Kirk here with Minamata disease news about the Supreme Court rejecting claims for damages.
First, here are a couple of paragraphs from the only English-language article about this verdict that I could find:
Article Headline: Top Court Rejects Minamata Disease Recognition for 8 People — start quote — In a decision Tuesday, the top court’s Third Petty Bench turned down the appeal by the plaintiffs against a Fukuoka High Court ruling, which rejected the claims in a damages lawsuit filed against the Japanese government, Kumamoto Prefecture and chemical maker Chisso Corp., which caused the pollution. As a result, the high court ruling that reversed a Kumamoto District Court ruling that recognized three of them as sufferers of the disease became final. — end quote — https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2022031000689/
The article doesn’t explain the reasoning for the rejection. I found that in another Japanese-language article put out by the same news service:
更年期障害や飲酒が原因の可能性もあるとして罹患を否定。 https://www.jiji.com/jc/article?k=2022031000689&g=soc
The idea is that the court could not be sure that the typical Minamata disease symptoms were not the result of aging or alcohol consumption. So, even if it’s clear that the waters were poisoned and that the poison got in people’s bodies and they got sick in a way that is consistent with Minamata disease, if there’s some other possible explanation, the victims lose in court.
Now, another thing I find interesting (and disturbing) about this case is that it has been virtually ignored by the English-language press. I thought some more interest might be shown after Johnny Depp raised the profile of Minamata disease with his movie. But, if you do a Google search for “Minamata,” you’ll find many articles about the movie and about the Minamata treaty to limit mercury use but only one article (the one I quoted) about this verdict. :(
By the way, the URL of the Japanese article with picture I used here is as follows: https://www.asahi.com/articles/photo/AS20220310002810.html