Environmental pollution in Japan has accompanied industrialization since the Meiji period. One of the earliest cases was the copper poisoning caused by drainage from the Ashio Copper Mine in Tochigi Prefecture, beginning as early as 1878. Repeated floods occurred in the Watarase River basin, and 1,600 hectares of farmland and towns and villages in Tochigi and Gunma prefectures were damaged by the floodwater, which contained excessive inorganic copper compounds from the Ashio mine. The local breeders led by Shōzō Tanaka, a member of the Lower House from Tochigi appealed to the prefecture and the government to call a halt to the mining operations. Although the mining company paid compensatory money and the government engaged in the embankment works of the Watarase River, no fundamental solution of the problem was achieved. Japan is the world's leading importer of both exhaustible and renewable natural resources and one of the largest consumers of fossil fuels. Environment deterioration in the 1960s Current Japanese environmental policy and regulations were the consequence of a number of environmental disasters in the 1950s and 1960s that attended the high-speed economic growth associated with the Japanese economic miracle. Cadmium poisoning from industrial waste in Toyama Prefecture was discovered to be the cause of the extremely painful . People in Minamata City in Kumamoto Prefecture were poisoned by methylmercury drained from a chemical factory, a condition known as the Minamata disease. The number of casualties in Minamata is 6,500 as of November 2006. In Yokkaichi, a port in Mie Prefecture, air pollution caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions led to a rapid increase in the number of people suffering from asthma and bronchitis. In urban areas photochemical smog from automotive and industrial exhaust fumes also contributed to a rise in respiratory problems. In the early 1970s, chronic arsenic poisoning attributed to dust from arsenic mines occurred in Shimane and Miyazaki Prefectures. Environmentalist movements began to spring up around Japan in the wake of the 1960 Anpo protests, which energized a new generation of activists. These movements gained momentum as Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda's Income Doubling Plan placed a priority on economic growth at all costs, exacerbating environmental problems. In 1969, the Consumers Union of Japan was founded to deal with health problems and false claims by companies. The National Diet session of 1970 came to be remembered as "the Pollution Diet." Responding to rising popular pressure and outrage,