Many tragedies never really end, they just fade from view. Such has been the case with Minamata disease, a neurological disorder caused by mercury poisoning that afflicted thousands of people in Kumamoto Prefecture in one of the postwar era’s most notorious examples of industrial pollution.
The culprit was a chemical company called Chisso, which had been dumping methylmercury into the sea and spent years trying to evade responsibility before it was forced to make a massive payout to victims in 1973.
A recent biopic about the American photographer W. Eugene Smith, who helped bring the scandal to the world's attention at the time, underscored the impression that it was a tragic episode from Japan’s past, rather than an ongoing concern. That assumption is resoundly disproved by Kazuo Hara’s “Minamata Mandala,” which documents the protracted legal battles of victims for whom the story is still far from over.