This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Over the last 150 years, activists and policymakers in Japan have tried to improve access for disabled persons, but these attempts have frequently excluded as many impaired individuals as they have empowered. Why and how have stakeholders pursued these accessibility projects for different demographics in modern Japan?