Minamata (gelatin silver print 11 x 14 inches)

Minamata disease, which is often quoted as illness by a silent atomic bomb, is organic mercury poisoning that broke out among those who ate fish, shellfish and seaweed in the Minamata Bay.  The bay was contaminated by the effluent discharged from Chisso Corporations’s Minamata Plant through its production of acetaldehyde.  It occurred due to the Japanese government’s policy to give priority to the chemical industry for economic development while neglecting the safety of the residents in the area.  The effluent were stopped to discharge into the bay in 1968.  However, the number of victims who claim that they suffer from organic mercury poisoning is still increasing even now since the first patient was found in 1953.

At first, victims were found mainly among fishermen and their families since they ate a lot of fish every day, Their symptoms were acute and malignant type, and everybody who saw such a patient was really shocked.  For instance, a fisherman who was vigorous and out for fishing the previous day suddenly lost the use of his lower limbs and could not even speak with saliva dangling from his mouth on the following morning.  There were many cases like this.  There are also young victims who suffer congenital Minamata disease.  They were affected by organic mercury while they were in their mothers’ wombs.  The existence of those shocking victims has been fully reported by the works of Mr. Shisei Kuwahara, the late Mr. Eugene Smith et al.

I photographed the life of a small town on the Kyushu Island where the victims of Minamata disease incident live with the plentiful natural features along the Shiranui Sea for a background.  The beautiful landscape of the countryside still remains.  Fishing is continued as before.  Behind the scene, however, there live over 12,000 people suffering from Minamata disease.  What a tremendous sacrifice did Japan make to obtain economic wealth?

Toroku (gelatin silver print 11 x 14 inches)

Toroku is a small village along a valley in the Kyushu Mountainous region.  In this village Toroku with a population of a little over 200 a refinery started the production of white arsenic, a deadly poison.  It was in the year 1920.  White arsenic was produced by calcinating arsenopyrite.  Through the process poisonous smokes flowed out damaging the crops and farm animals.  Horses and cattle writhed in the agony of pain and died.  Many villagers suffered from the sore of the skin and incessant coughing.  On the palms and soles appeared keratosis, a skin lesion characteristic clinical symptom of arsenic poisoning.  Gradually they died.

Their voices to appeal the casualty were not listened by town people or the administration.  They were sacrificed for Japan to achieve its modernization.  The Toroku mine pollution incident was buried in the darkness of Japanese history until 1971 when the sufferings of Toroku people became known to the public through a report by a group of local elementary school teachers.  Many victims had already died from acute and sub-acute arsenic poisoning.  In 1975, those who had survived filed an action against Sumitomo Metal & Mining Co. Ltd., the only existing and legally responsible company, for compensation.  They made a compromise at the Supreme Court in 1990 to end the struggle.

It was in 1973 that I first visited Toroku.  The mine and refinery that had caused pollution was already closed down and many victims were dead.  It was too late to photograph the graveness of the casualty.  What I saw there was close relationships among the people and the life in a mountainous village blessed with affluent nature.  I felt as if I had found the original image of happiness for the Japanese.

My photographs on Toroku, which were taken in consciousness of the history that experienced a mine pollution incident for a background, are to covey the current existence od survived victims who lived modestly but happily.

My Walks (gelatin silver print  11 x 14 inches)

The small town I live is located in Kyushu. It has a mild climate and is blessed with abundant nature. When I feel tired from working I often stroll near my house and am comforted by little pieces of nature like flowers and plants that grow by a stream or in the corner of a field.  Such little pieces of nature also repeat the cycles of life together

with the mankind as a member of the earth, and their memories now exist there in the current forms.  My photographs exhibited here depict little pieces of nature I found

near my house while strolling.

Whispers of 46 hundred million Years (gelatin silver print  11x14 inches)

A living thing must have some misgivings about the termination of life.  However, we are hardly conscious of the misgivings in a daily life.  Four thousand six hundred years have passed since the birth of the earth. The sea, being the source of life, has maintained the life system on the earth. I drew to the sea as close as possible and calmly listened to whispers of the sea.  Did you hear the whispers of life?