The Minamata Disease as an Example of Government Weakness

The Minamata Disease as an Example of Government Weakness

The effects of Minamata disease, which originated in Minamata, Japan, first came to the attention of local fishermen. They referred to cats afflicted with the disease as “the suicide-prone group of dancing cats” due to their tendency to ‘dance’ around, and then jump into the nearby bay (Ui, 1992). From 1940 through the late 20th century, thousands of inhabitants of Minamata developed that same neurological disease that resulted from heavy industrial pollution of Minamata Bay. They did not receive adequate government protection against such a disaster because of the city’s poor economic structure and the relentless national drive to industrialize Japan. One company, Nippon Chisso Ltd. or Chisso for short, which worked extensively with chemicals in the production of energy and of industrial materials, comprised the local economy.

Before it became a center for the Japanese chemical industry, Minamata generated revenue almost entirely from salt production enterprises. In 1908, the Japanese government had recently decided to take over the salt industry and the village needed new sources of income. At the same time Jun Noguchi, a recently graduated electrical engineer and founder of the Chisso Company, needed a location to build a new carbide production plant. Minamata won the bid for the factory’s location through a favorable deal to Noguchi, in which the local government offered the old salt industry’s land at very low prices. The city also provided a route for electricity to reach the factory at no charge (Ui, 1992). These offers established the policy of the government, and indeed of Minamata as a whole, to defer to the Chisso Company’s wishes to ...

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.... Measures to avoid a situation of that nature must focus on the enactment of effective policy by both local and national governments to regulate their industries, and focus on having an adequate number of revenue-generating industries so as not to jeopardize public interests.

References

Ui, J. (1992). Industrial Pollution in Japan. Tokyo: United Nation University Press

Harada, M. (n.d.). Minamata disease and the Mercury Pollution of the Globe.

Retrieved February 19, 2003, from

http://www.einap.org/envdis/Minamata.html#name.

Littlefield, A. (1996). Minamata Bay Pollution in Japan and Health Impacts. Retrieved

February 19, 2003, from http://www.american.edu/TED/MINAMATA.HTM.

Ziegler, J. (1995). Rays of Hope in the Land of the Rising Sun [Electronic version].

Environmental Health Perspectives, 103(5), (n.p.).