Unique Face Journal

Uniqueface Group in Facebook

2010-08-10T22:56:00.000+09:00

twitter

2010-01-24T21:49:00.000+09:00

I started twitter in English. Please follow me!

http://twitter.com/uniquefacejp

NYC Walk for Kids with Craniofacial Difference, Oct. 18

2009-09-12T13:39:00.003+09:00

The action of Forwardface is not well known in Japan. Very powerfull movement!

http://positiveexposure.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/nyc-walk-for-kids-with-craniofacial-difference-oct-18/

http://www.firstgiving.com/forwardface

Changing Faces' face equality campaign

2009-08-27T05:35:00.004+09:00

I joined Changing Faces' face equality campaign to post my photo. It's very easy and effective action for all. I hope to join this campaign for Japanese people with facial disfigurement.

Nishikura's Work

2009-07-04T12:57:00.002+09:00

Difficulties with employment: understanding the experiences of people with visible differences

Miki Nishikura＊

University of Tokyo, Japan

Since the 1980s, and in contrast to Japan, many researchers in the UK have revealed that facial disfigurement can disturb social interactions and have a great psychological impact upon the people affected. Despite the known psychological and social consequences associated with facial disfigurement, little is understood of the economic difficulties confronting people with visible differences. The aim of this paper is to explore the various difficulties that people with visible differences experience in terms of employment. Fourteen people with visible differences participated in this small qualitative study. This paper argues that research on the difficulties for people with visible differences people in terms of employment has to pay attention to the stage ‘before applying for a job’ and, in addition, focus on the significant effects arising from a person’s concealment of their visible difference.

Keywords: visible difference; facial disfigurement; difficulties with employment; qualitative research

http://www.read-tu.jp/english/Forum2009/paper/nishikura.doc

Facebook

2009-01-03T23:55:00.001+09:00

My data of Facebook.

2nd International Conference

2008-01-25T12:39:00.000+09:00

2nd International Conference on Psychosocial Research and Services for Burn Survivors and People with Facial Disfigurement is being organized by Sunshine Foundation on May 17th-18th 2008, at the GIS Conference Center in Taipei City, Taiwan.

http://www.sunshine.org.tw/english/about.asp

Books written by Masayuki Ishii

2007-06-24T09:50:00.000+09:00

Books on disfigurement

2007-06-05T06:36:00.000+09:00

Psychiatric Disorders in Burn Patients: A Follow-Up Study

2007-05-31T07:15:00.000+09:00

http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowAbstract&ArtikelNr=56222&Ausga

With birthmark gone, face mask ensuring tot is not scarred for life

2007-05-30T06:44:00.000+09:00

With birthmark gone, face mask ensuring tot is not scarred for life

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5839575

Burnsurgery.org

2007-05-28T21:54:00.000+09:00

http://www.burnsurgery.org/

Daily Yomiuri

2007-05-28T12:22:00.001+09:00

Living with physical and mental scars

Living with physical and mental scars

Saori Kan / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
----------------------------------

Sitting in a chair in his room, Takeo Kubo described his feelings about the large purple birthmark that covers nearly all of his face and part of his body. "Sometimes children shout, 'Look! His face is red!' At some music appreciation groups I used to go to, some women gave me nasty looks even though I was just there to listen to music," Kubo said. "I wondered many times if I was just born to suffer."

There was no sign of sorrow, anger or pain in his voice or facial expressions, but his words carried the weight of someone who has been through a severe ordeal.

Kubo spoke in a scene from the 48-minute documentary film Unique Face Life, produced by Unique Face, a Tokyo-based nonprofit organization to support people with such disfigurements as scars and discolorations on their faces and bodies. The first screening was held last month in Tokyo.

The film's highlights are interviews with Kubo and Sayuri Okunaka, a Nagoya woman in her 40s, both of whom have marks congenitally caused by hemangioma, a usually benign purplish or reddish tumor made up of overabundant blood vessels.

The film also features comments by parents about their disfigured children.

The 150 members of Unique Face include people who are not disfigured, but all of the interviewers and camera crew members have disfigurements of some kind, and none of them had prior experience in movie production.

"We have to admit the film is unsophisticated," said Masayuki Ishii, a freelance journalist and president of Unique Face, who also has a hemangioma. "However, we believed we should produce it ourselves to convey to viewers what we are thinking and how we are feeling."

