It is a sad irony that the Fukushima nuclear
disaster should occur in the same year that Noriaki Tsuchimoto’s groundbreaking
documentary Minamata: The Victims and Their World (水俣 患者さんとその世界/Minamata: Kanja-san to sono
sekai, 1971) got its first release on DVD with English subtitles. For the narrative of corporations and politicians
putting financial gain ahead of risks to public health and safety is not a new
one in Japan. History is repeating
itself yet again – only the players and the type of poison have changed.
Minamata: The Victims and Their World is
the first in a series of documentaries that Tsuchimoto made documenting the
plight of the victims of Minamata disease, their families, and their fight for redress. Minamata disease takes its name from the city
in Kumamoto prefecture where the disease was identified in 1956. The disease is a neurological syndrome caused
by severe mercury poisoning. The local
chemical factory run by the Chisso Corporation polluted Minamata Bay and the
Shiranui Sea with industrial waste water containing the highly poisonous
chemical compound methylmercury between 1932 and 1968.
Noriaki Tshuchimoto’s documentary opens
with a series of title cards that quietly lay out the bare facts of how the
people of Minamata came to be poisoned by mercury. The documentary then shifts its focus from
the facts and figures to the stories of the victims and their families. Fishermen talk of how they knew something was
wrong when fish began behaving strangely in the sea and local cats that ate the
fish started going insane. Family
members share the agonies endured by their loved ones before they died of the
disease. Doctors, teachers, and physiotherapists compare and contrast the illness to other known conditions such as cerebral palsy. The most chilling legacy is the
stories of the children with congenital Minamata disease, who were poisoned
while in the womb. Their physical and mental challenges are so great that there is little hope for rehabilitation.
The interviews are paced throughout the
film like the ebb and flow of the tide.
Emotionally harrowing personal testimonies are book-ended by quiet
sequences that give the spectator a moment to pause and reflect. These quiet moments are often montages that
capture the natural beauty of the landscape and the sea of the region. With each new story of pain and loss, the
tension slowly builds until the film’s dramatic climax in which the victims and
their families go to the Chisso biannual shareholders meeting to confront the
company president and demand that he publicly take responsibility for his
company’s crimes against humanity and the environment.
The mainstream documentary style in Japan –
even today – is one in which an authoritative, voice-of-god narrator tells the
spectator how to interpret the images they are being shown. As authority figures had betrayed the people
of Minamata, Tsuchimoto wisely decided to foreground the voices and faces of
the victims themselves in this documentary.
According to Sachiko Mizuno in the supplementary material for the DVD
release, the victims had resisted the efforts of television documentary
crew because of their deeply held suspicions about the media (p.6) It becomes
apparent while watching the documentary that Tsuchimoto has won over the people
with his friendly, sincere manner. He occasionally
appears in the film, usually partly or wholly off-frame, holding a microphone
in his hand and gently coaxing his subjects to talk to him.
The film is particularly interesting for
its use of sound. The lack of synch between
the image and the soundtrack is initially distracting. Sound was a big problem for low budget
documentary filmmakers of the day as it was recorded separately from the
image. The asynchronous sound provided
Tsuchimoto with the opportunity to play with the soundtrack in innovative
ways. As his subjects tell us their
stories, we are treated to montages of images of the dead, their families, and
their homes. The asynchronicity forces us to listen more closely to the words and to study the face of the speaker more carefully. Although each family has
their own individual tale of suffering and loss to tell, taken together one
gets the sense of a community of simple, hardworking people who have been unjustly
made into outcasts in the town where their families have lived and fished for
generations. The story of their fight
for justice is not only of historical import, but their determination against all odds is also inspiring for the
many people who are today suffering at the hands of an unfeeling bureaucracy in
the southernmost prefecture of Tohoku.
Minamata: The Victims and Their World is one of four documentaries by Noriaki Tsuchimoto (土本典昭, 1928-2008) released by Zakka Films on DVD this year. It has optional English language subtitles and is accompanied by an essay by Abé Mark Nornes (U of Michigan) and film commentaries by Sachiko Mizuno (Kanazawa U). Individuals can purchase this DVD for a reasonable price from independent film distributor Film Baby. Institutions should contact Zakka Films directly for purchasing information
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011
