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The
Brownstone Journal >>
Issues >> Vol.
X Spring 2001
Twisted Hands: The Photographs of E.
Eugene Smith in Minimata
Roman Brusovankin (CAS XX) is a junior
in the College of Arts and Sciences. He currently studies biochemistry
and molecular biology, and he thanks Professor Sichel for his
help on this essay.
Throughout a career that began in the early thirties.
W. Eugene Smith focused his work on the power and beauty of
human emotions. Renowned for his eccentric and reclusive behavior,
financial troubles, and chronic battles with the editors of
Life magazine, he had become a legend by the middle of the century.
Smith strongly believed that his pictures must be presented
just as he shot them, without the interference of magazine editors,
and he insisted on overseeing the complete presentation of his
work, all the way down to the layout of his photographs on the
page (Enyeart 65). A rebel not unlike Walker Evans, Smith was
one of the few allowed to pursue his own projects simply because
his editors soon realized that he produced his most powerful
images when deeply involved with the humanity of what he was
photographing (Turner 65). Smith helped revolutionize the photojournalist
industry by fighting for the right to express the truth he saw
in his own photographs (Enyeart 66). He adhered to his ideals
during his entire life, and he culminated his artistic career
with an influential photodocumentary about the harsh reality
of mercury poisoning in a small Japanese fishing village called
Minamata. Co-authored with his wife Aileen just years before
his death, Minantala contains some of the most beautiful and
shocking photographs he ever created, photographs that depict
the truth about the struggles of people stricken with a life-shattering
disease.
Smith and his wife spent three years in the polluted fishing
village, living with the people, documenting their lives. They
also actively participated in their legal battle against Chisso,
a petrochemical company that from the 1930s specialized in the
production of acetaldehyde via a mercury catalyst process that
poisoned the village waters, causing profound human suffering
and deformity. No matter how grotesque and shocking the subject
matter, Smith and his wife took great care in producing each
photograph for Minamata, aiming to present the deformed villagers
with the basic human dignity they deserve (Turner 65). Smith
originally became a photographer because of the beauty of human
emotions, and this beauty violently radiates through three of
the untitled, black and white pictures in Minantata. These images,
in particular, represent the suffering of a people whose lives
revolved around the sea—around the water that was polluted with
mercury for over 30 years.
When I thought I was dying, and my hands were numb and wouldn’t
work—and my father was dying too—when the villagers turned against
us—it was to the sea I would go cry. The sea protected my tears.
I talk crazy about the sea. No one can understand why I love
the sea so much. The sea has never abandoned me. The sea is
the blood of my veins.
Smith 13
As the poison collected in the waters over the years, it became
devastating enough to cause severe bith defects, and babies
were born that would never comprehend the true beauty of the
sea—babies like Tomoko Uemura. Smith made his famous series
of Tomoko Uemura in her bath with her mother with delicate care
and planning for every shot. The mother cradles her deformed
daughter as illuminated water droplets glide down their bodies
and fall back into the bath. Even in suh a dark photograph it
is clear that Tomoko’s body is frozen forever. The muscles in
her tiny, bony body are always flexing, always tense, with her
hands severely twisted and her fingers shooting out in random
directions in wild, s-shaped curves.
The most startling contrast in the whole photograph is the illuminated
curve of the hands. A white line in the shape of a sine curve
oulines Tomoko’s right hand: it appears majestic until it becomes
apparent that this curve is actually a young woman’s severly
deformed hand. Light also strikes the mother’s left hand, curled
into a loose fist, her fingers startling in their normality.
The head of the mother is covered by a white swimming cap that
appears mostly gray. Her face is gently illuminated, revealing
a serene sadness caused by years of living with the reality
of her daughter’s disease. The mother’s eyes are closed, while
Tamoko’s eyes are obscured in the blackness of the top of her
head. In a way her eyes are unimportant because they can never
look back; they are just there. The photograph’s beauty and
sensuality overshadows the grim fact that the mother cradles
a daugher that never should have been born.