But it was not easy for them to find interviewees. As a professional journalist, Ishii is experienced in interviewing people and talking about himself in his own words. However, most disfigured people are not.

The exact number of such people is not known, but it is believed there are several hundred thousand individuals with facial and other disfigurements in Japan. Conditions and causes vary, but they include burns, albinism, alopecia areata (an autoimmune disorder causing hair loss), strabismus (eyes that look in different directions), Ota's nevus (blue and gray patches on the skin named after the physician who researched the condition) and neurofibromatosis (a hereditary nerve, skin and bone disease).

"These days, reconstructive surgery and medical treatments can be effective in making some kind of disfigurements much smaller or less noticeable, but a disfigurement can't be removed completely in many cases. Some scarring or complexion change usually remains," Ishii said.

In his case, he had to endure the pain of childhood treatments using dry ice to destroy unwanted skin tissue. The method was expected at the time to be effective in shrinking the discolored area caused by excess capillary vessels. But his disfigurement did not vanish.

Being ogled at and sometimes bullied verbally or physically, people with such dramatically unusual faces suffer deep social and emotional wounds. Many lose confidence and self-esteem.

According to Ishii, most of the adult Unique Face members he knows, including himself, have felt discriminated against during job interviews, with the interviewers clearly showing discomfort or getting upset because of their unusual appearances. Some people gave up trying to find employment after they were rejected by the companies they had interviews with.

Sometimes even families are not able to help.

"Relationships between disfigured people and their parents are complicated, too," Ishii said. "They usually hesitate to complain about their mental pain as they are afraid to hurt their parents, who blame themselves for their children's difficulties. On the other hand, there are many parents who don't try to understand their children's disfigurements or their feelings."

===

Makeup artist training course

Unique Face recently launched a camouflage therapy professional training course to teach makeup artists how to put makeup on disfigured people to cover up their irregular features.

"Camouflage therapy" is an internationally used term referring to techniques to cover disfigurements with special foundation. It reportedly dates back more than 50 years to when a cream was introduced to assist in the rehabilitation of severely burned pilots injured during World War II. Today, camouflage therapy can be used to conceal discolorations such as postoperative bruising and erythema, an abnormal reddening caused by congested capillaries.

During the first day of the course last month, a woman in her 20s introduced herself by saying she had decided to take the course as a step toward becoming a plastic and reconstructive surgeon in the future.

"When I used to work as an at-home saleswoman of cosmetics, I met a woman with burns on her face. Whenever she talked to me, she bent her head so as not to show her disfigurement to me. The experience made me feel I should learn how to reach out to disfigured people."

Hiroko Togawa, 38, on the organization's board of directors, said camouflage therapy "is not just a matter of makeup techniques. It's very important to have counseling with disfigured people to learn about their lives and how they want to be, building up trustful relations."

Togawa, with her refined features, seems to have no problem about her appearance. Even before entering the organization, however, she understood how disfigured people were mentally hurt by others when she had a boyfriend who had burns on his face.

"When we went on a date to Tokyo Disneyland, children stared at his face wherever he went and their parents didn't even stop them. I remember him saying one day, 'I really hate my face.'"

Two years ago, when the organization held a makeup lecture inviting a professional artist, Togawa was surprised when the artist suddenly started putting makeup on Ishii, who served as a model, without explaining how it would be finished and even asking how he wanted himself to look.

"Many makeup artists tend to selfishly think disfigured people must be happy if their marks are perfectly concealed," she said. "Actually, some of them prefer light makeup to make their differences at least faintly visible to others as they are afraid they won't be able to reemerge [as disfigured] when they remove it. We launched this course to build a standard of camouflage therapy in Japan so disfigured people will be able to use the professional services with ease."

===

Efforts to change society

Overseas, there are some similar organizations, including Changing Faces in Britain and AboutFace in Canada, which have pioneered support for people who have disfigurements.

According to a report by Changing Faces, at least 400,000 people in Britain have disfigurements. About 3,000 children are born every year with cleft lips, craniofacial conditions and birthmarks, while 40,000 people suffer visible burns and scalds.

"The severity of a disfigurement is not a reliable indicator of how distressing it will be," said Changing Faces founder James Partridge, who has scars left by a fire in a car, in an e-mail response to questions sent by The Daily Yomiuri.

