Noriaki Tsuchimoto

A record of the stories of patients suffering from Minamata disease, 30 years after its discovery

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Video version of the picture book 'Hiroshima no pika', based on the art pieces known as The Hiroshima Panels by Iri and Maruki Toshi

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Having spent her childhood in Dalian and Harbin in the former state of Manchukuo, Taeko Tomiyama carried within her the conviction: “As an Asian, as a woman, I will begin from the margins of beauty.” Noriaki Tsuchimoto, on the other hand, directed numerous films related to Minamata disease. He confronted the suffering of pollution victims head-on, continuing to convey the harshness of life with unflinching clarity. In an interview, Tsuchimoto once remarked: “Within Tomiyama’s narrative world lies something that could be called her eros, her utopia, her aesthetics of liberation. Why does she persist in creating such dark lithographs on the themes of Chikuho and Korea? And how is it that, while doing so, she can also simultaneously depict a world of such beauty?” This film not only reveals the allure of the lithographs themselves, but also centers on the dialogue between Tsuchimoto and Tomiyama. It is a portrait of two comrades, earnestly pursuing the meaning of artistic expression.

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Umitori takes place in Shimokita Peninsula on the northern edge of the mainland, which was becoming a “nuclear energy peninsula”, undergoing tremendous development and serving as the home port for Mutsu, a nuclear­-powered ship. Focusing on the fishermen and their stories, Tsuchimoto and his crew made their subject matter the “theft of the sea” perpetrated by giant business conglomerates. While the fishermen of Minamata were obvious victims of the mercury­-poisoning tragedy, the fishermen in Shimokita were inadvertently becoming the permanent victims of another announced trag­edy. Tsuchimoto interviews the fishermen, especially focusing on a stage play actor and his boat­-owner family, establishing, as it became his practice, a complex reflection about the threat brought to small communities by the forces of “progress”.

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A film essay about nuclear energy in Japan, composed of newspaper clippings collected in scrapbooks

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After a handful of groundbreaking films detailing the tragedy and suffering of the mercury-poisoned Japanese town of Minamata, documentary master Noriaki Tsuchimoto revisits the subject of Minamata through the eyes of the celebrated husband-and-wife painting duo Iri and Toshi Maruki. Tsuchimoto follows the Marukis from their quaint homestead studio, where they paint slews of ghastly, psychotropic mural panels depicting the effects of Minamata disease, to the streets of Minamata, where they meet and paint portraits of several victims of mercury poisoning.

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Since Minamata: The Victims and Their World (1971), director Tsuchimoto Noriaki has made numerous works depicting people living in Minamata. This work for children is a visual fantasy poetically depicting the moon that governs the ocean’s tides, the fishermen and the various fish living there.

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Portrait of Japanese youth. Produced for the Japan Foundation.

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My Town, My Youth is an inspiring film shot twenty years after the official recognition of the disease and focuses on a group of young people (many born with the disease) as they mobilise to keep their cause visible by organising a concert by the popular enka singer Ishikawa Sayuri.

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An update to the story of Minamata disease, going up to 1976

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A medical perspective of Minamata disease in three parts - 1) Progress of Research; 2) Pathology and Symptoms; 3) Clinical Field Trials

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The sea around Minamata was heavily polluted with mercury during the 1950s and 1960s from the Chisso Corporation's chemical factory. This highly toxic chemical bioaccumulated in shellfish and fish in the Yatsushiro Sea which, when eaten by the local populace, gave rise to Minamata disease. The disease was responsible for the deaths and disabling of thousands of residents, all around the Yatsushiro Sea. The marine ecosystem was also extensively damaged.

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Second film in Tsuchimoto's series on Minamata disease - the victims of Minamata disease negotiate directly with Chisso Corporation (responsible for dumping toxic water into Minamata Bay) for life-long medical care and compensation.

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The first in a series of independent documentaries that Tsuchimoto made of the mercury poisoning incident in Minamata, Japan.

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This film documents student preparations for the final phases of the 1969 protests against the renewal of the security treaty.

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Tsuchimoto made this travelogue film in 1967, documenting a five-month journey from the port city of Nakhodka on the coast of the Sea of Japan, to Moscow on the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Beautifully shot in colour, Tsuchimoto moves the camera from celebrations and official parades to the expressions of ordinary daily life, portraying the experiences of young people in Siberia. This commissioned film was televised, but this theatrical version was never released, and it is rarely shown.

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Documentary on Chua Swee­-Lin, a Malaysian exchange student who was threatened with deportation over his protest against the separation and inde­pendence of Singapore.

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Follows the treatment of Minamata disease patients

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"In my filmography, An Engineer’s Assistant (1963) is called my “first film.” This PR film on the safety of the Japanese National Railways was designed to be “self-criticism” after the big accident on the Joban line at Mikawashima Station, which had occurred in 1962. Right after the events back then, the responsibility for the accident was considered to be negligence of the engineer and the engineer’s assistant. The topic of this project was the promotion of a new device to avoid accidents. However, I had seen that the true cause of the accident was a congested service schedule, and I consciously placed emphasis on the depiction of the actual work of the engineer and his assistant, and of those who had chosen the route and were responsible for safety on the line on which the accident took place."

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Japanese documentary from 1964 directed by Noriaki Tsuchimoto. The film focuses on the taxi drivers of Tokyo in the year before the Tokyo Olympics and the difficulties they face: construction obstructing traffic, poor working conditions, numerous accidents, and bad pay. It becomes a critique of a changing and modernizing urban Japan.

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