The 1973 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts

BIOGRAPHY of Michiko Ishimure

Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
Manila, Philippines

MICHIKO ISHIMURE was born on March 11, 1927 in Kumamoto Prefecture on Amakusa Island off the west coast of Kyushu, one of the four main islands of Japan. When she was three months old her parents, Kametaro and Haruno Shiraishi, moved to Minamata, a small village of Kyushu on the Bay of Minamata, where her father continued his trade of stonecutter. The eldest in the family of three brothers and one sister, MICHIKO grew up in the "low strata of a community which was formed in the process of a village's transformation to a town." She maintained "a brilliant record" in the local primary vocational training school and graduated at 16. Since this was 1943—in the middle of World War II and Japanese manpower was absorbed by the military machine—she was given an immediate position as substitute teacher in a primary school in town. She resigned in 1947 to marry Hiroshi Ishimure, a war veteran doing day labor until he became teacher at Minamata High School. One reason for leaving teaching she has said was that she "felt ashamed" of the role she had played as a teacher in promoting the wartime propaganda that demanded "100 million commit suicide fighting the enemy."

For the next few years, MlCHlKO ISHIMURE took an occasional minor job, but spent most of her time in traditional housewifely activities, growing rice for the family and in raising their only child, a son Michio born on October 5, 1948, who is now a graduate in Physical Education from Nagoya University.

Shy and frail and feeling herself of a lowly origin, Mrs. ISHIMURE nevertheless had a burning ambition to become a writer and poet. In the early 1950s, she felt keenly the disappearance of traditional community life and she identified with the villagers who confided in her their fears as sons left the farms for the cities to try to earn a living. In seeking to find others with her interests and concerns, she came into touch with study groups of the local labor union and the Japanese Communist Party. She began to feel, as many other "intellectuals" of that period, that communism equated with freedom and self expression. However, joining the "Circle Village," a literary movement begun by one of Minamata's most talented poets and leading Communists, she soon learned that the party had no time for personal causes. When she began to publicize the plight of the victims of Minamata Disease and criticized the party for its stand against her activities, she was investigated, accused of being a Trotskyite, and informed that she was allowed to write only for the party organ. She quit, "with an abiding distrust of organizations which are overcentralized, bureaucratic and do not give their chapters freedom." Her distrust is reflected in the loose organization of the movement to fight Minamata Disease.

In the early years of this century Minamata was a beautiful, clear bay of the Shiranui Sea. The people along its shores were poor but well fed due to the bounties of earth and sea. Fish and rice were their mainstay, with a little wheat and barley, but few fruits or vegetables. Fish played a particularly prominent dietary role because they were plentiful and fishing was a major livelihood.

In 1908, one of Japan's earliest chemical producers, the Chisso (Nitrogen) Company, built a carbide plant at Minamata. The village of 10,000—which grew to 50,000 by 1956—became a one-company town, with Chisso controlling the political and economic life of the community. The company showed a lack of concern for human and esthetic values, typical of many industries in the early stages of national industrial development. For example, it emptied its solid wastes into the bay—which was a natural settling pond—until 1933, and its untreated liquid wastes until 1960 when reaction to the discovery of Minamata Disease forced it to install an effluent purification device.

Chisso expanded the Minamata plant in 1927. By the end of World War II the corporation, with its headquarters in Tokyo, had become one of the largest chemical manufacturers in Japan. In 1955, more than 10 products, including PVC vinyl, were being turned out by the Minamata factory, and its liquid wastes were still being emptied into an estuary of the canal leading to the bay. As Jun Ui, a biologist in the Department of Sanitary Engineering at Tokyo University later wrote, "the multiplicity of the elements with which the sea water was polluted, was one of the causes of the delay in successfully determining the cause of [Minamata] disease."

During the developing years of the chemical industry little was known about the dangers of chemicals and chemical waste being passed on directly or indirectly into the environment. But as early as 1925 Chisso recognized its responsibility for polluting the waters and damaging the fish life of Minamata Bay by its waste disposal procedures. It paid the protesting fishermen's union—which had fishing rights in the polluted area-¥1,500 on the condition that "there will be no more complaints forever."

The issue was revived in 1943 and again Chisso agreed to compensation, this time ¥152,500 "to compensate the damage for the past and future by throwing the polluted waste water, remnants and garbage to the sea area, where the union holds the right to fish." Again it paid on the grounds that the issue never be reraised and that the agreement be binding on "successors to the union."

