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- Convenor:
-
Shuji Iijima
(Kyushu University)
- Location:
- 101a
- Start time:
- 16 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Minamata disease was officially discovered in 1956. It was severe mercury disease which a local chemical factory caused. Although many legendary works have been presented, sufferers insist "Minamata disease never be finished". Our panel wants to share some possibilities of multi-layered ethnography.
Long Abstract:
Minamata disease is caused by mercury poisoning due to the release of mercury in the industrial wastewater from Chisso and was officially discovered in 1956. Although many legendary works have been presented by novelists, artists and doctors, and the Japanese government has often used such terms like 'final solution' and 'regeneration', sufferers still insist that 'Minamata disease never be finished'.
During the days after Minamata disease struck, everything changed in the Minamata city. Not only did the mercury attack 'patients' but it polluted the entire region around the Shiranui Sea. Through peddlers' routes, contaminated seafood was delivered up in the mountains. All human relationships were wrenched by symptoms, results and effects of the disease. 'How to stay alive' was a question to be answered, especially in the Minamata city. Post 11 March, 2011, Fukushima inhabitants and academics have tried to learn some lessons from the Minamata experience, but the government also appears to have learned how to localize issues such as the Minamata disease.
In this presentation, our panel wants to share some possibilities of multi-layered ethnography. Akira Nishimura maps some environmental pollutions in the Kyusyu area. Shuko Hagihara investigates some life histories from the Minamata regions. Kentaro Shimoda focuses on the alternative social movement of specific core sufferers and their supporters. Shuji Iijima examines a specific fisherman's village. Our presentation does not cover the 'possibilities of ethnography itself' but the 'possibilities through ethnography'. Through these works, we hope we can view 'the future of/with anthropologies'.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to situate Minamata area and Minamata disease in the island-wide perspective on Kyushu taking into consideration other public hazard issues, and to see the interplay among them focusing upon the social actions of describing phenomena and patient support.
Paper long abstract:
From a bit wider perspective than Minamata area, we could find several public health hazard issues like Toroku arsenic disease in Miyazaki, Yushō disease by PCBs and PCDFs contaminated oil in Fukuoka and Nagasaki, Leprosy sanatoria in Kumamoto and Kagoshima, the CO poisoning caused by the accidental explosion at the Miike coal mine in Fukuoka, and the Atomic Bomb disease in Nagasaki as well as Minamata disease in Amakusa and Izumi in Kagoshima.
This paper, at first, refers to these issues in the geopolitical context of Kyushu island in Japan's modernization and industrialization. Then, it tries to see the cross-interaction, with the concept of "Tracing Layers," among the social movements in each area focusing upon the documenting activities in literally and scholarly works and the supports of the patient. Through the discussion, we could gain a visualization perspective on the layers in Minamata disease issue, and a basic framework to examine the merits and demerits of the problem oriented ethnography.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation investigates the life histories of two victims of the Minamata disease incident. In examining their surprising narratives and messages, we try to identify some aspects of investigating life histories from the perspective of transmitting messages from the past to the future.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation investigates the life histories of two victims of the Minamata disease incident, which has captured the attention of novelists, medical practitioners, supporters, and activists (including victims themselves) for the last 50 years. One notable example of the latter is the Club of the Original Vow (Hongan-no-kai), a loosely organized affiliation of victims of Minamata disease who pray for the salvation of the souls lost to organic mercury and relate their own experiences. Their efforts have influenced people to question the effects of modern industrialization—more recently, for example, after the Fukushima incident of March 2011. In this presentation, we focus on two members of this club: both are fishers who are not only victims of Minamata disease but also activists and storytellers.
One member withdrew his application for certification as a Minamata disease patient, stating that to accept responsibility for Minamata disease meant to share the pain one caused another; he also told he carried Cisso within his: he would have behaved exactly as they did if he had worked for Chisso. The other member, whose entire family contracted Minamata disease, described the disease as nusari—a gift. How did such surprising narratives and messages emerge from these people's experiences as victims of Minamata disease, and why do their messages appeal to us?
In examining these questions, we try to identify some aspects of investigating life histories from the perspective of transmitting messages from the past to the future.
Paper short abstract:
I analyze the interactions between the members of Hongan-no-kai and stone statues created by them, to discuss how the materiality of these statues affects the reconstruction of the member's experiences of Minamata disease, a topic that has not been discussed by previous studies on the disease.
Paper long abstract:
A part of Minamata Bay in Kyushu, Japan, was transformed into a landfill by the pollution control public works of Kumamoto Prefecture in 1990, because it had been polluted with organic mercury from the Chisso Corporation factory. Individual members of Hongan-no-kai, founded in 1995, have continued to carve various images (such as Jizo statues in the traditional form of Buddhas and modified Jizo to represent each member's feelings, self-images etc.) out of stone. They have set up these statues on the landfill as an expression of their memories of the tragedy that remain in spite of governmental acknowledgement of and compensation provided for the Minamata disease. They have cumulatively erected 52 stone statues over nineteen years.
The members of Hongan-no-kai have not only narrated their memories but inscribed their memories onto the statues. However, stone statues remain in a landscape once they are erected, unlike a narration, which is temporal in nature. I therefore analyze how the materiality of these statues, such as their durability, affects the reconstruction of the member's experiences of Minamata disease sensually and physically. I focus on the changes, both in their practice of narrating memories and in the landscape of the landfill, including the statues, based on field data collected over 27 months between 2007 and 2013. The findings suggest that more than reflecting or representing each member's reality, the materiality of these statues have helped their creators, the members of Hongan-no-kai, to reconstruct and pluralize their realities.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation focuses on a fishing village where many residents have faced Minamata disease. Although the village is famous for its charismatic storyteller, people did not want to talk about the disease. In this situation, how can we start our fieldwork and write our ethnography?
Paper long abstract:
As an academic, who has majored in cultural anthropology and clinical psychology for seventeen years, I have observed that ethnographic reports seem to have been published 'automatically' or 'arbitrarily' against field-site situations because in clinical psychology, the therapist's work is done according to the client such as the period of time with the client, the timing of the intervention and the timing of publishing an article.
In a very early stage of our visit to the fishing village in 2009, many residents seemed to avoid talking about Minamata disease even though the village was famous for its charismatic storyteller. Thus, during our first stage of research, we changed our focus from Minamata disease to folk society. At that time, we did not know how many years we could research, but according to our annual funding plan, we had to publish an ethnographic report at the end of 2009. However, during our second research period in 2011 we could research various roots and routes of products. During our third research period in 2013, we focused on life history finding that the charismatic storyteller's family was exceptional in the village. So they needed their network of sufferers.
Through this presentation, we want to share some topics such as various experiences of Minamata disease, how to utilize the annual ethnographic report clinically and the need to layer focuses, to prioritize issues and to construct collaborative relationships on each issue. This will serve as a reply to the question of the future with/of anthropologies.