Minamata

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1 水俣病 Minamata Disease

水俣病 Minamata Disease

Minamata is located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Kyushu Island. Minamata is a fishing village of natural beauty, but a factory of chemical company Chisso polluted the bay with mercury and the villagers who ate the fish caught in the bay were poisoned by mercury. Minamata disease was officially acknowledged in 1956, and becomes a symbol of environmental pollution in Japan (see Wikipedia for detail).

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Photo Collections

An American photographer Eugene Smith is a pioneer to report the suffering of victims to the world in the early 1970s.

Minolta Photography - William Eugene Smith 1918-1978

W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith. Minamata: life: sacred and profane. Tokyo: Soju-sha, 1973. OCLC:4047043

Aileen Smith has a web site, Aileen Archive, and you can look at some of the photos and the slide show. Also, there is a video footage of interview with Eugene and Aileen Smith .

Many Japanese professional photographers took photos of Minamata disease victims, however among them Shisei Kuwabara （桑原史成）is perhaps most well known.

桑原史成『桑原史成写真全集　第1巻』草の根出版会、2004年(Kuwabara, Shisei. Kuwabara shisei shashin zenshu. 001. Tokyo: Kusanoneshuppankai, 2004.) OCLC: 55864588

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Documentary Films

Director Noriaki Tsuchimoto （土本典昭）, who is one of the pioneer of documentary film movement in Japan produced a number of Minamata related documentaries.

土本典昭主要作品 (Major works of Noriaki Tsuchimoto, see also this website) Many of his works are available at SIGLO, some of them have English subtitles.

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Literary Expression

Local writer Michiko Ishimure （石牟礼道子）has written many novels and poems related to Minanmata. She received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts in 1973.

Michiko Ishimure. Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: Our Minamata Disease. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2003. OCLC: 52853978

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Medical Research

Doctor Masazumi Harada （原田正純）has been been involved in this issue since 1950s as a graduate student and has been the top specialist of Minamata disease and other pollution-related disease. He has also conducted a field research on mercury pollution in Indian reservation in Canada (see this video footage of CBC.)

Masazumi Harada, "Minamata Disease and the Mercury Pollution of the Globe."
Harada, Masazumi, Sachie Tsushima, and Timothy S. George. Minamata Disease. [Kumamoto, Japan]: Kumamoto Nichinichi Shinbun Culture & Information Center, 2004. OCLC:55051715
原田正純　『水俣が映す世界』日本評論社、1989年 (Masazumi Harada. Minamata ga utsusu sekai. Tokyo:Nihon Hyoronsha, 1989.) OCLC:22280833

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Scientific Research

When Minamata disease broke out, no university was teaching about environmental studies. Back then, Jun Ui was an assistant researcher of engineering department at the University of Tokyo, the top university of Japan. He organized an unofficial student-initiated course of pollution studies from the perspective of ordinary citizen outside of the curriculum of the university. See Ohio Citizen Action page for introduction to his principles.

Jun Ui (Ed.).Industrial Pollution in Japan. Tokyo:United Nations University, 1992. OCLC:27054963

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Court Cases

The first group of victims filed the law suit in 1969, however since a comprehensive policy was not enacted, different victim groups filed different lawsuits and still have not resolved completely. There are people who are potentially victims of mercury poisoning by Chisso, but have not officially acknowledged as victims. The victims situations were various and it is not always very easy to prove the relationship between their symptoms and the pollution by Chisso. Also, the plaintiffs not only pursued the responsibility of Chisso, but also the responsibilities of the state and the prefecture (for not taking appropriate measures to prevent the pollution), but it is difficult to determine to what extent they are responsible. So far, the Kansai lawsuit （関西訴訟）was the last lawsuit, and finally settled in 2005.

水俣病被害者・弁護団連絡会議編　清水誠、宮本憲一、淡路剛久監修、『水俣病裁判全史』（全5巻）日本評論社 (Makoto Shimizu, Kenichi Miyamoto, and Takehisa Awaji. Minamatabyo saiban zenshi. Tokyo: Nihon hyoronsha, 1998.) OCLC:41895512
チッソ水俣病関西訴訟

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History

The year 2006 is the fifty year memorial of the identification of the first victim. Several books commemorating the break out of Minamata disease have been published recently.

George, Timothy S. Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. OCLC: 48931964
岡本達明, 松崎次夫編集、『聞書き水俣民衆史』（全5巻）草風館 (Tatsuaki Okamoto and Tsugio Matsuzaki. Kikigaki Minamata minshushi. Tokyo: Sofukan, 1989.) OCLC:21673433
水俣病50年取材班編、『水俣病50年ー「過去」に「未来」を学ぶ』西日本新聞社、2006年 (Minamatabyo 50 nen shuzaihan. Minamatabyo 50 nen: "Kako" ni "mirai" o manabu. NishiNippon shinbunsha, 2006) (Not available from OCLC yet)

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Sociology

Minamata can be related to many sociological issues. Many sociologists see this incident as an antithesis of rapid economic development of the period.

Tsurumi, Kazuko. Social Price of Pollution in Japan and the Role of Folk Beliefs. Tokyo: Sophia University, 1977. OCLC:3798047
Tsurumi, Kazuko. New Lives: Some Case Studies in Minamata. Research papers, 51. Tokyo, Japan: Sophia University, 1988. OCLC:19665914
Tsurumi, Kazuko's collected works: Korekushon Tsurumi Kazuko mandara OCLC:38729763
栗原彬、『証言水俣病』岩波書店、2000年 (Kurihara, Akira. Shogen Minamatabyo. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2000.) OCLC:45027756 ISBN 4004306582 ISBN 9784004306580

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Interdisciplinary Research

Michiko Ishimure proposed the interdisciplinary research, and in response, many known scholars from various fields (biology, economics, history, medical science, philosophy, political science, and sociology) gathered and edited books (2 volumes).