In the early 1950s, a strange phenomenon was noticed in the fishing hamlets of Myogin, Tsukinoura, Itzuki and Yudo which were strung out along a narrow strip of land between the steep hills and Minamata Bay. Cats in these hamlets were reported to be standing on their heads, rubbing their noses into the sand until the skin came off and then jumping into the sea and drowning.

As a sensitive woman and aspiring writer, Mrs. ISHIMURE was both disturbed and intrigued by these stories and wanted very much to see for herself the "dancing cats." Then word began to spread of the same strange behavior appearing among members of the fishermen's families, particularly among those who owned the cats. Mrs. ISHIMURE knew that in the societal context of Japan an ordinary housewife could not walk into these villages and begin asking questions, yet she felt an "inexplicable force" drawing her to them. She hit upon the excuse of visiting classmates living there. "I pretended I was just wondering how they were," she later wrote, "and brought up the matter of the cats casually." In this manner, she learned about both the cats and the—usually—elderly persons who were exhibiting the same bizarre symptoms which the villagers referred to variously as the "dancing cat," "high-collar" (i.e., modern), "civilization" or "mysterious" disease. What surprised and shocked her was the derision and lack of pity expressed by her friends for the victims. Many took the Buddhist position that they were paying for sins committed in lives past, others ascribed the disease to evil spirits, leprosy or simply to the senility of old age. Victims were hidden away by their own families, as if the affliction itself were shameful; some feared it was contagious. Appalled by what she learned, she could not bring herself to ask to visit any of the sufferers to see the ravages of the disease firsthand.

Minamata Disease was first seen in 1953; that year 13 persons were known to be suffering from this strange malady. It usually manifested itself first in numbness and a "drunken" loss of coordination, which progressively led to a total loss of the ability to walk, speak, write, see, hear, smell and feel. In its later stages it resulted in severe deformation of the body, convulsions, fantastic behavior and death. By 1956, some 52 persons were known sufferers and by 1958, the Minamata City Hospital had to add a wing to accommodate the patients.

In May 1956, Dr. Hajime Hosokawa, Director of the Chisso Factory Hospital, officially identified this condition as a discrete but unknown disease. On his initiative the "Committee to Control the Weird Disease of Minamata" was established, with members drawn from local physicians' associations and from the city and factory hospitals. In August a research team from Kumamoto University Medical School was organized as the "Medical Research Team for the Weird Disease of Minamata." Associated with it was the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and the United States National Institutes of Health. Preliminary findings in November described the disease as "an intoxication caused by intake of marine products of Minamata Bay."

During the next two years warnings were issued and central government funds were given for "research into cause, and receiving facilities and medical care for patients." Yet, little was understood by the villagers themselves, and government aid, as is frequently the case, was slow in making itself felt. Fishermen were urged to fish beyond the Shiranui Sea, a palpable hardship since the average fisherman used a two-oared boat, rowed by himself and his wife, which was neither seaworthy nor large enough to venture far.

In July 1959, the Kumamoto Team identified mercury as the cause of what became officially known as Minamata Disease. Its source, they said, must be waste from the Chisso plant since it was the only industry in the area.

At this point, factory cooperation ceased. It denied responsibility, refused to allow scientists access to its drainage flume and refused to divulge the chemicals used in its various manufacturing processes. Dr. Hosokawa had confirmed by experiments on cats that the factory drain contained substances that could cause Minamata Disease, but his findings were suppressed by the factory and he was ordered to stop his research into the disease.

The irony of mercury and other metal poisonings is that the waters into which the chemicals seep or are dumped do not necessarily register as dangerous, but the aquatic life cycle imbibes and retains them, and as one species is consumed by another, the amounts of chemical increase in each succeeding life stage.

When literary friends of Mrs. ISHIMURE who were in government positions learned of her visit to the fishing hamlets to hear firsthand of the "mysterious disease," they procured for her a copy of the report made by the Kumamoto University Team which confirmed that the disease was the destruction of the central nervous system by mercury poisoning acquired by eating contaminated fish. She also learned that the disease was showing up in more and more people, not just in the elderly who had been eating poisoned fish for many years, but in younger and younger people as the accumulation of mercury in fish increased.

When she heard that a young woman her own age had died of Minamata Disease she decided to visit the city hospital and see the victims herself. The first visit was such a shock to her sensitive nature and frail constitution that she was "ill and weak for six months." Each subsequent visit took its emotional and physical toll.

