Abstract
Minamata disease is a type of poisoning caused when mercury from a chemical factory in southwest Japan polluted the sea, accumulating in fish and shellfish, and affecting people who consumed contaminated seafood. This chapter reviews the historical background of Minamata disease and analyzes the suffering experienced by the victims of the Minamata disease incident, showing how damage to the environment caused multiple disabilities including health and livelihood impairments, poverty and discrimination, and loss of occupational meanings and identities.
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Notes
- 1.
A recording of such a patient can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxB_SXbxY28.
- 2.
Up-to-date data on the number of certified patients can be found at www.soshisha.org/kanja/toukei.htm.
- 3.
Mainichi Shinbun newspaper, 30 August, 2012.
- 4.
Until 1971, the US dollar exchange rate was fixed at ¥360. These payments were thus equivalent to $833 for deceased family members and $277 for adults still living ($83 for children).
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Acknowledgments
This chapter was translated by Mark Hudson. I am grateful to the editors of this volume for their comments on earlier versions of the text. The research summarized here was partly supported by a grant from the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation.
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Editors’ Postscript
If you liked Chap. 3 by Mami Aoyama, and are interested in reading more about intracultural interpretations of decolonization, we recommend Chap. 5 “Landings: Decolonizing Disability, Indigeneity and Poetic Methods” by Petra Kuppers and Chap. 6, “Occupying Autism: Rhetoric, Involuntarity, and the Meaning of Autistic Lives” by Melanie Yergeau. This chapter also addresses a number of issues about the operation of conformities in communities, and it is worth considering it against chapters that explore the experience of meeting these powerful demands such as Chap. 10: Neoliberal Academia and a Critique from Disability Studies as well as those which deal with community empowerment such as Chap. 12: “Refusing to Go Away: The Ida Benderson Seniors Action Group” by Denise M. Nepveux. This chapter also anticipates some of the issues (for example corporate power over disability) which the editors raise in their final chapter for this book, Chap. 26: Science (Fiction), Hope and Love: Conclusions.
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Aoyama, M. (2016). Minamata: Disability and the Sea of Sorrow. In: Block, P., Kasnitz, D., Nishida, A., Pollard, N. (eds) Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9984-3_3
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