The Role of Literary Artists in Environmental Movements: Minamata Disease and Michiko Ishimure

Orika Komatsubara

doi:10.5204/ijcjsd.1984

Abstract

By offering new fantasies, perspectives and representations, artists have the power to make people aware of social issues and inspire them to action. This paper describes how artists can offer a vision of environmental resistance by employing fantasy and using tools of poetic expression for communities affected by environmental destruction. This paper employs a case study methodology to examine the Minamata disease victims’ movement in Japan through the lens of environmental justice. As part of this movement, writer Michiko Ishimure created a fantasy called Mouhitotsu-no-konoyo, based in a mythical world and featuring the moral relationships that the people of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, had embraced before modernisation. I will show the importance of this fantasy for the movement, analysing it from two perspectives: those of ningenteki-dori (the human principle) and the invisible fantasy about the mythical world. Ishimure’s fantasy offers a moral message to prevent further environmental harm.

Highlights

In the Minamata disease (MD) movement, victims took issue with the pollution of the natural world and the human toll caused by these economic pursuits and participated in court cases to redress it, but their reasons for joining the movement were rooted in a fantasy that emerged from within their community
By examining the case of MD, I have presented the possibility for literary artists to create fantasies that become the driving force of social movements
The fantasies offered by artists can provide local people with a basis for an ideological struggle against the environmental destruction of capitalism without having to resort to external, less locally resonant traditions of environmentalism

Summary

Introduction

In Japan, a series of severe pollution problems began in the 1960s, and many people took part in social movements against them. This destruction of the environment was brought about by rapid industrial development after World War II and was considered a tendency that emphasised economic development over human life and nature. Green criminologists have focused on the relationship between humans and non-humans and have researched environmental destruction. Brisman and South (2017: 40) focused on environmental drama, environmental (science) fiction, reality television, documentary-reality programming and mockumentaries in green criminology: Since the beginning of humankind, humans have endeavored to survive the dangers of nature, overcome its constraints, and harness it for human needs.

Discussion

Conclusion