Besides the ordeal of seeing and talking to the Minamata Disease victims, was the pressure from family, friends and townspeople who felt a housewife should not involve herself in such affairs and that publicizing the condition of the patients "gave the town a bad name." During the next few years whenever the pressure got too great she turned for physical and emotional comfort to the family of the editor of Kumamoto Fudoki (Kumamoto Record), which was to publish her essays and of which she is now co-publisher. "Without any hesitation," she wrote, "I told them of my spiritual loneliness and hunger and begged for food, and at their homes I was able to sleep like a fish thrown over the beach. During this time without mercy, my family was left alone, but what could I do? I had many acquaintances who consoled my family . . . . "

Driven by an intense desire to help the sufferers, but with the government siding with the company in downplaying the disease and refusing to admit to its cause, there were no official channels open. Her one outlet was in writing. Through her essays and articles she could expose the condition of the patients as they suffered and died. Since the villagers came from her own background she instinctively knew their thoughts and feelings and could speak movingly for them. Where possible, she used their own speech to make more poignant the condition in which they found themselves and their sense of shame and disbelief that they could no longer work and care for themselves. To emphasize the simplicity of these people she wrote in the Kumamoto dialect.

She also interested a group of her literary friends in the plight of the victims and together they organized the Mutual Aid Society for Minamata Disease Patients, persuading the patients' families to band together, with each family contributing ¥50 for expenses. They themselves gave and also begged for money on street corners in neighboring towns.

In the fall of 1959 when the Minamata Fishermen's Cooperative requested compensation for the loss of their livelihood by the activities of the Chisso company, the Society joined with the union and likewise made demands upon Chisso for compensation for suffering and loss of life from Minamata Disease. The company signed agreements in December that year with both groups. While not accepting responsibility for the disease, the company nevertheless agreed to pay a "solatium"—condolence money"—of ¥300,000 (US$833) for each deceased victim, ¥100,000 for each adult patient and ¥30,000 for each incurable child. The company however stated in the agreement that "even in the event that the factory's drainage be found to have had a causal connection with Minamata Disease, the Mutual Aid Society of Patient's Families shall not make any new demand for compensation." The fishermen received less than 10 percent of the loss they had suffered.

The government now took the position that since the company had paid compensation and was in the process of installing an effluent purification device, the need to pursue the source of pollution was no longer necessary. Funds were withdrawn from the Kumamoto Team, which, however, continued to search for the source of the mercury. Since Minamata Bay had little tide or current, the team found great quantities of sludge on the bay bottom. It was only when the company changed drainage sites and the team had a chance to check both old and new sites, take samples, and check the geographic location of patients that it "ascertained beyond a doubt that the effluent from the nitrogen company was responsible for the methyl mercuric compounds found in fish and shellfish in the bay." By 1964 it also understood the process through which inorganic mercury used by the company was changed to organic mercury in the sea. The government and the company still refused to credit the findings.

Writing of this period, Mrs. ISHIMURE says, "no matter how hastily you view the unprocessed factory waste that started biting into our Islands from the Pacific Coast side [the Ashio Mine poison case of the 1870s] and continue to drain Japan, it begins to resemble the blood of the internal organs, the intestines, being squeezed out of our soil. Flooded with unknown chemicals and covered with soot resembling

poisonous gas, our country is slowly suffocating. The seas, rivers, lakes, the surface of the ground, the water underground and all living things, including human beings who are the last receptacle, most certainly accumulate organic acid compounds and organic phosphorous chemicals."

In 1965, Minamata Disease was diagnosed in Niigata, on the east coast of Honshu, under similar circumstances. Again scientists at the university (this time of Niigata) made public their definite conclusion—that the disease was from mercury emptied into the river by the Kanose plant of Showa Denko. Again the government did not recognize the report, although it began checking effluents of all factories using mercury as well as the waters around such plants. It suggested that perhaps a single accident, rather than the continuing disposal process, could be the problem.

It was not until September 1968 that the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Science and Technology Agency, announced that "waste water from the Chisso plant" and "waste water from the Kanose plant of Showa Denko" were responsible for the mercury poisoning that was the cause of Minamata Disease in Minamata and Niigata. This was 15 years after the discovery of the disease in the former, 12 years after its identification, 10 years after its cause was determined and 3 years after its outbreak in Niigata. During this time, "the victims rather than offender had to shoulder the burden of proof, notwithstanding the fact that a specific source was related beyond question to a specific damage through a causal connection scientifically established."

