May 18 was an emotional day that began at the Minamata Disease Municipal Museum, where we joined over 200 middle school students from Saga Prefecture to listen to a survivor. Yoshinaga Yumiko was born in 1951, when mercury carried in the effluent from the Chisso factory was beginning to affect cats. She lived on the coast, near the site of the museum that now honors the disease victims. Her grandparents fished and her father worked at Chisso, so in a way she represents both sides of the tragedy – the factory and the fishing families whose livelihoods and lives were most directly impacted.

Yoshinaga Yumiko shares her story about Minamata Disease

Middle school students attending Mrs. Yoshinaga's talk

She was 3 years old when the disease was recognized in people, although no one yet knew the cause or who was to blame. The disease robbed her grandfather of his ability to speak, eat, and use the toilet by himself. He spent the final 9 years of his life at home in bed rest. Her father’s life with the disease ended more rapidly. When he first experienced symptoms like numbness in the lips and loss of some motor skills in his hands, he was admitted to the Chisso company hospital. While there he slowly recovered over the course of a year. However, when he was well enough to return home, the disease quickly returned with a vengeance. He died in a few months. Only later did doctors and family members realize that food was the vector. At the hospital he did not eat any seafood from the polluted bay; at home, doctors believed he would recover quickly by eating what he liked, so he ate the fish that eventually took his life. He had always fished on his way home from the factory and had eaten his fill of fish from the bay.

Mrs. Yoshinaga has virtually no memory of her father, and her feelings regarding Minamata and the Chisso factory are complicated by years of denial regarding the disease’s impact on her family. For decades she told no one that her father and grandfather had died from Minamata Disease, and she recalls shunning a cousin in public who was affected. People thought that those who suffered had been foolish enough to eat bad fish and were now receiving payment for their foolishness. Therefore, she didn’t even tell her husband before marriage, for fear she would suffer the same kind of discrimination as others from Minamata.

However, something changed for her some years ago. She decided the only way to end all discrimination about Minamata Disease was to stop denying its presence in her life. Today, she not only shares her stories with groups like this group of students, but like many others in Minamata, she has become a concerned environmental citizen. For her, this means designing and selling goods made entirely from recycled glass. Earlier this year she was awarded the distinction of 環境大臣 (kankyō daijin, environment minister).

Student representative thanks Mrs. Yoshinaga after the talk

Following her talk, a student representative thanked her for sharing her story. Of course, this was all carefully scripted with the previous assistance of the student’s teachers. She could not have known the nature of the talk in order to craft her thank you. Despite this small issue, the talk was helpful for NUS students to see how an individual can affect change in the world through a concern for the environment.