Abstract
In Japan, national development strategy has been based on industrial development. Over the last 140 years Japan has shifted its economic structure from agriculture to industry and service sectors. However, this strategy has incurred costs as well as benefits. From the late 1950s to the 1980s, Minamata City, a small city in Kyushu, suffered the worst industrial pollution case caused by organic mercury in the world. Many residents came down with Minamata disease, a severe neurological syndrome, which ruined their lives socially, economically, and culturally, and created pervasive social divisions among local residents as well as discrimination by people outside the city. However, in 2008, Minamata City was chosen as one of the six leading environmental model cities in Japan. This chapter focuses on this dramatic turnaround by focusing on keys critical for this change: local leadership, government policy, citizen’s actions, and Jimotogaku (a neighborhood study method).
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Notes
- 1.
“Jimotogaku” is a community development approach born in the local communities of Minamata in the mid-1990s. Jimotogaku focuses on existing local resources, including nature, history, customs, and people, and facilitates the community people’s initiative to utilize those resources. The main principle of Jimotogaku is “Stop asking for what we do not have, let us start from finding out what we have.” Jimotogaku builds confidence in community lifestyles by enhancing autonomy in design and implementation of local development (Yoshimoto, 1995, 2008).
- 2.
In Japan, a sociologist named Kazuko Tsurumi, who was educated at Princeton, studied society from the perspective of social structure throughout her career (Tsurumi, 1979, 1996). She was very interested in development and change in societies, including in Japan. Among many themes, modernization and local development became her strongest areas of research.
- 3.
The population size of 27,697 is as of June 2010. http://www.minamatacity.jp/ Accessed on 15 July 2010.
- 4.
This number is obtained from the Minamata city website. http://www.minamatacity.jp/jpn/kankyo_etc/kankyo/kankyo_Meister.htm. Accessed on 30 July 2010.
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Acknowledgments
My heartfelt appreciation goes to Mr. Masazumi Yoshii and Mr. Tetsuro Yoshimoto whose inspiring community ideas and actions were of inestimable value for my study. I am also indebted to Ms. Etsuko Numata whose kindness made an enormous contribution to my work. Finally, I would like to thank JSPS (KAKENHI 20530436) for a grant that made it possible to complete this study.
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Kusago, T. (2011). A Sustainable Well-Being Initiative: Social Divisions and the Recovery Process in Minamata, Japan. In: Sirgy, M., Phillips, R., Rahtz, D. (eds) Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases V. Community Quality-of-Life Indicators, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0535-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0535-7_5
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