Minamata: The Victims and Their World (1971) & Minamata (2020) (Guest: Darryl Flaherty) (episode 35)

This episode looks at two films that examine the environmental disaster in Minamata, Japan: Noriaki Tsuchimoto’s documentary, Minamata: The Victims and the World (1971), and Andre Levitas’s Minamata (2020), a Hollywood feature film that tells the story through the famous American photographer, W. Eugene Smith. From 1932 to 1968, the Chisso Corporation, a local petrochemical and plastics maker, dumped approximately 27 tons of mercury into Minamata bay, poisoning fish and, ultimately, the people who ate them. Several thousand people died and many more suffered crippling injuries, with often severe mental and physical effects. The corporation’s environmental pollution sparked legal and political battles that would last decades and reverberate throughout Japan. Joining me to discuss the films and the insights they provide into Japanese law and society, is Professor Darryl Flaherty.  Darryl is a historian of law and social change in early modern and modern Japan. He has published work on the emergence of Japan's legal profession during the nineteenth century, the Meiji Restoration in world history, and the twentieth century history of the jury in Japan. He is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Delaware, where he teaches courses on Japanese, Asian, and world history. 

Timestamps: 

0:00   Introduction
2:13     The Chisso Chemical Corporation
4:58    The fishing life in Minamata
7:30    The discovery of methylmercury poisoning
12:20   Movement politics and environmental protest in Japan
16:44   The debilitating Minamata disease
18:59   The Minamata pollution litigation
22:03   Denial and violence by the Chisso Corporation       
24:08   Government complicity
29:26    Discrimination and pushback against victims of Minamata pollution
30:51    Strategies and challenges in obtaining compensation
38:28    Noriaki Tsuchimoto, W. Eugene Smith, and the notoriety of Minamata
44:51     A history of direct action in Japan and the importance of an apology
48:30    Environmental reform and its limits in Japan
52:14     A lens into the 2011 Fukushima disaster
54:39    The limited role of lawyers in the films
57:21      Minamata today
59:07    The decline of political activism in Japan
102:02  Take-aways and stories about storytelling

Further reading:

Flaherty, Darryl, Public Law, Private Practice Politics, Profit, and the Legal Profession in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 2013)

George, Timothy S., Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan (Harvard Univ. Press, 2002)

Smith, Eugene W. & Aileen M. Smith, Minamata: The Story of the Poisoning of a City, and of the People Who Chose to Carry the Burden of Courage (Holt, Rinehart, 1975)

Upham, Frank K., Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan (Harvard Univ. Press, 1989)

Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember.
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