Smog Over Mt. Fugi

Tokyo...Seven-year-old Seiichi Yasuda of the heavily industrialized city of Yokkaichi, Japan, recently collapsed and suffocated despite doctors' attempts to revive him. The cause of death, according to city authorities: air pollution. Young Seiichi, an asthma sufferer since the age of 3, became Yokkaichi's 41st officially designated pollution fatality.

The mounting casualty figures in Yokkaichi suggest the growing dangers of breathing Japanese air. The day that Seiichi died, Japan's second largest city, Osaka, issued its first smog alert. And within three days, in the smog-bound city of Kawasaki, the air claimed a new victim, Mrs. Natsuko Hojo, a 28-year-old mother of two children, whose death badly shocked the other victimized residents of the city.

American consumer advocate Ralph Nader, during a recent visit to Tokyo, cited the city as "a notorious symbol of world-wide pollution." During one smoggy week in July, over 8,000 people were treated in Tokyo hospitals for severe eye and skin irritation and other pollution-induced ailments. Tokyo traffic policemen will not stand at busy cross-roads longer than 30 minutes, and 40 junctions have oxygen machines available. Most of Japan's gasoline derives from Middle Eastern oil, which contains particularly large quantities of pollutants.

Japan's oil industry adds benzene and toluene to the cheaper grades of petrol, which the sun's rays convert into highly toxic gases. Compounding the ecological tragedy still further, the number of private cars in Tokyo has doubled within the past three years, and the Japanese car manufacturers, who equip automobiles exported to the U.S. with exhaust-control devices, follow no such restraints in their own domestic market.

Concern, outrage and protest are mounting among the Japanese almost as rapidly as the thickening air. According to a poll conducted by the Japanese government last year, 52 per cent of the residents in the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas were convinced they suffer from the effects of pollution. And a third of those polled blamed the pollution on the weak measures taken by the central and local governments.

Controls on industrial wastes in Japan are lacking. In the port of Fuji, 380 pulp and paper factories are spewing untreated wastes and sludge at such a rate that not only are the fish dying off but the harbor continuously must be dredged.

Cadmium poisoning, which affects the liver and kidneys and painfully softens the bones, has claimed over 100 lives since its symptoms were discovered in the early 1950's. But the government appears unconcerned. Although last spring officials did move to quarantine some 300 acres of pasture land and rice paddies around the Nippon Mining Company's zinc refinery, refining goes on unabated.

In the fishing town of Minamata, mercury poisoning has killed 46 villagers and paralyzed or blinded more than 70 during the past two decades--yet the Nippon Nitrogen Company continues to discharge its mercury wastes into the bay. The government has mirrored the company's indifference. Japan's Economic Planning Agency suppressed a report which demonstrated that the plant's effluents are lethal.

The families of the Minamata victims have engaged in demonstrations and sit-ins that have captured the attention of the Japanese public. Recently, in the absence of government intervention, they began a drive to buy control of the offending company's stocks in a final desperate attempt to end the poisoning.

Escalating public concern and the opposition parties' goading this winter finally forced Prime Minister Sato to convene an extraordinary session of the Diet to legislate a dozen anti-pollution laws. Industry moved forcefully into action, and the bills finally passed in December had been watered down substantially from the original versions.

A major United States copper company recently concluded an agreement to shift its most polluting operations to Japan, explicitly to avoid U.S. anti-pollution laws. Prime Minister Sato has decided upon a similar strategy of exporting pollution. His government has announced that an industrial park for some of Japan's worst polluters will be established on South Korea's southern shore.

Sato's Liberal-Democratic Party will not willingly put into practice policies, such as strict pollution control, that put heavy financial burdens on Japanese industrial activities. Hence, the surging Japanese economy will likely continue its pace. But thoughtful Japanese are already wary of their impending prosperity. A Tokyo professor confides he has decided to give up his job in order to move his family out of Japan's industrial belt. He observes, without a trace of a smile, that "GNP translated into Japanese means Gross National Pollution."