Minamata city is well known as the company town of Chisso Corporation, as the site of Minamata disease and, in recent times, as a city with environmentally friendly policies. The postwar experiences of Minamata city are often compared to a microcosm of Japanese modernization. A few decades earlier, the city faced and tackled several problems that most non-metropolitan cities currently face, such as an aging population and economic decline. There are meaningful lessons and suggestions we can adopt from Minamata city for sustainable development policies suited to non-metropolitan cities. This paper focuses on the economic history of Minamata (which includes not only Chisso but also other manufacturing companies and industries) and the dynamic relations between its local economy and politics. In Minamata, social tensions, such as those between the perpetrators and the victims of Minamata disease and between Chisso's labor and management, gradually disappeared due to reconciliation efforts and generational change. Minamata city office changed its vision of future development from being an industrial city to an environmentally friendly one, bearing in mind not only the experiences of Minamata disease victims but also the city's varied environmental resources. The residents of Minamata offered their support for these policies in recent mayor elections. Nevertheless, new problems began to emerge in the city. Jobs for the young had been limited for a long time, especially for men and those who were highly educated. One of the reasons for this is that Chisso prioritized retaining employees and restricted new hiring. Besides, the economic dominance of Chisso prevented local leaders and enterprises from growing. As a result, although Minamata's town planning, with its emphasis on environmentally friendly policies, received much attention and support, those policies could not be effectively implemented due to a lack of local human and institutional resources. Recently, however, young residents have begun to construct new social networks. It is worth noting that they share environmentally friendly visions. We can regard these kinds of movement as the results of continued efforts by Minamata city office and citizens. The economic and social dynamics of Minamata and the problems mentioned here are likely to be common to many non-metropolitan cities. Those cities must not be nearsighted about depopulation problems, but should investigate and try to maintain the conditions needed for long-term social and economic sustainability.

抄録全体を表示

  To clarify the position of learning by experiencing nature in the history of education on pollution, this paper aims to clarify the time of establishment of learning by experiencing nature in the history of education on Minamata pollution.

  In the second and third chapters, attention is paid to the educational movement in the Minamata disease epicenter, one of the major pollution-affected areas of Japan, which has been working on the regional revitalization of Minamata while recognizing the existence of Minamata disease patients and the Minamata disease. It is possible to show the historical fact that the practice of the Minamata Nature School developed from learning by experiencing nature in the pollution epicenter of Minamata, indicating the presence of learning by experiencing nature that was developed as education on pollution.

  In terms of the contrast with the Minamata Practice School and the Minamata Life School of the 1980s, is it shown in the last chapter of this paper that learning by experiencing nature in the history of education on Minamata pollution was developed by the Minamata Nature School in the 1990s. However, the author shows that there was another kind of learning by experiencing nature in the 1980s, in which learners felt the suffering due to the Minamata disease. The author points out that several similar cases also appeared after the recent Great East Japan Earthquake. As a finding resulting from this paper, the author concludes that in education on pollution we should consider the aspect of learning to understand suffering through experiencing nature.

抄録全体を表示