It began with the cats. In the mid-1950s, dozens of pet cats that roamed freely through the Japanese fishing town of Minamata started acting strangely. They yowled in their ragged cat voices and ran in circles. After a time, they began throwing themselves off jetties to drown in Minamata Bay. No one could understand what was going on.
Not long after that, some people in the town started trembling and walking oddly, looking dazed, and often shouting incomprehensibly as they stumbled through the town. Some suffered interludes of blurred vision and dizziness; others fell into convulsions on the street and lapsed into comas. "Minamata Disease," as it became known, eventually affected thousands of people, many of them babies born with crippling deformities.
The first four deaths from Minamata disease were officially reported on May 1, 1956, beginning a decades-long battle to discover what turned out to be a manmade scourge. There were two industries on that remote southern island of Kyushu: fishing and a petrochemical factory run by the powerful Chisso Corp. Since 1941, Chisso had been making vinyl chloride at the plant and dumping mercury-contaminated sludge into Minamata Bay where the mercury found its way into the fish and, eventually, the people.
It took another four years and a riot by fishermen at the Kyushu plant to awaken the Japanese press to what was going on, and then decades of legal and political action to bring Chisso to account. The wrangling and buck-passing continue to this day, even as a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of that first report was recently held, with prime minister Junichiro Koizumi present to offer apologies on behalf of the government for not acting quickly enough to stop the spread of the disease.
America and much of the rest of the world didn't know about what was going on until 1972, when the great photographer W. Eugene Smith and his wife published Minamata, a book-length photoessay about the human and environmental toll wrought by Chisso's pollution. Smith was equally legendary for the probing human quality of his work, his thorny integrity about the way it was presented, and his willingness to take insane risks to get a picture.
Article comments
1 - Richard Marcus
I bet people still haven't heard about the English River system in Northern Ontario where the same thing occured. In about 1973 it was discovered that the Cree who lived in that par to the world, and the wildlife as well, were bringing forth children with horrible birth defects.
Our culprit was Butten and Reid Paper...The big pulping presses dumped mercury laden sludge in the river for everyone to eat and drink. The governments initial responce of well just make sure you don't eat too much fish or drink too much water.
I think a doctor up north began to notice similarities among his clents and the pictures you talk about. When he filed his reports and the government did nothing he leaked them to the the papers, who ran the picutres and news of the story.
Thanks for a beautiful story, and a timely reminder of what can happen when business leaders are allowed to do as they pleae in terms of the environment.
I had forgotten about the man who took those amazing phots, should try and find out more about him I think.
cheer
Richard
2 - Purple Tigress
It seems that similar things are happening in China.
See this article about cancer villages.