Minamata disease, as the sickness has become known, poisons
the nervous system, caused by the mercury that Chisso dumped
into the waters of Minamata Bay. Mercury poisoning devours the
brain, turning it into a porous sponge, and eventually causing
desctruction of the entire nervous system (Smith 18). “First,
a tingling and growing numbness of limbs and lips. Motor functions
may become severely disturbed, the speech slurred, the field
of vision constricted” (S. 18). Some become severely brain damaged;
others lapse into unconsciousness, shake constantly, and shout
so uncontrollably that they are considered insane. The unborn
children sustain the most devastating effects of the mercury,
since the substance concentrates in the fetus, causing the child
to be born severely disabled or virtually brain dead, as in
Tomoko’s case.
Jitsuko-chan is another such victim. “Trying to photograph you,
Jitsuko-chan, is to reach towards a mind that shades its passage
so rapidly, I am frightened that I am making grievous mistakes
of perception. I do know that to me, every photograph I have
made of you is a failure” (S. 74). The picture is a close-up
portrait of the nineteen year-old Jitsuko-chan; she looks as
if she could easily be twelve ears old. She is photographed
from the side while facing the camera, her forehead defining
the top of the image and her chest the bottom. Right under Jitsuko’s
chin there extends a pair of clenched, dark gray hands, the
fingers firmly grasping their partners. A look of strange concentration
graces her face, her lips slightly parted and her eyes gazing
diagonally up at the camera as the strands of hair gently slope
down from her head and fall in her face. It is hard to imagine
that this young girl is severely brain damaged, and yet under
close inpection the subtle truth emanates from the photograph.
On the left edge of her chin, a streak of saliva is captured
as it is about to fall off her face—just a simple sign of something
missing inside Jitsuko-chan. Her fingers tell a harsher story—thrust
out into space, they hopelessly attempt to reach other. Smith
found beauty in everything he photographed, but the mercury
that ate away at her life scars forever the beauty in Jitsuko’s
portrait. She will never be able to live the life of a woman,
and in this portrait Smith shows just how much the world will
miss by never fully knowing Jitsuko-chan.
It took over twenty years for the mercury to reach devastating
levels in the water around Minamata; the first cases of Minamata
disease did not occur until 1956. The fishermen took great pride
in their work: the sea was their life, and the life of their
ancestors. The children who played in the waters became sick
first. Later the adults fell ill, and soon babies were born
showing signs of mercury poisoning. The corporate managers of
Chisso knew about the poisoning and its effects as early as
1956 and did their best to divert the blame. By 1958 the company
started dumping its waste in the Minamata River delta, away
from the bay. Still, more people became ill, and when a year
later Chisso’s private researcher, Dr. Hosokawa, provided the
company with indisputable proof that the company’s mercury waste
caused Minamata disease, he was forced to discontinue his experiments
and to conceal his results. Not until he was on his deathbed
in 1970 did Dr. Hosokawa testify against the company he worked
for all his life (S. 122). His testimony was central to Chisso’s
eventual conviction. To this day, a small shrine to Dr. Hosokawa
stands in Minamata, a quiet memorial to a man who provided crucial
evidence to the cause against Chisso. But the harshest memory
will always be the broken patients, their suffering captured
in a fleeting instant by Smith’s camera.
Three minutes. How does one photograph a dying man in such a
short time? Iwazo Funaba struggled with Minamata disease for
12 years, while it gradually ate away at his brain. In 1971,
Eugene Smith was given only three minutes to photograph the
dying man, taking what he described as “the only picture of
Mr. Funaba that made sense to me, recording the fact of his
hands, and we left. He died two days later” (S. 73). There is
nothing obscure about this photograph: everything is laid out
right in the center, in the hands, which rest on a clean, white
blanket. The hands are dark and shiny, and the skin is wrinkled
and thick, as thick as the blanket, shimmering where the light
hits it at the tips of the fingers. On Mr. Funaba’s emaciated
arms, the thin veins can be easily distinguished circling around
the bones, and the bent, thick, grainy, pearly nails on the
twisted fingesr look like they have not been trimmed in months.
