#protestinjapan — Public Fediverse posts

.> Towards the end of the 1950s, the people in a small fishing village on Minamata Bay in Kyushu, Japan, began to suffer from a terrible disease.
.> Their limbs were paralysed, their lips unmovable; and they cried aloud like dogs howling in madness. Japanese scientists discovered that this strange disease was caused by waste from Chisso Corporation's factory, located in Minamata City, which had polluted not only the coastal waters but also the fish and the shellfish.
.> There was one woman visitor to this fishing village who made calls on these poor victims. She was Ishimure Michiko, a poet and housewife. She kept records of all she saw and heard during her visits to the victims. Among those she visited were a blind boy who could not talk but fumbled for a baseball bat with which to hit at stones; a fisherman's wife who, longing to live a healthy life once more and to go fishing with her husband, died in convulsive agony; a beautiful little girl who lived a death-like life; and an old man who died in madness, rending the wall and hitting his head against the head-board of his bed.
.> In profound sympathy, understanding and anguish, Ishimure Michiko wrote her documentary account, Kugai Jodo (Pure Land Poisoned Sea), which was subtitled 'Our Minamata Disease.' This documentary brought the true results of industrialisation vividly to the attention of the Japanese people, and an enormous reaction ensued. The book openly and effectively questioned the 'productivity-first and profit-first' attitude of industrialised Japan.
.> Ishimure Michiko herself organised a civic group to assist victims of Minamata Disease and launched a movement to secure adequate compensation for them from Chisso Corporation.
.> (N.B. This extract uses the Japanese convention of putting the family name first and the personal name second.)

.> Source: Adapted from Matsui, Y. (1975) Protest and the Japanese Woman, Japan Quarterly, 22(1), pp. 31-32.