New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 2019. Susan L. Burns examines the history of leprosy in Japan from medieval times until the present. Refusing to treat leprosy patients as simply victims of state power, Burns recovers their voices in the debates that surrounded the most controversial aspects of sanitarium policy, including the use of sterilization, segregation, and the continuation of confinement long after leprosy had become a curable disease.