The Social and Cultural Consequences
The case of Minamata is surely engaging because the relationship between the causal agent and the effect is so unambiguous (at least today). Yet a full account also includes the more "human" dimension--those elements which contributed to the figurative poisoning of the city, and that make the case both more striking and more valuable for reflection.
For example, because the disease was related to the unexplainable behavior of wildly-acting cats, the disease became stigmatized, often in the victim's own eyes. In the Japanese view of medicine, the condition of the body reflects how the individual has maintained his or her balance with the external world--and sickness can be viewed as something "deserved." The victims were thus often implicitly "blamed" for their own condition. Also, wary of contagion, residents ostracized disease patients. Neighbor turned against neighbor. One tatami mat-maker, Yahei Ikeda, for instance, disparaged those who had the disease--until one day he, too, ironically, showed the symptoms. Neighbors with whom he had earlier shared his isolationist sentiments regarding the victims now turned those same feelings against him.
Fishermen and their families were the earliest and most severely afflicted, having consumed the most contaminated fish. But it was also the fishermen, perhaps, who most embodied the traditional Japanese appreciation of nature, so evident in classical haiku poetry and watercolor painting. For the fishermen, the sea, viewed romantically perhaps, was life-giving. It was hard for the villagers to comprehend that the sea could also take life away. One fisherman expressed his love of the sea: