Animism in Contemporary Japan

Voices for the Anthropocene from post-Fukushima Japan

Shoko Yoneyama

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781315393889
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

'Postmodern animism' first emerged in grassroots Japan in the aftermath of mercury poisoning in Minamata and the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. Fusing critiques of modernity with intangible cultural heritages, it represents a philosophy of the life-world, where nature is a manifestation of a dynamic life force where all life is interconnected. This new animism, it is argued, could inspire a fundamental rethink of the human-nature relationship.

The book explores this notion of animism through the lens of four prominent figures in Japan: animation film director Miyazaki Hayao, sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko, writer Ishimure Michiko, and Minamata fisherman-philosopher Ogata Masato. Taking a biographical approach, it illustrates how these individuals moved towards the conclusion that animism can help humanity survive modernity. It contributes to the Anthropocene discourse from a transcultural and transdisciplinary perspective, thus addressing themes of nature and spirituality, whilst also engaging with arguments from mainstream social sciences.

Presenting a new perspective for a post-anthropocentric paradigm, Animism in Contemporary Japan will be useful to students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, philosophy and Japanese Studies.

Part I

Animism as a grassroots response to a socio-ecological disaster

1 Life-world

A critique of modernity by Minamata fisherman Ogata Masato¹

A grassroots philosopher

In the winter of 2012, I visited Minamata for the first time. I was struck first by the beauty of the Shiranui Sea, ² then by the vast expanse of water, some 15 kilometres of it, between Meshima, where the family of Ogata Masato (緒方正人) lived, and Hyakken Port, where organic mercury compounds were discharged from a factory belonging to Japan’s leading chemical company, Chisso. I could not help wondering what sort of pollution it took to kill, deform, and incapacitate tens of thousands of people in and around this vast inland sea.

Ogata is a Minamata fisherman. His father died from acute Minamata disease in 1959. His mother, eight of his siblings, and their children were officially recognised as Minamata disease patients under the extremely stringent certification criteria of the government. ³ Like most families in Minamata, three generations of the Ogatas so far have been inflicted with neurological disorders caused by the methyl mercury in seafood, mercury that poured into the sea for 36 years from 1932 to 1968. ⁴ Masato himself suffers from the disease.

Ogata Masato is a man with a strong presence. No sooner had I met him than he began to talk about the Minamata incident with incredible clarity. His words were powerful. Beyond his local accent, there was something in his language that I felt had not been conveyed in his books. It was as if his voice was breathing life into the ideas I had read in his books. The word ‘tamashii’ (‘soul’ 魂) came to my mind.

Historian Irokawa Daikichi called Ogata a ‘most creative and persistent leader within the community’ with whom the Minamata patients have been blessed, ⁵ and sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko (see Chapter 3) regarded him as one of the key persons in Minamata, a person who can create new knowledge. ⁶ Ogata’s autobiography and philosophy have been published in two volumes – Rowing the Eternal Sea: The Story of a Minamata Fisherman ⁷ and Chisso wa watashi de atta [Chisso within, ⁸ or literally, Chisso was I]. ⁹

For more than half a century, ever since he lost his father at the age of six, Ogata has relentlessly searched for answers to the questions with which he ‘wanted to confront society’: ‘What do we mean by “progress and civilization”? What is “modernization”? What does it mean to be human?’ ¹⁰ They are fundamental questions that few dare to ask, and they often drove Ogata into deep isolation and loneliness. ¹¹

In the post-Fukushima era, however, where key structures of our advanced industrialised civilisation are crumbling – as indicated not only by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, but also by other issues such as global financial crises, global warming, ever-widening polarisation between rich and poor around the world, and terrorism – the questions Ogata has contemplated for decades are extremely relevant to us. Clearly, these crises are beyond a simple institutional fix, and they all demand a critical re-evaluation of our fundamental assumptions about modernity, including how we conceptualise humanity. Ogata’s philosophy provides a radical reference point for exploring the question of humanity and modernity at this particular point in human history.

The price of life

Ogata Masato was born in 1953, three years before the 1956 ‘official recognition’ of Minamata disease, as the youngest and twentieth child of Ogata Fukumatsu, an owner of fishing boats and leader of the local fishermen (amimoto). When Masato was a child, 30 to 40 people lived and worked at his house, including some from Korea, together with other workers who commuted to his house daily. ¹² The vibrant family life of the Ogatas collapsed suddenly with the unexpected death of Fukumatsu and the succeeding outbreak of Minamata disease among other family members and neighbours. Shortly after Fukumatsu’s death in 1959, the level of organic mercury compounds in Masato’s hair was recorded as 182 parts per million (ppm): This was a time when a healthy Japanese person averaged one to five ppm. ¹³ Masato applied for official certification to be recognised as a Minamata disease patient in 1974 and dedicated himself to being a key activist on the Minamata Disease Certification Applicants’ Council, a group which has been central to the Minamata movement. He became its president in 1981. ¹⁴

In the early 1980s, however, ‘the [Minamata] movement had shifted from the streets to the courts’, says Ogata. ¹⁵ Here, he is referring to the change associated with what Simon Avenell calls the establishment of the ‘green leviathan’, ‘a dedicated and highly sophisticated environmental bureaucracy’ ¹⁶ created through ‘substantive legal and legislative innovation’, ¹⁷ and supported by ‘the wave of regulation and institutional reforms on … the local, the national and the judicial [levels]’ ¹⁸ as well as ‘hundreds of bureaucrats nationwide’. ¹⁹ This gigantic system of bureaucracy was established as a result of the environmental consciousness that emerged in Japanese society after it witnessed the devastation caused by industrial pollution in the 1950s. ²⁰ The creation of the ‘green leviathan’ peaked in 1970, when anti-pollution laws were passed, and this was followed by the 1971 launch of the Environmental Agency, which later became the Ministry of the Environment.

