertaining to special education and its change towards a more inclusive education with the ratification of United Nations Conventions of the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD). With the changes in laws, more children with constant medical care needs in Japan have the opportunity to attend mainstream schools. The recent court case, K. K. v. Kanagawa prefecture and Kawasaki city, ruled against a child with medical care needs to attend mainstream school and made the judgment that a special needs school (tokubetsushien gakkō ) is the appropriate placement for the child based on the child's disability type and degree of disability rather than needs and regardless of the wishes of the child's parents. This paper explores the case judgement and discusses where Japanese special education laws fall short similar to that of the U.S. system based on Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). We suggest the need to keep inclusion as the basic human rights aligned with the Article 24 of the UNCRPD rather than focusing on the continuum of education principle in IDEA, and operationalize the law into practice to make integration of children with disabilities, including children with constant medical care needs, into mainstream education schools.

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The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) guarantees the right of all children to receive inclusive education and requires reasonable accommodations be provided accordingly. Japan, which ratified the CRPD in 2014, now positions the social model of disability at the core of its domestic laws and, in schools, we see more provisions of reasonable accommodations for children with disabilities. In this article, we analyze the very first judgments delivered on reasonable accommodations for children with medical care needs since Japan’s ratification of the CRPD. The case was closed by simply recognizing the “financial limitations” of the municipal government and school while excessively emphasizing the parents’ “duty to ensure children to receive general education.” Such a judgment did not sufficiently reflect the intent of the CRPD and relevant domestic laws guaranteeing inclusive education as a “human right” for children. We expect an inversion of this case in the future.