From Minamata
Hirakida Rimiko
Every morning I walk to the seaside near my house. The sea is where I go to bathe. The first thing every morning I walk down to the sea and wash my face, returning home full of the oceanfs ki (energy and spirit). As I stand in the salt water I encounter many forms of life. I feel very strongly that both the lives in the sea and our human lives are just the same.
Have you ever heard of the matsuba-gai (pine-needle limpet) or the hizara-gai (pipe-bowl chiton)? Are you familiar with a crustacean called "kame-no-te (turtlefs foot)" that lives in cracks of rocks? When you stop by the beach during the day, the shellfish may appear to be totally immobile. But if you watch them very closely for about an hour you can see them moving about in all kinds of ways. For example at the waterfs edge the "turtlefs foot" will close its hard shell tightly when exposed to the air, but as soon as in senses the incoming water it opens up and sends out its tentacles, spreading its "toes" out widely as it takes in nourishment from the sea. The white egret eats every bit of the fish it catches, without wasting a morsel. Crabs eat the bodies of stink bugs, cicadas and the like that have collected along the shore. The sea louse will come out to clean the shore of remaining bits of food. Then, onto this clean salt strand, home to shellfish and egrets, drift discarded plastic containers and empty alfoot_blnum cans.
I think about what happened in Minamata. Forty years ago these sea creatures carried on the same activities. What happened to those creatures then? We didnft hear their tiny voices. Or, we heard them but chose to ignore the warning call. As a result, we were beset with Minamata disease. It was not until many lives had been lost, that we finally noticed the disaster that had befallen us.
No matter how we may try to discard them, no matter how far we may flee from them, the chemical products we produce will return to us. Even if we donft see what is happening with our own eyes, the wastes we discharge are taking innumerable small lives. The sea is not a waste receptacle. Our sea is the source of life.
Hirakida Rimiko
Born in Minamata city in 1951.
In 1954 her father, a local fisherman, developed the symptoms of Minamata disease that was then called a strange disease and died of the acute type of Minamata disease in 1956. Her grandfather showed the symptoms. (Both her father and grandfather were designated Minamata patients in 1956.) Her mother and grandmother were also authorized afterward. Rimiko Hirakida, being ashamed that her family members are Minamata patients, kept the fact secret. One day she was recommended to read a report gA Revelation of Minamata ? Research of Shiranui-seah and she knew the fact about Minamata disease. She realized the necessity of publicizing her own experience.
Together with Minamata patients like Masato Ogata and Eiko Sugimoto, and Michiko Ishimure, a writer, she was involved to organize gHongan no Kaih in 1995. She became a subject of comprehensive medical project in 1996.
In 1998 she began to work as a story-teller at Municipal Minamata Disease Library.
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