According to Partridge, the British organization raises about 700,000 pounds [140 million yen] per year from all sources, the main one being charitable trusts and foundations.

"Working in schools for the last eight years, we employ a teacher on our team who can raise teachers' awareness about the issues that children with disfigurements can face (for example, teasing, bullying, isolation) and how to empower them and the rest of the class or school to deal with 'difference' with confidence," he said.

"The overseas organizations are systematically organized and well funded," Ishii said.

But the main funding source of Unique Face is the annual fee collected from its 150 members--6,000 yen per person.

"What we can do now is too limited due to shortage of funds and staff members," Ishii said. "But we continue to do our best to realize a society in which people respect the differences in one another's appearance. That's our dream represented in the name of Unique Face.

"I also hope to develop our activities internationally in the future in cooperation with people in other Asian nations who are in similar situations."

Screenings of "Unique Face Life" are scheduled for March 22, April 7 and May 14 in Tokyo. For more information about the documentary or camouflage therapy courses, planned in April and May, call Unique Face at (070)5575-0227, or visit the Web site www.uniqueface.org.

(Mar. 18, 2006)

BBC Inside Out - North East: Monday February 7, 2005

2007-05-28T12:17:00.000+09:00

BBC
Inside Out - North East: Monday February 7, 2005

http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/northeast/series7/facial_disfig.shtml

children birthmark

2007-05-28T06:58:00.000+09:00

http://purplemedicalblog.blogspot.com/search/label/children%20birthmark

my photo and profile

2007-05-26T08:25:00.004+09:00

a man with facial disfigurement, red birth mark, hemangioma.

Masayuki, ISHII born in 1965
President of NPO UniqueFace
Journalist

●BOOK
Ganmen Hyoryuki, 1999(Kamogawa Pub, Japanese)ISBN:4876994439
Mayoi no Karada, 2001(Shunjusha Pub, Japanese)ISBN:489590136X
Mitsume rareru kao, 2001(Koubunken Pub, Japanese)ISBN:4874982638
Kao to torauma, 2001(Kamogawa Pub, Japanese)ISBN:4876995958
Itimonitto Unique Face, 2001(Kaihoshuppan Pub, Japanese)ISBN:4759282394
Nikutai Hubyodo, 2003(Heibonsha Pub, Japanese)ISBN:4582851827

●Documentary video
“Unique Face Life” ,2006

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DPI WA Daily Bullentin "HitoBito"

Ｗｏｒｋ　ｓｈｏｐｓ
Every Road Leads to Convention on Human Right
http://www.dpi-japan.org/sapporo/dpi%20etc/english/20021017.html
Inclusion & cooperation - impaired groups who are not active in DPI

Ishii, Masayuki (Japan) President of Unique Face

　Workshop 9 on Oct. 16 was consisted of groups which has not been active in DPI. Taking "DPI plan for action" in mind, each organization reported its activities and made proposals. The most impressive speech was done by "Unique Face." This group is to support persons who have "disfigurement in face and body because of connate illness and acquired accident or burn. On January 2002 the group was chartered as non-profit organization by Tokyo prefecture.

　"There are potentially several hundreds thousands of people who are facing difficulties and suffering for interpersonal relations because of disfigurement of their faces. Especially at the first meeting, I hesitate to meet someone although he or she looks embarrassed. There also are many cases those who have Unique Faces could not find job because of their face. Whenever they meet someone, they have to be asked about their faces and to explain their reasons; so, it causes difficulties with social engagement. Even if it is serious, it is considered as just small problems."

　The organization has several missions for examples to support those who have disfigurement in their faces and to train professionals such as callous physicians. Once a month the organization also holds peer counseling or open meetings.

　Finally, Ishii said "we have come to Sapporo to encourage that several hundreds thousands of people who have disfigurement in their face should come out, and to make the public think about them."

2007-05-26T08:06:00.001+09:00

Unique Face Manifesto, Tokyo Japan

Mission
We will build the society in which everybody lives happily, regardless of the disfigurement.

Vision
1 We challenge to realize the social environment, which people with disfigurement can live with self-confidence.
2 We challenge to realize equal opportunities for the people with disfigurement in every social scene.

Objectives

Advocacy & empowerment

Message

We think everybody has a Unique Face.