Reviving our Memory of Life -- a Message from Minamata
Ogata Masato
Minamata was a prophetic incident for modern society. It was those people driven by twentieth century greed who produced Minamata disease as the wretched expression of a sickened civilization.
Half a century after this incident we see all manner of environmental destruction world-wide, bringing us face to face with a crisis of enormous magnitude affecting not only the human race, but the entire planet of living beings. Or, we may say that it is inevitable that each one of us possess qualities of both the victim and the victimizer, and that we now find ourselves questioned about this most fundamental problem of human existence.
Modernization focused upon economic development has created a value structure that kindles our desires, sending us upon an endless pursuit of convenience and material wealth. The natural environment, the many lives in the ocean, hills, and rivers, have been integrated into the market economy as commercial resources. In fact we may say that we humans have even turned our own lives into commodities circulating within the market economy. We have lost that distant and eternal memory of life (of the spirit), and we have lost our sense of life as human beings. We have gone astray, and the kind of shallow wisdom that informs our anthropocentric behavior will be of no help to us here.
If humans are to have a future, each of us must face the world of Life, addressing it from our hearts, and listening carefully for clues to its current condition. We must apologize for the sins we have committed in the modernization process, worship the diversity of life, and become ourselves the embodiment or expression of the will of that web of life of which we are part. This is the way we may return to that world of green, to the type of existence in which we realize that we live at the grace of other life forms.
This is the only way in which we will be forgiven and allowed to perpetuate as a species. We cannot expect to endure as long as we support a market system based on greed-inspired development and commercialization of the environment.
We appeal to you from Minamata:
People of the world, awaken to your memories!
(Translated by Karen R. Colligan-Taylor)
OGATA Masato
Resident of Ashikita Meshima, Kumamoto Prefecture.
Born in 1953 Ashikitacho, Meshima. His father
died of acute type of Minamata disease in
1959 when Masato Ogata himself began to develop
the Symptoms. In 1974 he applied for official
authorization and joined Council of Victims
who are seeking authorization. In 1975 he
was prosecuted for protesting against the
remarks by a member of the prefectural assembly,
that some patients were fake and cheating.
He wags declared guilty. He married in 1977.
He was appointed the chairman of the council
in 1981 and he started a lawsuit with other
victims, claiming monetary compensation for.
having kept waiting. In l985 he withdrew
his application and seceded from the council.
In 1986 he staged a one-man sit-in at Chisso
Factory. He lodged a protest against a policy
of utilization of reclaimed area of Minamata
Bay. .
He, other victims and volunteers inaugurated
"Hongan no Kai" in 1994.
He staged a protest demonstration by sailing
in a small fishing boat, Nichigetsu maru.
From Minamata to Tokyo in 1996, He still
continues fishing in the Shiranui Sea.
Copyright(C) SOSHISHA. All rights reserved.