3/20/2024 0 Comments Minamata mercury poisoningIn the end, after trying to cover up the facts that they knew the wastewater from the plant was the cause of Minamata Disease, the Chisso Corporation was found guilty of corporate negligence. It left a great footprint for Japanese photographers to follow.” Kuwabara’s archive from his decades documenting Minamata now numbers over 30,000 negatives. “The documentary series that Eugene Smith produced in Minamata was amazing. Kuwabara does not bear any resentment of Gene and Aileen Smith’s work being more widely known. Tamano, a Minamata disease patient, suddenly had a seizure in the corridor of Minamata City Hospital. Remembering what had transpired during my childhood, I wanted to tell the tragedy unfolding in Minamata.” The poison got into the community’s water supply, contaminating the drinking water and damaging the rice crops. The local mining company excavated copper and arsenic was a byproduct of the process. “When I was young, my hometown had also suffered the side effects of chemical pollution. “I was deeply touched by their plight,” adds Shisei Kuwabara. “After seeing this article, I immediately decided I had to go there to document what was happening in Minamata City.” But as he was leaving Tokyo, a school friend gave him a copy of the Weekly Asahi magazine which contained a ten-page story on the discovery of Minamata disease. Upon graduating in 1960, Kuwabara planned to return to his hometown. During my third year at the university, I realized that I really wanted to be a professional photographer and began taking night classes at Tokyo Photo School.” After graduating from the local high school in my hometown of Tsuwano City, I entered Tokyo Agriculture University as a Civil Engineering major. “It was a domestically made Petri camera. “My father, who worked in the city office in our village, bought me my first camera,” he recalls. “I was deeply touched by the inhabitants’ plight.”ĭuring the time when Minamata Disease was first discovered and its cause being researched, Kuwabara, now 84, was finishing high school, and gaining an interest in photography. Who suffers from birth defects during his mother’s pregnancy He began photographing eleven years before the Smiths came to the city and has continued since.įetal Minamata Disease patient Kazumitsu Hannaga, That Japanese photographer is Shisei Kuwabara, who has spent almost sixty years photographing Minamata and documenting the lives of those who lived there and the effects of the poisoned water that ravaged their families. And while the movie is a dramatized version of the true story of Gene and Aileen and Minamata, it is not the only story of a photographer documenting Minamata. That book has also now been turned into the movie Minamata set to be released later this year starring Johnny Depp as Eugene Smith and French-Japanese Actor Minami as Aileen Smith. Their work was first published in LIFE magazine on Junder the title “Death-Flow From a Pipe,” and later as their book Minamata which was published in 1975. They spent three years in Minamata documenting what was happening. The story of Minamata was made world-famous by photographer W. Death can occur within weeks of the symptoms showing.Īt the Minamata factory, the factory was closed and the labor union (first union) went on strike for a year. The symptoms can include muscle weakness, blindness, difficulty speaking, impaired motor skills, and in severe cases insanity, paralysis and coma. It is a neurological disease caused by severe mercury poisoning. This quickly led to the discovery of more cases in the town, and the discovery of Minamata Disease. In April of 1956 a young girl was examined at Chisso’s factory hospital with symptoms including difficulty walking and speaking and having convulsions. Thus the mercury made its way into the food chain that ended with those in the city who ate the fish from Minamata Bay. This highly toxic organic version of mercury settled on the seafloor and was absorbed by the plants in the bay. This resulted in the plant’s wastewater, which was dumped into Minamata Bay, containing methylmercury. The plant had originally opened in 1908, but in 1951 the process that was used to make its chemical products was changed. What differentiated it from the countless other fishing villages in Japan and sealed its place in history was the local Chisso Corporation chemical plant. The town of Minamata sits along the western coast of Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. Modo, one of the villages with the largest number of Minamata disease patients.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |