With memories of his late parents who suffered from Minamata disease in mind, Kazuaki Maeda, a 65-year-old fisherman in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, will participate in a fish releasing event to be held Sunday in the city as part of the annual national convention for the development of an abundantly productive sea.
The 33rd annual marine products promotion event will be held this year in the prefecture on Saturday and Sunday. The Emperor and Empress will visit Minamata for the first time to attend the fish releasing event.
Maeda’s parents and younger sister suffered from Minamata disease, and he waited 20 years to resume fishing in Minamata Bay.
He hopes Sunday’s event will show people across the nation that the sea off Minamata has been revived since the mercury poisoning that caused Minamata disease decades ago.
In early October when shirasu (whitebait) fishing started, Maeda proudly said with a smile on his tanned face: Shirasu in Minamata have plenty of fat and are delicious. I believe the fish here are the tastiest, so I’ve never eaten any from other places.
Maeda was born to a fisherman’s family who lived near a plant of Chisso Corp., which discharged waste that caused Minamata disease.
Minamata Bay, once called the sea teeming with fish was also a place where Maeda played.
When he was a primary school student, he walked along the shore with a handmade harpoon made from an umbrella with a sharpened tip, and easily caught large black porgy, a species of sea bream. He brought home bucketfuls of them and ate them.
I now think the fish were swimming so slowly because of the mercury, so even children could easily catch them. At that time, we knew nothing [about Minamata disease], he said.
Soon after, his younger sister, then 1, began falling over, though she had just learned to walk.
In the first half of the 1950s, abnormal incidents began to occur in fishing villages in the city. For example, a large number of fish died and floated on the sea, and cats acted strangely and then died.
In 1956, the existence of Minamata disease was officially confirmed. Though Maeda had assisted his father in fishing since he was about 18, voluntary restrictions on fishing were imposed inside Minamata Bay.
There was a movement to refuse fish from Minamata, forcing some fishermen to give up fishing.
In 1968, the government officially recognized that Minamata disease was caused by industrial pollution. The disease was confirmed to be poisoning caused by methyl mercury contained in waste water from the Chisso plant.
Maeda’s late parents and younger sister, who survived, were recognized as Minamata disease sufferers.
The sea is my life, Maeda said.
He worked for a company managing and maintaining dividing nets set up in 1974 at the mouth of the bay to prevent contaminated fish from swimming out of the bay. When Maeda was in his 30s, he waited for the day when the ban on fishing would be lifted while earning income for his family.
Maeda’s younger brother got a job eliminating contaminated fish in the bay and repeatedly caught and threw them out, though they looked the same as uncontaminated fish.
They were fishermen who helped battle against Minamata disease.
In 1997, the Kumamoto prefectural government declared that fish in the bay were safe for consumption. As soon as the dividing nets were removed, Maeda immediately headed his boat out to the sea.
Due to the elimination of contaminated fish, the number of fish in the bay had plummeted drastically, but Maeda said, The amount of shirasu was so abundant, and I caught a ton of them.
A few years later, he borrowed money and built a fish processing plant, spending ¥70 million, and introduced kamaage shirasu (boiled whitebait) at local events.
In Minamata Bay, research by the prefectural government and other authorities has confirmed that the fish and seawater there are safe. Coral also live in the bay.
Releasing fish into the sea, farming seaweed and other efforts to revive the rich sea conditions have been ongoing.
Even now, fish brokers outside the prefecture sometimes ask Maeda to attach certificates to prove his fish catches are free of mercury pollution. Maeda said he sometimes feels frustrated by this.
But he said: I don’t want to make a fuss complaining, Don’t help spread such a bad rumor.’ If we catch good fish, the results will be clear.
The site for the fish releasing event on Sunday is a park built on land reclaimed for reviving clean seawater.
Maeda will take part in the event as the head of Minamata’s fishery cooperative. His two sons, who followed in his footsteps as fishermen, will show the Emperor and Empress Minamata-style fishing techniques aboard their fishing boat.
The Yomiuri Shimbun