The Minamata Story
An EcoTragedy
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
2022 Skipping Stones Honor Awards Recipient | 2021 NCTAsia Freeman Award Honorable Mention
The true story of how one Japanese village suffered and survived the mercury poisoning of its waters.
A powerful graphic novel/manga that tells the story of "Minamata disease," a debilitating and sometimes fatal condition caused by the Chisso chemical factory's careless release of methylmercury into the waters of the coastal community of Minamata in southern Japan. First identified in 1956, it became a hot topic in Japan in the 1970s and 80s, growing into an iconic struggle between people versus corporations and government agencies.
This struggle is relevant today, not simply because many people are still living with the disease but also because, in this time of growing concern over the safety of our environment—viz. Flint, Michigan—Minamata gives us as a very moving example of such human-caused environmental disasters and what we can do about them.
The event is also the subject of the 2020 Andrew Levitas directed Johnny Depp film, Minamata.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wilson and Shimojima (The Satsuma Rebellion) lead readers capably, if somewhat drily, through the generational repercussions of a shocking environmental disaster. Minamata Disease, a neurological disorder caused by mercury poisoning, struck a Japanese fishing village in the 1950s. Even when it was traced to water pollution, there was little governmental response, and cases mounted for years, with symptoms ranging from disability to coma to death. As panic spread and the local fishing economy tanked, the afflicted families were discriminated against and scapegoated. Wilson tells this tangled story through a modern-day college student named Tomi, who discovers while researching a class project that his grandmother lived through the period. This frame distances without adding much perspective; though the more effective present-day scenes feature real-life victims sharing their memories from an assisted living facility. Shimojima's simplified, old-fashioned character designs against detailed backgrounds read occasionally stiff and uneven, but come alive when depicting the fish, the sea, and the natural beauty of southern Japan. Though the execution falls short, the complicated history of environmental injustice depicted makes this worthy reading.
