The Minamata disease incident is a mirror that reflects contemporary society. Environmental destruction and the emergence of countless victims due to corporate negligence; the destruction of a coastal fishery upon which people depended for their livelihood; local prejudice toward and discrimination against the victims; the confrontation between unaffected citizens and the victims in a company town; discrimination also against the citizens by outsiders − these casualties may be seen as the driving forces advancing Japan's economic growth. Moreover, we see condensed in this incident the true face of Japanese politics and government; the difficulty of restoring our polluted natural world; the state of the victims, beyond hope of cure; and the alienation of man in contemporary society that underlies people's losing awareness of others' pain.
To the extent that the Minamata Disease Museum takes as its theme the on-going nature of the Minamata disease incident and questions the way we live and the basis of our livelihoods, the Museum is not simply a place that displays artifacts and documents from the past. It continues to collect oral testimony and to engage in fieldwork, organizing and conducting further research based on these results. Moreover, the Museum also issues a periodical publication and organizes seminars and environmental education programs through which it is able to disseminate the results of its research and fieldwork activities. In this sense it is an institute that allows us to constantly reconsider the present in view of the past.
Through this focus, visitors come to realize that the entire region is a museum. The Minamata Disease Museum is a facilitator, a doorway through which visitors may walk in order to hear the testimony of the victims, to come in direct contact with nature, to experience local lifestyles.
One of the victims once said, "If things remain as they are, we will die to no purpose." The Minamata Disease Museum will strive to ensure that the victims have not suffered in vain. It is the Museum's mission to continue to "document and convey," in order that we may create a world in which Minamata disease will not recur.