It is an important story, focusing on the socioeconomic aspects that get short shrift in the biomedical literature. The book recounts Masato's childhood, coming of age, self-realization, and the crusade he carried out to gain recognition for sufferers of Minamata disease.
CHOICE
Oiwa Keibo eloquently transcribes Masato's story from early days and a simple life fishing the Shiranui ... Read moreSea, through the growing shadow of the disease across family community and livelihood, to a struggle for compensation marked by growing self-awareness and powers of leadership and, in an extraordinary act of redemption, the decision to withdraw from the certification process for which he had fought so long and hard, and take control over his own fate, free of dependency. Ogata rows the eternal sea as the pilot of his soul-disease and its discourse transcended.
Times Higher Education
Ogata has a message that goes further than what happened in Minamata.
Kyoto Journal
Wonderfully translated and interpreted now for a Western audience, what was a worthy book has become a great book that articulates the pain of a sensitive pilgrim recounting a dramatic and universal tale of progress.
Gavan McCormack, The Australian National University This book is a diamond, an eloquently told life history of compelling importance and profound depth. Masato's story is relevant to English readers on many levels, not just as a personal account of an environmental tragedy and travesty with global implications, but also as an exposé of the ways some corporations and governments degrade humankind and the earth, as an exploration of life in a traditional Japanese community, and as a unique opportunity to learn from a man of extraordinary spirit, dignity, intelligence, and wisdom.
Richard Nelson, author of The Island Within Show Less