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NIIGATA, JAPAN – MAY 22: This year marks the 50th year anniversary since the previously unknown serious diseases in Niigata Prefecture caused by mercury drainage by metals maker Showa Denko was finally recognized by the government as the industrial public pollution in 1965 years after its real breakout. Thousands of residents along Agano River were affected by diseases that caused paralyses or sensory impairments through intake of fish contaminated by mercury out of Showa's metals factory upstream. The Niigata disease was recognized nine years after the fatal Minamata mercury diseases and called "second Minamata" in the context of the broad public influences through heavy metals exhausted into the natural environment by the industry.