It was during these intervening years that Mrs. ISHIMURE brought to the attention of the people of Japan the plight of the victims of Minamata Disease, helped the patients in their compensation negotiations with the Chisso company, and assisted them in their dealings with the government, whether in confrontation in front of the Ministry of Health in Tokyo or in the long court case in Kumamoto City. During this time not only the government but "the union leaders, company officials and the city's political leaders . . . managed to sidetrack the scientific investigation time and again."

The position of the city officials could be understood for the mayor of Minamata was a former manager of the Chisso plant and about half the assemblymen were associated with the factory. The union's role was more surprising, but the union was more concerned about the ongoing strength of the plant and the resultant security of their jobs, than justice for fishermen-patients who were beyond their ken. The stand of the union finally backfired, with the union splitting and the new union taking a stand on behalf of the victims. Prior to the split even Mrs. ISHIMURE's brother, a union member, opposed the Mutual Aid Society for Minamata Disease Patients.

In the late 1960s, a literary friend living in another part of Kyushu suggested Mrs. ISHIMURE publish in book form a collection of the essays she had written about the Minamata victims. In this way her writings would come to the attention of a wider audience, and she would establish herself as a recognized writer and thus acquire the status necessary to enable her to carry on her work for the patients. (Indicative of the importance of status, Mrs. ISHIMURE had been turned down—on the basis that she wasn't an established writer—when she attempted in 1963 to arrange an exhibition of photographs of the patients in Kumamoto City.)

Her book, entitled Kukai Jodo—Waga Minamata (Pure Land— Poisoned Sea), was published in 1968. The theme that runs throughout is that Minamata Disease represents the sickness of Japanese society. Mrs. ISHIMURE views industrialization and the evils that it brings with it as an illness because it results in an alienation of the Japanese from their roots. The book "commanded nationwide response," and aroused public concern and support for victims of Minamata Disease. She has since published another book in the same vein, Rumin no Miyako (City of Drifters), printed in March 1973 and in its third printing a month later, and edited Waga Shimin—Minamata-byo Toso (Minamata Disease—My Dead People) (1972), a collection of essays by herself and others.

The publication of Pure Land—Poisoned Sea brought attention to the Citizens Council of Minamata which with Jun Ui and others she had helped found earlier. As a group to study ways to help Minamata patients, it was, she said, "a mixture of highly regarded experts and some, like myself, who had only primary school education." Doctors and professors from the Kumamoto University Hospital who had been involved in the study of the disease from the beginning were among its most active members.

The Kumamoto Committee to Indict Minamata Disease was set up at about the same time to help the Citizens Council, "spiritually and materially," and to publish a monthly newspaper Kokuhatsu (Indictment), which later was changed to Minamata Kanja-san to Tomoni (Together, or Hand in Hand with Minamata Patients). Three thousand copies were printed of the first issue; interest was such that printing has increased to 15,000. Indictment is provided free to those who cannot afford to pay. Its purpose is to obtain the broadest possible publicity for the patients' fight against the government-business establishment in order to win financial security for themselves and legal protection from dangerous abuses of the environment for all. Mrs. ISHIMURE has lent her time and effort to both Council and Committee, but her talents have been especially engaged in writing for Indictment.

When two new cases of Minamata Disease were discovered in 1968, the Mutual Aid Society split into two factions, one seeking renewed compensation negotiations with Chisso, the other bringing suit for compensation against Chisso in the Kumamoto District Court. Those negotiating with Chisso reached an understanding with the company in May 1970, after two years of bitterness, with the company "totally completely uncooperative" much of the time. At issue was not only increased compensation in view of the official government fir cling that the company was responsible for causing Minamata Disease, but public admission by the company of its guilt.

The court case was even more protracted. It came to trial in October 1969 but was not decided until March 1973. In the interim the litigants and members of the Mutual Aid Society decided to carry their case to Tokyo and demonstrate where both the government and media would be forced to notice them, see their deformities, and realize that this would be the future state of all unless pollution controls were enforced. Thirteen were arrested—as the Society had planned. The attention of the nation was caught, people were shocked, and both financial and moral support for the court fight mushroomed. Over ¥10,000,000 were contributed, enough to pay for most of the expenses of the trial and for continued publication of Indictment for months to come.

