Reconnecting with Life Systems
Akira Kurihara
There are two ways in which Minamata disease is not yet over. First of all, the pain of Minamata disease sufferers continues unabated. There are those whose condition grows steadily worse. Patients continue to apply for certification. Moreover, discrimination continues against the patients' families. As long as the dignity of the sufferers has not been restored and permanent relief is not available, we cannot say that the Minamata problem has been resolved. In the second place, although we may say that Minamata disease represents the origin of large-scale destruction of life systems through chemical pollution, as we see in the case of the problem of endocrine disrupters and so on, the lessons of Minamata disease have not yet been learned. In this sense as well, Minamata disease is not an event of the past.
Minamata disease patients spoken out against their horrible and unnecessary suffering. They have disclosed the sickness inherent in the way industrial society functions and exercises its authority. But, even more importantly, they have appealed to the people of the world to live with "gentleness" toward the earth's life systems, that they may endure. Minamata disease sufferers appeal to us to exercise the utmost sensitivity toward life - another words, to seek a way of life, an ethics, a world view that allows all life and life systems to co-exist in support of each other.
Those patients who are now raising sweet pomelos say that as victims of chemical pollution they cannot justify destroying the environment with herbicides. They practice organic farming. Bed-ridden patients with congenital Minamata disease are cared for by other sufferers, without regard to kinship ties. Patients are reaching out to citizens who once discriminated against them, or who took the position of indifferent bystanders, to restore the natural environment and the human community.
Members of the "Society of the Original Vow" have carved Buddhist statues out of stone and placed them on the reclaimed land in order to unite the spirits of those who have passed on and those who have yet to be born.
From the depths of their suffering Minamata disease patients have posed such fundamental questions as "What does it mean to be human?" or "What is modernization?" We would do well to plumb the depths of their thoughts.
The ultimate response of these sufferers is an ethics of "reconciliation" that rises above the simple dichotomy of good and evil. As an extension of this ethic we hear the proclamation, "Everyone should be able to exist on this earth in a place they can call their own." May sufferers and refugees throughout the world who respond to this appeal and who are sensitive to the suffering of their fellow humans, join forces in creating a new world commons with different peoples and life forms in harmonious coexistence.
(Translated by Karen R. Colligan-Taylor)
KURIHARA Akira
Political Sociologist. Representative of Minamata Forum Akira Kurihara was born in 1936 in Tochigi Prefecture. After graduating from University of Tokyo, liberal arts department, he was admitted to post-graduate course of sociology. In 1968 he took up his post with Rikkyo University as an assistant professor. In 1978, he participated in a sit-in protest against the then Environment Agency staged by Minamata disease patients. In that year he was promoted to a professor of the law department of Rikkyo University. At inauguration of Minamata Forum in 1997, he was appointed as a representative. Next year he also became a representative of newly started Japan Volunteer Society. In 2002,, he resigned from his post at Rikkyo University and joined Meiji University as a professor at the faculty of literature.
Hw is an author of many books and papers.
gWhere Tenderness goes --- A Discourse on
Contemporary Young Peopleh, gControlled
Society and Society and Folk Reasonh, gFolklore
of Politicsh, gSociology of Discriminationh(co-author),
gTestimony ? Minamata Diseaseh(co-author)
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