The development of the ‘green leviathan’ ensured that Japan ‘stood at the forefront of environmental policymaking and administration worldwide’ ²¹ in the early 1970s, and provided the foundation for the litigation cases that took place in the late 1960s, the so-called ‘Big Four’ (methyl-mercury poisoning in Minamata, air pollution in Yokkaichi city, cadmium poisoning in Toyama, and another case of methyl-mercury poisoning in Niigata), which led to monumental verdicts in favour of the plaintiffs from 1971 to 1973. ²² Yet, at the same time, it meant environmental issues were increasingly being solved through bureaucratic means resulting in a ‘gradual shift in control of the environmental agenda from civil society to the state’. ²³ This is what Ogata means when he says that ‘the movement had shifted from the streets to the courts’.

After that, Ogata recalls: ‘Whatever we did, wherever we went, whomever we dealt with, the only common language was money, and unless we could translate everything into this language, it was as if we could no longer communicate’. ²⁴ From then on, the question of money has continued to haunt him. Ogata explains today:

The biggest problem I had was why everything was decided by money. There has been a massive devaluation of compensation. The first compensation [in 1973] ranged from 16 to 18 million yen per patient, but in 1995, it was 2.6 million, and then, 2.1 million. The amount went down. This is the case for the lung disease lawsuit (jinpai soshō 塵肺訴訟) and lawsuits over drug-induced suffering (yakugai soshō 薬害訴訟) as well. It was as if life is traded in markets and was devalued in the 40th (1995) and 50th markets [counting from the outbreak of Minamata disease]. With the compensation being slashed like this, the biggest problem is the very fact that the existence of life itself (本来的生命存在) is calculated and converted into a commercial value. The government sees compensation as a ‘cost’. It is the same for TEPCO ²⁵ in relation to the nuclear disaster. (Interview, 15 January 2012, Minamata; unless otherwise specified, ‘interview’ in this chapter means the interview conducted with the same details)

Ogata questions the basic assumption of compensation, which is that the ‘price of life’ (命の値段) can be determined. He argues that the emphasis on compensation is an indication that the Minamata movement has been swallowed by the system. It was not just about money though; a highly specialised language and culture of compensation started to dominate the Minamata movement. Ogata explains:

Lawyers and activists approached us. I do not deny them. I understand their good intentions to help sufferers get medical support or living allowances. But not all has been good. … They come with jargon, legal and administrative terminology, as well as concepts, such as human rights, which are all external to us. At one time, I felt that I had to speak with such jargon and that to do so was to be at the leading edge. But the gap between using such language and my own sense of self got bigger and bigger, and I felt I was drifting farther and farther away from my original intentions. (Interview)

More specifically, Ogata describes the change thus:

The first Minamata lawsuit was a fight. Suing Chisso was a momentous decision, as the company existed in the same city. Those who took part in the lawsuit had relatives and neighbours who were working for the company, but they had no choice but to sue. Not even half of the patients took part in the court case. Those who did knew very well that they would be alienated from relatives and other townspeople. They held rallies and put up posters, literally exposing themselves, their names, and their faces.

In the second and the third lawsuits, however, no faces or names were to be shown. At most, the names and faces of only a couple of individuals, the leader and the vice-leader, became public. Other people appeared just as numbers. So, for instance, when a case began, statements would be collected from patients in the court, but only from one or two patients, 15 minutes each. No matter how many years the case continued, that was it, as far as the patients’ statements were concerned. The lawyers took total control; there was no input from the patients. Lawyers themselves treated patients just as observers. (Interview)

George gives a detailed description of how direct negotiations were possible in the early 1970s, for example, just after the Kumamoto District Court judged that there was corporate negligence and liability on the part of Chisso. At that time, the delegates of the Minamata disease sufferers negotiated directly and literally face-to-face with the Chisso’s president and the Environmental Agency director. ²⁶ As Ogata points out above, that sort of human interaction became outside the norm after the ‘green leviathan’ became fully established.

For Ogata, the implication of the system was far more profound than just losing control over the process and mode of litigation. He considers that it was the system that led to a crisis of subjectivity (主体性の危機). According to him, in the system lawyers treated patients simply as observers:

The process in which each sufferer worries, thinks, and makes decisions has been removed. As a result, each patient’s identity, subjectivity and independence (主体性) was being lost. They just waited for the fin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Style
• INTRODUCTION A theoretical map: Reflections from post-Fukushima Japan
• PART I: Animism as a grassroots response to a socio-ecological disaster
• PART II: Inspiring modernity with animism
• CONCLUSION Postmodern animism for a new modernity
• Epilogue: The re-enchanted world of post-Fukushima Japan
• Index