Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan

Harvard East Asian Monographs #194

by Timothy S. George

Nearly forty years after the outbreak of the “Minamata Disease,” it remains one of the most horrific examples of environmental poisoning. Based on primary documents and interviews, this book describes three rounds of responses to this incidence of mercury poisoning, focusing on the efforts of its victims and their supporters, particularly the activities of grassroots movements and popular campaigns, to secure redress.

Timothy S. George argues that Japan’s postwar democracy is ad hoc, fragile, and dependent on definition through citizen action and that the redress effort is exemplary of the great changes in the second and third postwar decades that redefined democracy in Japan.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Japan, Japanese History

424 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2001

Reviews

[Noi Nhieu]

A meticulous piece of research. The first parts of the book are a bit tiring, if it seems so, only to reflect the slow and ineffective struggle of the victims, spanning years and decades of complaints, protests, negotiations, trials, ... all the while surviving an incurable disease.

[AskHistorians]

Covers the political and social dimensions of the Shin Nihon Chisso Corporation's dumping of organic mercury in and around Minamata, leading to two decades of horrific human misery during Japan's postwar "economic miracle".