Minamata

New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Dust Jacket Included. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975. Quarto, 192 pages with dozens of illustrations from photographs (many full-page). Synthetic cloth very slightly bumped; edges and leaves adjacent to the endpapers foxed; a very good copy with the dustwrapper slightly worn and with three closed tears (the most notable approximately 65 mm in length on the front panel). 'Minamata is a fishing and farming town on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Its people joined the industrial age when the Chisso Corporation built a chemical factory there. The disaster that then befell them, and the ways in which some have managed to respond, reach far beyond Japan ... Many individuals fell ill with the same symptoms: limbs and lips tingled and then became numb; speech slurred; motor functions went out of control. Some died ... Minamata's disease was recognized as methyl mercury poisoning from industrial wasters ... As groups of victims pressed a turbulent, multi-sided crusade to force industry and government to take responsibility, W. Eugene Smith and his wife, Aileen, moved to Minamata. ... The result of their collaboration is an enduring document that crowns the work of one of the world's great photographers' (from the dustwrapper blurb). An Alskog-Sensorium Book.