Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: Our Minamata Disease

Michiko Ishimure writes:

What kind of personality should a historian have or acquire in order to record this crime for posterity? What sources could grant him the strength of character, and the integrity needed in order not to be crushed by the load of the task, and by his consciousness of complicity? It will not suffice to say what Chisso did to those fisherman was just another form of ruthless oppression of the working classes by monopolistic capitalism. As a native of Minanmata, I know that the language of the victims of Minimata Disease – both that of the spirits of the dead who are unable to die, and that of the survivors who are little more than living ghosts – represents the pristine form of poetry before our societies were show more divided into classes. In order to preserve for posterity this language in which the historic significance of the Mercury Poisoning Incident is crudely branded, I must drink an infusion of my animism and “pre-animism” and become a sorceress cursing modern times forever. show less