Patients of Minamata Disease Increase

Osaka Regional Court on Wednesday ordered the government of Japan to pay ¥2.75 million to each patient as the compensation for Minamata disease. The 128 plaintiffs had been excluded from the list of patients with Minamata disease. The court decision recognized that the people who had continuingly been eating fish in the Yatsushiro Sea would be affected by methyl mercury, the poison which caused Minamata disease. The decision spotlighted a nature of the government of Japan, which was extremely reluctant in helping the people suffering from the governmental policies or inactiveness.

Minamata disease brings painful transformation in bones or joints and damage in brain or nerves caused by intake of the fish poisoned with methyl mercury emitted from Minamata Factory of Chisso Corporation that produced chemical products including fertilizer. The disease was first discovered in 1956. Although three thousand of patients have been registered based on Pollution-related Health Damage Compensation Law, the greater number of people are supposed as potential patients.

 

The government paid compensation to about ten thousand patients in 1995 with not administrative but political decision. Along with a special measurement law in 2009, the government paid immediate compensation. But even under the special law, the patients of Minamata disease were limited to the residents in a part of the coastal area of the sea. The patients who had been excluded from the definition filed lawsuits in some cities of Japan. The plaintiffs include some patients who recently realized their own Minamata disease.

 

In the decision of Osaka court, the chief judge, Yuki Tatsuno, said that the people who continuingly consumed the fish in the sea had to be assumed as suffering from methyl mercury to the extent of outbreaking Minamata disease. She added that the national and prefectural governments were responsible for not exercising their power to apply the regulation to the industries.

 

The reluctancy not only in regulating economic activities of major industry but in compensating to the suffers erodes the credibility of the government of Japan. Chisso kept on discharging polluted waste water to the sea for years and caused serious health damage of the residents in broad area. It can be said that the government had been ignoring the consequence of the industry-leaning policies. It is partly understandable for some countries to have a concern about Japan’s decision of discharging radioactive water into the sea.

 

The drama film Minamata (2020) accuses the ignorance of Japanese government. “In 2013, the Japanese Prime Minister declared that Japan had recovered from mercury pollution, denying the existence of the tens of thousands of victims who continue to suffer today,” it asserts in the ending notes. The government of Japan has to recognize its constitutional responsibility for the people with whom sovereign power resides.