Michiko Ishimure

Michiko Ishimure (Jap.石 牟 礼 道 子, Ishimure Michiko, born March 11, 1927 in Kawaura, County Amakusa, Kumamoto Prefecture as Michiko Shiraishi ) is a Japanese author.

Life

Youth and Education

Ishimure was on, Amakusa Islands, which lie on the west coast of Kyushu, born in March 1927. When she was three months old, her family moved to Minamata. Ishimure grew up as the oldest child of the family along with three brothers. After 1943, 16 years finished school, she got through the war-related labor shortages, a job as a substitute teacher at an elementary school in the city. In 1947 she married a war veteran and later a teacher at the Minamata high school and finished her work as a substitute teacher. In the following years, Ishimure devoted mainly housewives activity. In October 1948, her son and only child was born.

Scripture Combinatorial activity

When it came mid-1950s in Minamata to a series of mysterious diseases in humans and animals, is Ishimure tried on the suffering of the people to draw attention. When later became known as Minamata disease disease is damage to the central nervous system by the inclusion of mercury compounds from food and drinking water. Your first essay appeared in a small, published in the prefecture of Kumamoto, Kumamoto Fudoki literary magazine, the co-editor Ishimure later. Waga Minamata byō (苦海 浄土 わが 水俣病) published as a book and achieved first nationwide attention that the Citizens Council of Minamata, whose co-founder Ishimure was and the way sought the sufferers also to help - in 1968, the essays were entitled Kukai Jōdo, zugutekam. Ishimure had to confront in the sequence with the resistance of local and national authorities as well as the chemical industry and the union. Since the chemical company Chisso was the largest employer in the city, Ishimure was also set by other residents Minamatas and even by their own relatives under pressure.

In 1968 she became the publisher Bungei Shunju (文艺 春秋) for the Ōya Soichi Nonfikushon Shō (大宅 壮一 ノン フィクション 賞), an award for outstanding journalism, is proposed. However Ishimure rejected the award on the grounds that she was too busy with her literary work. In 1972, under the title of Minamata byō Toso - waga Shimin (水俣病 闘争 わが 死 民) a collection of other essays written by Ishimure and other writers. In March 1973 her second book Rumin no Miyako has been published. Already after one month reached Rumin no Miyako the third edition. Ishimure wrote in Kumamoto dialect.

Public pressure eventually led to investigations by government agencies. The chemical company Chisso had to admit that the introduction of methylmercury iodide had into the sea water to the dramatic accumulation of mercury compounds in the seaweed and thus in the fish, the main food of the inhabitants of the coastal town, out.

Ishimure had so alongside the U.S. American photographer W. Eugene Smith and the Japanese documentary filmmaker Noriaki Tsuchimoto, whose work she greatly appreciated and regarded it as one of her best friends, significant contribution to the publication and the creation of public awareness of the Minamata disease.

In 1973 Ishimure received for their tireless efforts to Ramon Magsaysay Award in the category of Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts.

In her novels, she sat down on one of the fishermen and simple rural people and against the destruction of the ecosystem and the dehumanization of society by advancing industrialization. In 1993 she received the Murasaki Shikibu - Literature Prize for Izayoi hashi. The Asahi Prize she received in 2001 for their creative work that demonstrates the crisis of the ecosystem due to pollution.

Many of her works have been translated into English. Kukai Jōdo - Waga Minamata byō appeared in 1995 under the title of paradise in a sea of ​​agony - Our Minamata disease in German.