In those days, villagers employed by the company were known as “kaisha-yuki-san”—literally, “those bound for the company”—a group label uttered with a measure of envy and admiration.

This, too, is part of Minamata’s history. The city lies along the Sea of Shiranui, a semi-enclosed inland sea off western Kyushu long known as “io waku umi”; the phrase evokes the abundance of catches thanks to “a sea where fish seem to well up from the depths.”

In 1908, a predecessor of Chisso Corp. established a factory in this rural outpost of southern Kumamoto Prefecture. The plant brought electricity, the railway and the dawn of a new era to what had been a remote hamlet.

For the state, the chemical industry was a strategic pillar, producing everything from fertilizers to dynamite. Before and after World War II, it........

© The Asahi Shimbun