In addition a documentary film was made by Director Noriaki Tsuchimoto which had a great impact on public thinking and perhaps subsequent company action. Entitled Minamata—the World of Suffering People and shown on Japanese television on November 14, 1970, this film was the first widely viewed audiovisual documentation of "the real situation of the afflicted people and their inner world." Victims told in their own words of their distress and shame when they no longer had the strength or physical control to lead useful lives. Tsuchimoto, whom Mrs. ISHIMURE regards as one of her best friends, did not base his film directly on her essays but she feels it is "deeply connected with my work in its spirit—I think he made the film in the same understanding of suffering as mine."

In the fall of 1971 the government officially recognized 18 new Minamata Disease patients and the prefecture started a comprehensive survey of the Minamata Bay area to discern if there were other sufferers. The newly designated patients requested compensation negotiations with Chisso and when their demands weren't met, started a sit-down strike. They began demonstrating in front of the factory on November 1, and then entrained for Tokyo to address the main office directors, demanding to speak with the president directly. Mrs. ISHIMURE helped finance their trip with money from an advance for her third book, which also paid for a necessary eye operation for herself. Negotiations with the president were finally successful in 1973 but only after a new patient, angered by the president's statement that the company could not pay further compensation, replied that if the company couldn't pay, he couldn't live. He broke an ashtray against the negotiating table and slashed his wrists. The president, shocked into a recognition of their desperation, said, "Yes, yes, yes we will pay!" A solatium of US$60,000-US$68,000 was agreed upon plus monthly payments.

The Kumamoto District Court also handed down its decision in 1973. It found that "the defendant cannot escape from the liability of negligence." It was a landmark case because it was the "first time in Japanese history that a local court decided against the central power, the central government, in favor of local people in relation to a pollution problem." The people who won the case have now gone to Tokyo to confront the corporation and ask for a verbal and written apology for "lack of responsibility and wrecking of the human environment."

From the identification of Minamata Disease until the end of 1972, 59 victims died, 292 were officially recognized as sufferers and 370 were waiting to be certified as such. A number of patients have been found who were born with the disease, the mercury having passed through the placental barrier and infected the central nervous system of the fetus still in the womb. There is no cure for the disease and none anticipated. All that can be done for the victims is to see that they absorb no more mercury from the environment, that they are helped to cope with their infirmities and that they are given an amount to live on to make their lives free from want and as bearable as possible.

Today the Mutual Aid Society is seeking establishment of a Minamata Disease Center Project which will provide a meeting hall for the patients, a center for care, a medical research unit, work shops to train patients to regain economic independence where possible, and a center for the exchange of information between volunteer groups working with or for the patients.

Through the trial, negotiations and meetings Mrs. ISHIMURE lent her physical presence whenever it was meaningful. She rode with the patients on the bus to Kumamoto City to give them confidence, and sat with them in the courtroom through hours of hearings. She gave money whenever she had it and when not sought to raise it from others. She wrote of the victims and kept constantly before the public the specter of horrors resulting from environmental irresponsibility on the part of business and government.

In 1968, the Bungei Shunju Publishing Company chose her for the Soichi Oya Award, an award commemorating one of the most respected Japanese journalists. Mrs. ISHIMURE turned it down saying she was too busy to "comply with the requirement to receive it." She also turned down an award from the Kumamoto Nichinichi newspaper because, as she wrote, "it is not in keeping with what I am doing now."

Her shyness is so intense that she has been known to ask to have a room darkened before she rises to address an audience, wanting neither to see or be seen, and she has a "hideaway" house in Kumamoto City which she obtained in a circuitous way so that even her friends cannot find her.

Although she brought herself to deal with the harsh reality of the present, she has always yearned to go back to a simple uncomplicated past. In her essay on the sufferings of Minamata patients, "Groaning From the Dead Sea," included in City of Drifters, she began: "There is something we cannot do unless we go back to old times. Inside of me there is something I cannot explain—the scenery of a little village and a town in a fog." Now that the court case has been won, negotiations with all known patients completed, and the Japanese public and government alerted to the dangers of a polluted environment, she would like to turn her attention to the past and write about the War of Seinan (1877). This rebellion against the Meiji government by samurai of her homeland of southwestern Kyushu is the kind of quixotic behavior that attracts the romantic side of her nature. She also has the very Japanese attitude toward suicide. In one essay she bemoans that the victims of Minamata Disease cannot even kill themselves—they have not the strength. Although she suffers from partial blindness she is fond of reading and is particularly fond of the stories by a famous 18th century playwright of sweethearts who choose to die together. "The world which lovers can establish by death is beautiful," she declares.

