OSAKA--Plaintiffs expressed long-sought-after vindication on Sept. 27 that a district court finally acknowledged that they were also victims of Minamata disease and entitled to relief from the government.

“It took nine years for a ruling in our favor to emerge,” said plaintiff Atsuko Matsuo, 68, who grew up in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, at a news conference in Osaka. “The fair ruling was the result of the plaintiffs working together as one.”

The Osaka District Court ruled that day that the 128 plaintiffs should each receive compensation of 2.75 million yen ($18,400).

The ruling expanded the definition of Minamata disease victims beyond the standards set by the central government in a 2009 special measures law to provide relief.

The ruling concluded that individuals could be diagnosed with Minamata disease even if exposure to methylmercury was at low levels as long as the exposure extended over a long period. The ruling also stated that the disease could emerge many years after the initial exposure to the methylmercury.

The special measures law only covered individuals who lived in nine municipalities in Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures along the coast facing the Sea of Shiranui.

But the ruling said that with advances made in the distribution of seafood caught in that sea, individuals living outside those nine municipalities could also contract Minamata disease if they consumed large amounts of contaminated fish before 1974 when partition nets were installed in Minamata Bay.

Environment Ministry officials were stunned by the extent to which the Osaka District Court sided with the plaintiffs. The ministry is in charge of providing relief to Minamata disease victims.

Environment Minister Shintaro Ito only said on Sept. 27 that the ruling would be studied closely before any decision was made on future measures.

WOMAN TOLD NOT TO TALK ABOUT MINAMATA DISEASE

Matsuo, now, a resident of Kasugai, Aichi Prefecture, only realized she might have Minamata disease about eight years ago.

Her father told his children to never talk about the poisoning disease. Like many other residents of Minamata, her father worked for Chisso Corp., the company which in the 1950s and for much of the 1960s dumped industrial wastewater containing mercury into Minamata Bay.

Matsuo recalled that a similar mood was prevalent in other Minamata families when she was a child in the 1960s. Upon reflection, she said that symptoms of Minamata disease appeared when she was in elementary school.

She experienced severe pain in her leg muscles when she was sleeping and could only go back to sleep after massaging her legs.

After graduating from a high school in Minamata, Matsuo moved to Aichi Prefecture, where she found a job and attended a junior college at night. While she still had various physical ailments, she never imagined that she had Minamata disease.

That all changed in April 2016 when her older brother who still lived in Minamata visited her in Kasugai. Showing Matsuo his trembling hands, the brother said he had been diagnosed with Minamata disease. He also revealed that he received relief under the special measures law.

As they all ate the same seafood caught in the Sea of Shiranui as children, Matsuo came to realize that her symptoms were likely caused by the methylmercury exposure.

In December 2016, Matsuo was also diagnosed with Minamata disease, but the deadline for applying for relief under the special measures law had expired four years prior to her meeting with her older brother.

Matsuo told her three siblings who now live in Chiba and Aichi prefectures about their older brother. All four are now plaintiffs in the lawsuits before the district courts.

PLAINTIFF LIVED ACROSS FROM MINAMATA BAY

Another plaintiff, Kazuyo Kurata, 80, of Osaka, joined the lawsuit because she could not understand why she was not covered by the special measures law.

She grew up in Amakusa, Kumamoto Prefecture, which lies across the Sea of Shiranui from Minamata. She ate seafood caught in the sea and Minamata Bay was visible in the distance. 

In the early 1960s, she married when she was 19 and moved to Osaka.

A few years later, she experienced numbness and trembling in her hands and legs. She could no longer work at home making roof braces because her symptoms worsened.

Although she went to a hospital, doctors could not pinpoint the cause.

Kurata and her daughters opened a restaurant, but the numbness reached her lips and her sense of taste was impaired. Customers complained that the miso soup was too salty so she was forced to stop cooking. She also stopped eating out because she began spilling food out of her mouth. 

Kurata never thought she had Minamata disease because she had the image of patients with severe symptoms.

But when she returned to Kumamoto, her friends encouraged her to visit the doctor after she told them about her symptoms. A hospital in Osaka finally diagnosed her as having Minamata disease.

But under the special measures law, Shinwa, where she lived as a child, was not one of the nine municipalities covered.

“I was shocked that I was ineligible because fish from Minamata Bay came to Shinwa since the bay was right in front of us,” Kurata said.

She and others who formerly resided in Shinwa joined the plaintiff group.

While she still suffers from numbness from her shoulders to her fingers as well as her lower legs, the symptoms do not render her incapable of walking or working. 

She wanted others to understand the difficulties she has endured even though on the surface she seems like the picture of good health.

(This article was written by Takefumi Horinouchi and Kazutaka Toda.)