Curled upon each other in a very graceful fashion, Mr. Funaba’s
fingers are forever frozen together: the thumbs jut out into
space while the index finger of each hand cradles the other
three. Despite the obvious suffering he must have gone through,
Mr. Funaba looks peaceful in this magical, mesmerizing photograph,
taken on the verge of his death. Soon he will die and all that
will remain of him are the memories of his loved ones and his
long, exhausted fingers, forever grasping at something that
does not exist.
Until a more efficient way to produce acetaldehyde was developed
in 1968, Chisso continued to discharge its mercury waste into
the waters around Minamata. In 1959, the company unveiled a
special Cyclator that was supposed to end pollution of the Minamata
waters. In 1959, the company unveiled a special Cyclator that
was supposed to end pollution of the Minamata waters. In the
opening ceremony, the company president, Mr. Shimada, drank
a glass of water that presumably came from the Cyclator to prove
to the people that it was safe, but the water had never passed
through the machine at all (S. 55). The fish population gradually
eroded away, but through lies, intimidation, and secred deals
with the fishermen, Chisso was able to avoid major lawsuits
and a national scandal. Fishermen finally chose to accept a
settlement, but when similar cases of mercury poisoning occurred
in the distant northern town of Niigata, the new patients gave
new life to the movement to take Chisso to court, and in 1969
the four year-long trial began (S. 117). Teruo Kawamoto, a new
patient diagnosed in 1971, thrust the case into a greater public
eye by directly confronting and negociating with Chisso. He
and other patients overcame many beatings and abuses from Chisso,
including a 1972 attack by Chisso security that left Smith severely
injured and nearly blinded, and in 1973 won a landmark verdict
against the company (S. 86. 90). If not for Kawamoto’s battle
with the company in its Tokyo headquarters, it is doubtful if
the patients could have defeated Chisso, even in a court of
law. At one point during the trial, Tomoko Uemura was brought
before the Central Pollution Board as raw evidence of the dehumanization
caused by mercury poisoning. “The patients demanded that the
board members look, touch, hold this child, and remember the
experience as they evaluated human beings in dollars and cents”
(S. 45). By the time the dust cleared in 1973, 798 people stricken
with Minamata disease were identified, and by the beginning
of 1975 Chisso had paid indemnities of over eighty million dollars
(S. 179). To this date victims are still being compensated for
damages.
Eugene Smith built a career on fighting for the photographer’s
true idiological beliefs, photographing not only what he saw
but also what he felt (Turner 65). In every photograph in Minamata,
he focused on the humanity of patients, concentrating on their
true beauty, despite their severely damaged appearances. With
his photographs, Smith succeeded in showing the inner strength
of people who lost everything. The mercury stripped them of
their motor skills and drained their minds, but it was unable
to take away their passion for life, or the love of their family
and friends. Through these photographs, the twisted and shattered
lives of these people will be remembered forever.
At this time, around 3000 people have been diagnosed with Minamata
Disease, but people still continue to eat the fish from Minamata
Bay and the adjoining Shiranui Sea. The sea is their life; they
have no choice. Thousands more may be affected by the mercury
pollution at much smaller levels, but the effects still exist.
“The more subtle forms are almost impossible to detect, even
though they steal a portion of health from the victim, and do
not show up on an autopsy table. That—medically—is Minamata’s
warning to the world” (S. 33). These patients will never be
whole. Throughout their lives a part of them will always be
missing, leaving them forever dreaming of what could have been.
They no longer have to suffer in silence, but to Shinobu Sakamoto,
there will never be solace. Nothing can make things right, and
Shinobu’s words tell this as powerfully as any photograph:
“If Chisso could understand me. I want to say to them…To die
to die to die…no, to come alive again…no no…to die again…again…To
give me back my feet, mouth…I want it given back…to be given
back…to be like you…like a human being…like everyone else” (S.
159). TBJ
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Enyeart, James (ed.). Decade by Decade. Boston: Bulfinch Press,
1989.
“Minamata Disaster.” The Mandala Projects. Ed. James Lee. 11
Jan 1997. American U. 28 Nov. 00 http://www.american.edu/TED/MINAMATA.HTM
Smith, E. Eugene and Aileen M. Smith. Minamata. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1975.
Turner, Peter (ed.). American Images: Photography 1945-1980.
New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1985.
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