In Popular Culture
Toshiko Akiyoshi, touched by the plight of the fishing village, wrote a jazz suite, "Minamata" that was to be the central piece of the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band's 1976 album on RCA, Insights . The piece was constructed in three parts, to musically reflect the tragedy - "Peaceful Village," "Prosperity & Consequence," and "Epilogue." Akiyoshi used Japanese vocalists to sing the Japanese lyrics of a tone poem that were part of the composition. The album won many awards in jazz circles, including Downbeat's best album award, largely on the strength of this piece, which brought some further attention on the tragedy. Insights (Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Big Band)
The song "Kepone Factory" on Dead Kennedys' In God We Trust, Inc. makes reference to the disaster in its chorus.
The song "The Disease of the Dancing Cats" by the band Bush on "The Science of Things" album is in reference to the disaster.
Read more about this topic: Minamata Disease
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“For those that love the world serve it in action,
Grow rich, popular and full of influence,
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The struggle of the fly in marmalade.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)