Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: George, Timothy. 2001. Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center: Distributed by Harvard University Press.

Main points:

Ch. One. This book describes the three rounds of responses to Minamata disease (a mercury poisoning event happened in Minamata starting from the 1950s). The first round began with the discovery of the disease in 1956 and ended with a partial settlement in 1959. It was an inconvenience and embarrassing dispute to the enshrined high growth as the project of post war Japan. The solution concluding the first round of response consisted of sympathy payment to victims. (p.7)

- Minamata was a story not just about environmental and human cost for rapid modernization, it was also about a corporation hiding its guilt, and the collusion at all levels of government and society, including the scientific community and media that allowed the tragedy to happen and then to be covered up.(pp.7-8).

- the second round was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, partly because of Minamata and other frightening environment diseases had appeared. It became both possible and virtuous for citizens to be politically active. Minamata was brought to the center stage. (p.8)

-yet problems remained – many victims were uncertified and therefore ineligible for compensation.  In the third phase, a full solution to the Minamata disease was agreed upon in 1995-6. (p.8)

- a problem remained: many victims were uncertified and therefore ineligible for compensation, the question of government responsibility remained unsettled. A third full solution to the Minamata disease was agreed upon in 1996. (p.8)

- Minamata incident raised a question central to an understanding of democracy in post war Japan, it was a site of industrial pollution, and it was the locus of the development of new forms of civic action. (p.8)

- a societal response to an environmental disaster said a great deal about the society. (p.9) Minamata was more than a symbol of the dark side of high growth and the flowering of citizen’s movement in fighting the corporation and a state (p.10) Minamata was the best example of how the Japanese people had tested and redefined the meaning of what they called not citizenship, civil society, but postwar democracy. (p.10)

Ch. 2 - Minamata from 1907 to 1955 shared much of the experience of Japans’ century of modern development that began in the mid-1800s. Before the coming of the factory, it was an active but pre-industrial economy. Minamata served as the home base of a company that was active through the Japanese empire and symbolized the leading edge of technological and industrial development. In 1945, Japan lost its overseas empire.  When demand for compensation for Minamata disease seemed likely to harm the company, many citizens would rally to defend it in order to defend the city. (p.40)

- fishing required less community cooperation than rice farming. Factory work and the slow spread of a cash economy also served to weaken this traditional fishing community. (p.41)

Ch.3. the unknown disease that afflicted Hamamoto Tsuginori was officially discovered on May 1, 1956. (p.45) Finally there was the effort by the victims to struggle with the disease, to obtain compensation for their suffering and losses. There were efforts of the company to evade responsibility, and city groups to protect the company in order to protect Minamata. (p.45)

- Ui Jun used a four-stage model to describe Minamata disease and Japan’s other major pollution incidents. First people became aware of the pollution; second, a search of the cause. At the third stage, counter theories were issued or sponsored by the polluter; in the fourth stage all the theories neutralized each other. (p.47) Between 1956 and 1959 the Minamata went through the first three stages. The fourth stage started in 1959 to 69. (p.47)

- in 1957 and 1958, the search for the cause was carried on mostly by the laboratories of the Kumamoto university medical school. (p.51)

- In late 1959 MITI needed to avoid harming the chemical industry (Shin Nitchitsu). The nation’s economic growth depended on increasing the international competitiveness of Japanese industry. (p.63)

Ch. 4. At the end of 1959, Minamata witnessed a three-part solution: the payment of compensation to fishing cooperatives, the awarding of sympathy money to patients, and the construction of pollution control equipment (which failed to remove the mercury pollution). This was a victory for Shin Nitchitsu. (p.71)

- the victim’s defeat highlighted the extreme weakness, politically, economically, socially, and physically. The victims were failed by the Left, by the media, and by their own leaders, and they were opposed in a united front of nearly all other organizations and citizens in Minamata. The conclusion to this first round of responses highlights the persistent contradiction between Japan’s democratic constitution and its political attitudes and practices. The second round which began a decade later, illustrated the important changes that occurred during 1955 to 1965. (p.71)

- compensating the victims of the disease appeared as mere an afterthought in the events of 1959 in Minamata. Part of the reasons was that the Minamata disease patients families mutual aid society, founded in 1957, was smaller, weaker and more divided than the Minamata fishing cooperative, or the Kumamoto prefectural alliance of fishing cooperatives. The mutual aid society did have one thing these other groups lacked: a colorful, imaginative leader known as Watanabe Eizo. (p.102)

- even before they demanded restitution from Shin Nitchitsu, the Minamata diseases patients, most of them were fishermen that had families immigrated to the city region, were objects of discrimination. For many years, fishing hamlets represented a rural life-style considered to be poor and dirty. (p.105)

- With the conclusion of agreement with the fishing cooperatives of Minamata of Kumamoto prefecture with the patients, the first full and final solution to the Minamata diseases issues was almost completed. If new patients appeared, a mechanism was in place to certify and pay them. The third promise was the pollution-control equipment which the company had rushed to install. It was a highly publicized system consisted of a cyclator and sedifloater designed by the Ebara Infilco Company. But the cyclator was planned before Kumamoto University announced its organic mercury theory that explained the cause of the disease. (p.115)

- the real crux of the matter was an imbalance of power. Suing the company would have meant challenging the political economy of the nation as a whole. In 1959, the victims lacked the political, social, and economic power necessary to do this. (p.120)

- the victims were not passive in 1959, but they were unable to find the support needed to tip the balance of power in their favor. When victims and their supporters brought the struggle to Tokyo over a decade later, they changed the rules of the game, and changed them more permanently. (p.121)

(to be continued)