He also spoke of his opposition to the 1958 change in wastewater output route to Minamata River. Hosokawas testimony was backed up by a colleague who also told how Chisso officials had ordered them to halt their cat experiments in the autumn of 1959. Hosokawa died three months after giving his testimony. Former factory manager Eiichi Nishida admitted that the company put profits ahead of safety, resulting in dangerous working conditions and a lack of care with mercury. Former Chisso President Kiichi Yoshioka admitted that the company promoted a theory of dumped World War II explosives, though it knew it to be unfounded. The verdict handed down on 20 March 1973 represented a complete victory for the patients of the litigation group:

The defendants factory was a leading chemical plant with the most advanced technology and ... should have assured the safety of its wastewater. The defendant could have prevented the occurrence of Minamata disease or at least have kept it at a minimum. We cannot find that the defendant took any of the precautionary measures called for in this situation whatsoever. The presumption that the defendant had been negligent from beginning to end in discharging wastewater from its acetaldehyde plant is amply supported. The defendant cannot escape liability for negligence. The "sympathy money" agreement was found to be invalid and Chisso was ordered to make one-time payments of ¥18 million ($66,000) for each deceased patient and from ¥16 million to ¥18 million ($59,000 to $66,000) for each surviving patient.
The album won many awards in jazz circles, including Downbeats best album award, largely on the strength of this piece, which brought some further attention to 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 album The Science of Things is in reference to the disaster. Visual documentation
Photographic documentation of Minamata started in the early 1960s. One photographer who arrived in 1960 was Shisei Kuwabara, straight from university and photo school, who had his photographs published in Weekly Asahi as early as May 1960. The first exhibition of his photographs of Minamata was held in the Fuji Photo Salon in Tokyo in 1962, and the first of his book-length anthologies, Minamata Disease, was published in Japan in 1965. He has returned to Minamata many times since.A dramatic photographic essay by W. Eugene Smith brought world attention to Minamata disease. He and his Japanese wife lived in Minamata from 1971 to 1973. The most famous and striking photo of the essay, Tomoko and Mother in the Bath (1972), shows Ryoko Kamimura holding her severely deformed daughter, Tomoko, in a Japanese bath chamber. Tomoko was poisoned by methylmercury while still in the womb. The photo was very widely published. It was posed by Smith with the co-operation of Ryoko and Tomoko to dramatically illustrate the consequences of the disease.