More than 1,500 people filed a petition Monday with the Tokyo Bar Association demanding that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government return sex education materials to a local school for mentally disabled children.
The petition, submitted to the bar association's civil liberties commission, was filed by teachers of nursing schools for the mentally disabled, parents of such students and education experts.
The group demanded that the Tokyo board of education return 145 items, including dolls featuring sexual organs, which it confiscated from the Nanao Nursing School in Hino, western Tokyo.
They also demanded that the board withdraw its September punishment meted out on 116 teachers and workers at public nursing schools in Tokyo, including the demotion of the Nanao school's principal, on grounds that they provided "radical" sex education to disabled students.
The request concerned the board's decision in July to confiscate the sex education materials used to teach mentally disabled children, on grounds that they are pornographic.
The items include stuffed dolls with sexual organs, such as those used as teaching materials in 23 countries, pants featuring imitations of a penis or bags imitating a uterus. The board also ordered the school to stop teaching the names and positions of sexual organs through songs.
School officials said the items are effective in helping children learn about sex and that with parental support it has provided such education to its 150 charges for years.