Abstract
Two judgments of Minamata Disease, the judgment of Kumamoto District Court, March 20, 1973 and the judgment of Supreme Court, October 15, 2004 still give us many lessons. I would like to point out two points.
Firstly, the case of Minamata Disease and these judgments are linked to the contemporary environmental policy to minimize the utilization and release of hazardous chemical substances. Minamata Convention on Mercury was adopted with this aim. It is related to SDGs, Target 6.3 aims and 3.9.
Secondly, both judgments dealt with the contemporary precautionary principle, the issue of how the government and companies should respond to the scientific uncertainty problems. Up to now, we have had quite a few scientifically uncertain issues. In this situation, on the one hand, we should seek scientific evidence and on the other hand, we should make rational choices in society. The experience of Minamata Disease also seems to teach us many lessons for the application of the Precautionary Principle to environmental burden.
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Otsuka, T. (2022). Lessons of Court Decisions on Minamata Disease and Future Actions. In: Nakajima, T., Nakamura, K., Nohara, K., Kondoh, A. (eds) Overcoming Environmental Risks to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Current Topics in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6249-2_15
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