Kirk here with some news about and comments on the 66th anniversary of the official “discovery” Minamata disease (May 1, 1956).
I’ve included two screenshots from a news video published by MBC, a Kagoshima-based news service. The first is of the official commemorative ceremony and the second is of the unofficial one. The fact that there are two services results from and is an illustration of the divisions caused by the practice of only granting certification to the most extreme cases and leaving everyone else to more-or-less to fend for themselves. Angered by the government’s stance, many patients have refuse to participate in the official, government-sponsored ceremony (first image) and participate instead in another ceremony held at exactly the same time (the second image shows congenital Minamata disease patient SAKAMOTO Shinobu commenting after the ceremony). Here’s the URL of the MBC video report:
https://www.mbc.co.jp/news/article/2022050200056026.html
I’m a few days late but I was waiting to see if an English-language article would come out on the topic. Alas, it would appear that English-language media have better things to do – like write articles about Johnny Depp’s movie and the actor’s various problems.
In Japanese, NHK featured a report on the commemorative services on their 7 PM national news report. But it would seem that such coverage was only for domestic consumption; though NHK has various English-language news services, they didn’t choose to write a report about the anniversay in English as far as I can see.
I was hoping that the Depp movie would help raise the profile of Minamata disease. It may have done so to some extent. However, when it comes to the ongoing media coverage of issues and events related to real-life Minamata disease, things are either unchanged or worse than before. Now, if one wants to learn something about actual events, one must wade through various movie-related articles to find what little has been written in English about what is actually going on.