Minamata film explores a key moment in environmental history

One of the great turning points in environmental history –a  “Silent Spring” moment — involved the environmental catastrophe in Minamata, Japan that started in the 1950s but shocked. the world in 1971.

Fifteen years into the catastrophe,  the now-famous photos from Minamata  re-aligned perceptions of how dangerous chemicals can have devastating  effects on human health.  No one could look at the photos of Tomoko Uemura and  doubt that.

Tomoko Uemura, W. Eugene Smith, 1971.

The story behind the Minamata photos, and the price that  American photographer W. Eugene Smith paid for taking them,  is the subject of a new film (released Feb. 2021)  starring Johnny Depp, Hiroyuki Sanada,  Jun Kunimura, Ryo Kase, Tadanobu Asano and Bill Nighy.

It’s not a well known story, possibly because Smith was one of the most exasperating artists who ever picked up a camera.  In fact, a PBS  documentary about his life was entitled “Photography Made Difficult.”

A front line photographer in World War II, Smith covered the human condition on and off for the great photo magazines throughout the 1950s and 60s.

He said: “You can’t raise a nation to kill and murder without injury to the mind. It is the reason I am covering the war for I want my pictures to carry some message against the greed, the stupidity and the intolerances that cause these wars and the breaking of many bodies.”

His photo essays about Pittsburgh, about Albert Schweitzer, about the life of a country doctor, have gone on to be famous. But Minamata would be his last project.

“For Gene [Minamata] was an issue dear to his heart – prejudice, injustice, the courage to fight,” said his former wife, Aileen Smith.

The fight involved Chisso, one of Japan’s largest chemical companies,  and its refusal to stop dumping mercury into Minamata Bay,  where it accumulated in fish and drinking water.

Mercury-deformed hand of a child from Minamata, Japan. By W. Eugene Smith, 1972.

Not only did Chisso refuse to stop the dumping, or even acknowledge any problems, but it also attempted to suppress news and medical reports about the severe physical and mental symptoms it was causing.   Only in 2010 was any serious effort made to compensate victims under the direction of the government.

These symptoms ranged from permanent numbness of face and limbs to crippling birth defects, as seen in Smith’s photos of Tomoko Uemura with her mother in a bath.

Bioaccumulation of mercury through fish diet was suspected as early as 1956, when Dr. Hajimi Hosokawa first linked mercury poisoning to patients with severe nerve damage.

Although news reports filtered slowly through the Japanese media, especially following protests of fishermen and their families in the late 1950s and 60s, Smith’s photos in Life Magazine had the emotional impact to make a global impression.

After the Minamata photos were published, Smith was beaten senseless by thugs from   Chisso. He lost most of his eyesight, and his health declined until his death in 1978.

W. Eugene Smith wanted to document the human condition — the ‘best and worst of humanity’ as his ex-wife Aileen Smith said in a recent essay. 

It’s a story that needs to be told, and now,  a film that needs to be seen.