ABSTRACT
Modern industrialization and the globalization of industrial fi rms continue to destroy natural resources with dramatic but uncertain consequences for the health of present and future generations. Yet, as stressed by some jurists, globalization has also nourished interactions of social actors and juridical initiatives for international regulations. 1 For example, a growing trend has emerged in Europe towards expanding cross-border justice to environmental crimes modeled on what was achieved for war crimes in The Hague. 2 In that context, historical works on the socioeconomic processes of industrial pollution provide a decisive outlook on the longue durée to show what justice can and cannot do: for example, if indictment of the polluters helped prevent further pollution, provided the sentence was tough enough; or if the polluters kept on as usual. 3 These questions have become also growing topics in the sociology of science, mainly focussing on the scientifi c controversies over risks and uncertainty. 4
But the court of justice is not only a platform for resolving scientifi c controversies over the causes of industrial hazards, the amount of compensation owed, and who must pay it. Very often, if the plaintiffs choose to bring their case to court, it is also because they hope, consciously or unconsciously, to develop a personal narrative of the pollution, in front of their aggressor, and with the benevolent presence of the judge. 5 What is at issue, then, is not only the fi nal verdict; while, of course, it is better for the victims/plaintiffs if they win the case, the entire process of the trial is important: Did it help the victims/plaintiffs to heal the various forms of trauma caused by the industrial hazards in question (diseases, stillborn children, social discrimination, etc)? Here historians and sociologists may be inspired to borrow concepts from philosophers and psychoanalysts to understand the complex process of healing traumatic memory and symbolic recognition. 6
As far as industrial disasters at large and their impact on the environment are concerned, in the case of Japan and Taiwan, there is now abundant literature in Japanese and Chinese, as well as in English. In the fi eld of environmental history, and from the perspective of a dialogue with historians between the Chinese and Taiwanese, Morris-Suzuki has demonstrated the virtues of comparison through a
selection of three emblematic cases of industrial disease in modern Japan. 7 Starting during the Meiji period (1868-1911), he discussed two cases related to land pollution resulting from copper mining: one is the famous case of the Ashio copper mine 嵛⯦戭Ⱉ, which would become almost an ontological paradigm for post-Second World War cases; the other case in Shikoku ⚃⚥, caused by the Sumitomo ỷ⍳ company, is less familiar. The author then compared the social mobilization of these rural areas affecting rice farmers with the case of river pollution affecting fi shermen in the fast-developing urban area of Kawasaki ⶅⲶ, in the port of Tokyo, due to discharges from the monosodium glutamate (MSG) factory that would make the fortune of the Ajinomoto ␛̯䳈 company (and which is still “polluting” popular cooking in East Asia today). As the author points out, for prewar Japan, “in larger towns like Kawasaki and in the arena of prefectural politics, antipollution movements found themselves at odds with a local policy that saw the advance of ‘industrial culture’ as the one route to prosperity.” Regarding postwar Japan, I have myself documented the same tendency, in a comparison of the mobilization against the air pollution resulting from steel and petrochemical factories in Kawasaki, and the famous case of mercury poisoning in Minamata 㯜Ὡ, a small town in rural Kysh ḅⶆ. 8 But my focus has been on the role, passive or active, of labor unions in these movements, as well as the meaning of the related class actions, at both sociopolitical and anthropological levels.
