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The Asian side of the world - II

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Jean-François Sabouret

Part Two. National challenges and strategies

The miners of Chikuhô and pneumoconiosis

Bernard Thomann

Texte intégral

1March 2013

2On 26 December 1985, 84 former miners and the family members of 39 former diseased miners from the region Chikuhô in Kyûshû, supported by a group of lawyers already linked to other famous cases of pollution, such as that of Minamata, filed a lawsuit against the State and six big mining companies. These miners were victims of an incurable, particularly atrocious illness called jimpai in Japan and pneumoconiosis in English, which causes a slow death by asphyxiation in people who have breathed silica or coal dust. After nearly 10 years of proceedings, on 20 July 1995, the Fukuoka district court ordered the six mining companies to pay 197 million yen in damages to about 104 victims but did not recognize the responsibility of the State. After settlements with Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Furukawa, the Fukuoka High Court, on appeal on 19 July 2001, ordered the three remaining companies and the State to pay 1.91 billion yen. On 27 April 2004, after a settlement with two other companies, the Supreme Court of Japan finally pronounced against Nittetsu and State and granted a total of 566 million yen in compensation to the complainants.

3This suit resulted in a large amount of documents. These records, kept at the University of Kyûshû, consist of preparatory documents assembled by the defence, statements of witnesses (miners, experts, executives), statistics and surveys, inspection sheets and biographical data on victims. These documents are especially valuable for the historian because they starkly reveal the extent of the social invisibility of this disease. Historical writings also show this invisibility. The history of occupational health is generally absent from the labour history of Japan. In addition, there is a surprising lack of any mention of pneumoconiosis in the abundant literature on the social history of coal mining. Examples include the thick volumes on the history of Fukuoka Prefecture, in which the history of mining occupies several volumes, the descriptions by Ueno Hidenobu, who was a miner himself, of the poor living conditions of the inhabitants of Chikuhô, and a description of the very difficult working conditions and the violent customs in mines by Sakubee Yamamoto, who worked as a miner for 50 years, in a series of 700 illustrations that were recently classified as World Heritage by UNESCO. It is surprising to note the absence of any mention of lung disease due to dust, while explosions of firedamp or coal dust and their victims are thoroughly discussed; it is as if pulmonary illnesses never played a significant role in these mining communities and their memory. Beyond this surprising absence of pneumoconiosis in the social history of coal mining in Japan and despite a large number of scientific studies that demonstrate the reality of this epidemic, the social invisibility of the disease has resulted in what is certainly massive under-recording in official statistics, even though the Pneumoconiosis Act of 1960 institutionalized mechanisms for screening and financial compensation by social insurance.

4To understand the mechanism that fuelled the invisibility of victims of pneumoconiosis, even after its institutional recognition in 1960, as illustrated by the very existence of this trial, it should be understood that recognition of this disease depends on a medico-legal definition, and the first symptoms occur long after dust begins the destruction of the lung. Regular medical visits, interpretation of radiographs and clinical examinations and a decision to grant financial compensation to a worker depend not only on medical decisions but also on administrative ones, i.e. standards and practices that are the result of a power struggle between an industry that has been always been able to impose its medical expertise and workers in a position of great weakness.

5The weakness was particularly that of the labour unions. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, large reserves of coal were discovered and developed rapidly to provide the energy needed for the emergence of a modern, industrialized nation. Trade unionism was therefore severely repressed until 1945. But the rise of unions after 1945 was followed immediately, in the 1950s, by a decline of the mining industry and an overabundance of labour, which drastically reduced the unions’ bargaining power. In addition, unions emphasized the problem of unemployment, rather than occupational health, as the industry underwent successive rationalization plans. The boom, called Jimmu (Jimmu keiki), which saw the production of coalmines increase by 40% in 1956–1957, represented the last period of prosperity for coal. From 1959, the industry began to collapse. Throughout this period, the major industrial groups continued their strategy of investing in other activities, rather than putting money into an industry that was inherently unstable. In Chikuhô, between 1956 and 1959, 22,900 workers lost their jobs. In 1970, there were only five mines in this region, from up to 256 after the Second World War.

6Apart from the weakness of the labour movement, account must be taken of a kind of cognitive barrier against certain risks. Mine labour was subjected to an environment in which there was pervasive violence and a perception of risk monopolized by explosions. Large mines owned by the big industrial groups and much smaller units with little capital owned by local entrepreneurs always coexisted. Safety standards were rarely observed in the small mines, called tanuki bori (holes of tanuki, a wild canid widespread in the Japanese archipelago), which operated with networks of shallow galleries. But all mines in the Chikuhô basin were at particularly high risk for penetration of gas and water, due to the activity of the crust and the volcanic nature of the region. In addition, mine operators tended not to invest adequately in their mines to improve safety and, on the contrary, tried to increase production with the existing facilities and workforce. Thus, the accident rate in the mine area was remarkably high. The total number of deaths in the Chikuhô region can be estimated to have been over 11,000 in the large mines alone in the period 1922-1965; reliable statistics are not available for the small mines.

7Security was so badly neglected in both the smaller and the largest mines also because the work was always associated with a very low social status. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, there was widespread use of forced labour, and with industrialization of extraction after the Meiji Restoration mining attracted buraku populations from neighbouring regions of Kyûshû. The burakumin were used as hitoguri, who woke miners and sent them to work or acted as supervisors. In addition, after 1930, Korean workers were used extensively to replace the women and children who could no longer work in the galleries after the reforms inspired by the International Labour Organisation. The Koreans were often sent to areas in which gas accumulated, due to poor ventilation, where the Japanese would not go. During the Second World War, Koreans, and also Chinese, represented up to half of the workforce in some mines. In addition to their low social status, workers were subjected to a particularly oppressive system called naya-hamba. In this system, a subcontractor, known as nayagashira, watched the workers under his authority day and night, housing and feeding them in a sort of barrack dormitory called hamba. Before and during the Second World War, in some small, notoriously violent mines, this system included supervisors (rômugakari) who were sometimes associated with the local underworld. The nayagashira was generally responsible for recruiting workers, often at his own expense. Once he hired a group of workers, he assigned them to a vein on the orders of the company. Even within the same mine, the coal on some walls could be removed relatively easily, while that on others was harder, leading to large wage differentials. The power of the nayagashira was all the greater because they not only calculated and paid the wages of the miners but also sold them the equipment they needed for work and often lent them money. They were present in all aspects of their daily lives. This left miners in perpetual debt, both financially and socially. In the region of Chikuhô, a miner could be subjected to corporal punishment, according to the mine in which he worked and the seriousness of the offense, even after the war. In extreme cases, a miner who escaped was even hanged or beaten to death with a sword or a knife as an example to the others.

8The fact that the pneumoconiosis trial occurred nearly two decades after the closure of most mines in the region clearly demonstrates the barriers to recognition of the disease. Such a trial would not have been possible as long as the workers were employed by a mining company and were members of a local community that depended on the coal industry. Most miners began to sue the mining companies and to make their disease socially visible once the companies had abandoned the Chikuhô region and when they had become entirely dependent on public welfare. The paradox of this situation is that, if the miners of this region and their families had been able to achieve a social citizenship that medical expertise, funded by industry and the Government, was never able to give them, their victory finally came in a world that was already disappearing.

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