A Japanese couple affected by the mercury-caused Minamata Disease has called on more countries to get involved in the global fight against water pollution due to the substance under a 2013 international convention.
Japan's central government and Kumamoto Prefecture says they have appealed a lower court ruling that ordered them and a chemical company to compensate 128 unrecognized victims of the Minamata mercury-poisoning disease.
A Japanese district court orders the state and others to pay a total of 350 million yen ($2.3 million) in damages to 128 unrecognized sufferers of the Minamata mercury-poisoning disease, making it the first such ruling among similar lawsuits filed nationwide over the country's redress measure.
FEATURE: Minamata woman faces up to mom s prejudice over pollution disease By Keiji Hirano, KYODO NEWS - 4 hours ago - 14:15 | Japan, All
When Rie Koriyama read a highly acclaimed book during her college days on Minamata disease, a mercury-poisoning ailment that ravaged a small coastal city in southwest Japan, she was astounded that the mother she thought she knew so well could act with such callousness toward a sufferer. Kugai Jodo (Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow), written by the late Michiko Ishimure, a writer and activist who did much to publicize the victims plight, quoted a member of a sufferer s family as saying that a general store operator in Minamata refused to physically handle money from the victim s mother for fear of contagion.