Kirk here with some notes on Minamata disease. This article is from about a month ago but I just got around to reading though it and some other articles that I had clipped earlier. I wanted to share it, even though it’s in Japanese, to underscore the “it’s not over yet” aspect of the Minamata disease issue.
The article is about a court case demanding the Minamata disease certification of 7 people. At the time of the article, the legal proceedings had just concluded; a verdict is scheduled to be rendered on March 30th of this year.
There’s a sense in which it’s hard to believe that litigation related to Minamata disease is still ongoing. But, in my view, this drawn-out process is the result of the government’s insistence on limiting the scope of the assistance they provide to victims. Victory in one legal case forces the door open a bit and that leads others to file suit based on that precedent, and then that case opens the door a bit more allowing others to follow.
It’s interesting to me that I haven’t been able to find an article about this particular case in English, despite all of the focus on the MINAMATA movie. It was frequently noted, as I recall, that the Minamata disease issue “isn’t over” but, as far as I know, this concrete example of it not being over didn’t get mentioned.