Evaluating her a colleague says, "she is a superb writer, precise and poetic" and has established "a unique and fresh style of documentary writing." She has a deep understanding of Japanese folk culture and of Buddhist folk tradition and belief and this enables her to touch the wellspring of Japanese being. She represents and identifies with the vast majority of Japanese who may wear the cloak of modern life but at core are still moved in traditional ways by age-old values.

In the last analysis her concern for the victims of Minamata Disease, for the destruction of the environment by man-made pollutants and man's lack of care, are expressions of this sensitive romantic self which seeks the lost utopia of the past. "I am not the only one," she says, "all of Japan has experienced a great loss. We have lost too much, too much beauty, too much simplicity, too much feeling, receptivity. We have lost and that is all I can say."

September 1973
Manila

REFERENCES:

American Embassy, Tokyo. Minamata Disease, (unclassified report to U.S. Department of State). July 24, 1970.

Asahi Shimbun. Tokyo. January 15, 1972 and June 11, 1973.

Environment Agency. Air Pollution Control in Japan. Tokyo. May 1972, 60 p.

______. Pollution Related Diseases and Relief Measures. Tokyo. May 1972, 28 p.

______. Water Pollution Control in Japan. Tokyo. May 1972. 54 p.

Harada, Masazumi. "Methyl-Mercury Poisoning Due to Environmental Contamination 'Minamata Disease'." Department of Constitutional Neuropsychiatry, Institute of Constitutional Medicine and Department of Neuropsychiatry, Medical School, Kumamoto University Kumamoto, Japan. 1973.

Ishimure, Michiko. Group Discussion. Transcript. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. Manila. September 1, 1973.

______. Kukai Jodo- Waga Minamata (Pure Land-Poisoned Sea) Tokyo: Kodansha Publishing Co. 1969.

______. "People of Minamata," Public Forum. Tokyo: Tokyo University School of Engineering. No. 11, July 5, 1971.

______. Rumin no Miyako (City of Drifters) "Tokyo: Yamato Shobo. 1973.

______. "Self Destruction March," Asahi Evening News. Tokyo. June 11, 1973.

______. Waga Shimin-Minamata-byo Toso (Minamata Disease-My Dead People). Tokyo: Gendai Shorunsha. 1972.

Japan Times. Tokyo. April 10, 1972.

Krehl Willard A. "Mercury, the Slippery Metal." Nutrition Today. Annapolis, Maryland: Nutrition Today Society. November/December 1972.

Kuwabara,Shisei. Minamata Disease l960-1970. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun 1970.

Mainichi Shimbun. Tokyo. May 27, 1971; March 11, May 10, 1972.

Minamata Disease. Study Group of Minamata Disease Kumamoto University. Japan. 1968.

Minamata Disease Center Project. Tokyo: Minamata Disease Center Offices. 1972.

Tamaki, Akioshi "Pollution Control Poses Tough Problems." Japan Times. Tokyo. January 24, 1972.

"A Tribune of Sufferers," Asahi Evening News. Tokyo August 31, 1973.

Ui, Jun. "Mercury Pollution of Sea and Fresh Water-Its Accumulation Into Water Biomass." Contribution to 4th Colloquium for Medical Oceanography, Naples. 2-5 October 1969. 33 p. (Mimeographed.)

______. "Minamata Disease and Water Pollution by Industrial Waste," Revue Internationale D'Oceanographie Medicale. Nice, France. Vol. 13-14, 1969.

Ui, Sonada and Iijima. Excerpt of One Section from Environmental Pollution Control and Public Opinion. Chapter I ("The Progress of Kagai Problem"), II, 2 ("Minamata Disease") and II, 3 ("Regional Development of Kagai"). 1st International Symposium for Environmental Disruption, Tokyo. 8-14 March 1970.

Yomiuri Shimbun. Tokyo. September 30, 1971; March 10, 1972.

Interviews with persons acquainted with Michiko Ishimure, her service, her writings and their impact.

The RMAF is indebted to Matsuyo Yamamoto and Anthony A. Carter for their assistance in translating Mrs. Ishimure's books and articles from the Japanese language press.