Minamata is a rural community where most people either farm or fish for their livelihoods. It's located on the southwestern shores of Kyushu Island, bounded by an in-land sea — Shiranui Sea.

Farming is still done using traditional methods. It’s not uncommon for families to engage in both farming and fishing to make their livelihoods.

Chisso Corporation was invited by the prefectural government to build a factory in 1907. Before WWII, it began producing acetaldehyde, using methyl (organic) mercury as a catalyst and secretly dumping its effluent into the Shiranui Sea. They stopped using mercury in 1968 only because it was an outmoded method of production.

Congenital Minamata Disease victims are either full-time residents of rehabilitation centers or they have to visit these centers two to three times a week for therapy. Koichiro Matsunaga was born four years after the drainage from Chisso factories was recognized as the cause of the disease. Koichiro wonders, “What if Chisso had stopped the drainage at the time.”

Koichiro used to ride a touring bicycle, but had to stop 15 years ago because the muscles in his arms and legs started deteriorating due to the mercury poisoning in his body. Every week, physical therapists help him exercise and stretch to keep movement in his limbs to prevent atrophy.

If the muscles aren’t moved, they will atrophy, but the therapy is painful.

As the nervous system begins to degenerate, first the limbs grow numb, then motor functions are disturbed, making it difficult to walk and grasp things. Eventually it impairs speech and the victim’s sensory abilities.

A retired Chisso employee, Hiromasa Iwasaka spends his time fishing in Fukuro Bay, originally one of most contaminated areas in Minamata. Both his wife and him have Minamata disease. His wife has been hospitalized for a few years, but Hiromasa is still active and shows few of the symptoms that most patients experience.

The original Chisso plant still operates in the Hyakken Harbor area, but under a different name. The government financed the restoration of the harbor, dredging the toxic sludge and burying it under landfill where they built a museum and a park.

Masato Ogata was once a leader for the Minamata disease patients who were trying to obtain compensation from the Chisso Corporation in Japan. He is a fisherman and also a victim of the disease — one of Minamata's living legacies.

Umedo port is located directly behind the Chisso factory. In the 1950s, it was Chisso’s main port for shipping products internationally. As the port became congested, the fishing grounds were contaminated, leaving most of its residents ill. Later it was the site where protesting coastal fishers staged a sea blockade.

One of the more progressive rehabilitation centers in Japan is Hot House. It provides vocational training and social interaction for the victims of mercury poisoning. Tomohiro Mizoguchi is an uncertified Minamata disease patient. He watched his mother die from the disease, then became reclusive. It took the director of Hot House 5 years to get him to come to the center.

Hospitals and rehabilitation centers abound in the region. The Meisuien (lower right) is a residential facility for the most extreme cases of congenital Minamata disease. This is where Kiyoko has lived since she was 7 years old.

Minamata disease victims are happy to finally have the opportunity to have a job. At Hot House the patients make business cards, bookmarks and eco-bags from recycled newspaper. It has been a dream for them to have a regular life like everyone else.

According to Japanese tradition, a person’s 60th birthday is special. It’s even more special for Eichi Watanabe because despite his illness, he is still alive and functioning reasonably well. Above him, the photographer Shisei Kuwabara takes a moment to reflect on Eichi’s words, no doubt remembering how his photographs of these patients in 1960 were among the first that documented the Minamata tragedy.

The fishing folk have an annual tradition for giving thanks for their abundant harvest. Members of Hot House perform this rite along with their caretakers.

In the park above the buried toxic sludge, stone statues stand along the shore, reminding those who walk there of the victims that suffered and died from mercury poisoning in Minamata.

Kiyoko is ecstatic by the opportunity to show her appreciation for being alive, even though she has been confined to a wheelchair most of her adult life.

The economic promise of corporations or the self-reliant spirit of traditional commerce, it’s a compromise! What will the world choose? The survivors of the Chisso-Minamata disease, Minamata’s living legacy, reminds us that soon we will have to decide.