Our contaminated future
In Fukushima, communities are adapting to life in a time of permanent pollution: a glimpse of what’s to come for us all
As a farmer, Atsuo Tanizaki did not care much for the state’s maps of radioactive contamination. Colour-coded zoning restrictions might make sense for government workers, he told me, but ‘real’ people did not experience their environment through shades of red, orange and green. Instead, they navigated the landscape one field, one tree, one measurement at a time. ‘Case by case,’ he said, grimly, as he guided me along the narrow paths that separated his rice fields, on the outskirts of a small village in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture.
The author examines maps of radioactive contamination in Fukushima.
It was spring in 2016 when I first visited Tanizaki’s farm. The air was warm. The nearby mountains were thick with emerald forests of Japanese cedar, konara oak and hinoki cypress. A troop of wild red-faced monkeys stopped foraging to watch us as we walked by. And woven through it all – air, water, land, plants, and living bodies – were unseen radioactive pollutants. Almost everything now carried invisible traces of the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Tanizaki began taking measurements. With his Geiger counter, he showed me how radioactive elements were indifferent to the cartographic logic of the state. In some places, the radiation level dropped low, becoming almost insignificant. But here and there, beside a ditch or near a pond, the level was elevated dangerously high. Tanizaki called these areas ‘hot spots’ and they were scattered across the landscape, even within supposedly ‘safe’ zones on government maps. Contamination in Fukushima, he believed, was structured in a way that no state was prepared to solve.
A decade after the 2011 meltdown, the region remains contaminated by industrial pollution. Though attempts at removing pollutants continue, a new realisation has taken hold among many of Fukushima’s farmers: there’s no going back to an uncontaminated way of life.
Watching Tanizaki measuring industrial pollution in a toxic landscape neglected by the state, I began to wonder: is this a future that awaits us all?
As an anthropologist interested in contamination, Fukushima throws into sharp relief the question of what it means to live in a permanently polluted world. That is why I began coming to Japan, and spending time with farmers such as Tanizaki. I wanted to understand the social dynamics of this new world: to understand how radioactivity is governed after a nuclear disaster, and how different groups clash and collaborate as they attempt to navigate the road to recovery.
I expected to find social bonds pushed to breaking point. Stories of post-disaster collapse circulate in our collective consciousness – tales of mistrust, fear and isolation, accompanied by images of abandoned homes and towns reclaimed by plants and wildlife. And I found plenty of that. A sense of unravelling has indeed taken hold in rural Fukushima. Residents remain uncertain about the adverse health effects of living in the region. Village life has been transformed by forced evacuations and ongoing relocations. And state-sponsored attempts at revitalisation have been ineffective, or complete failures. Many communities remain fragmented. Some villages are still abandoned.
Farmers took matters into their own hands, embracing novel practices for living with toxic pollution
In Fukushima, I found a society collapsing under the weight of industrial pollution. But that’s only part of the story. I also found toxic solidarity.
Rather than giving up, Tanizaki and other farmers have taken matters into their own hands, embracing novel practices for living alongside toxic pollution. These practices go far beyond traditional ‘farming’. They involve weaving relationships with scientists, starting independent decontamination experiments, piloting projects to create food security, and developing new ways to monitor a changing environment. Among rice fields, orchards and flower beds, novel modes of social organisation are emerging – new ways of living from a future we will one day all reckon with.
But the story of toxic solidarity in Fukushima doesn’t begin among rice fields and farms. It begins under the Pacific Ocean, at 2:46pm on 11 March 2011. At that moment, a magnitude 9.0-9.1 earthquake off the coast of northeastern Japan caused a devastating tsunami that set in motion a chain of events leading to the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Soon, Fukushima would find its place alongside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl as an icon of nuclear disaster – and an emblem of the Anthropocene, the period when human activity has become the dominant influence on environmental change. As the reactors began to meltdown, pressure mounted in the power station’s facilities, leading to explosions that released dangerous radionuclides into the air, including caesium-134, caesium-137, strontium-90 and iodine-131. These isotopes, with lifespans ranging from days to centuries, blew across Fukushima and northeastern Japan. And as they accumulated, health risks increased – risks of cancers and ailments affecting the immune system. To protect the population, the Japanese state forced tens of thousands of citizens living near the reactors to evacuate.
Furekonbaggu, bags of contaminated soil, piled neatly in the Fukushima countryside.
At first, Tanizaki believed he had escaped the worst of the radiation because his village was not in the mandatory evacuation area. But when the wind carried radionuclides – invisible, tasteless, odourless – far beyond the government models, his village became one of the most contaminated areas in Fukushima. He learned he had been exposed to harmful radiation only when the government forced him to leave.
Tanizaki and other evacuated villagers were relocated to ‘temporary’ housing. As the months became years, Tanizaki longed to return to his life as a farmer. But what would he farm? His land had been irradiated, and no one wanted to eat food grown in radioactive topsoil. To help Fukushima’s rural citizens retrieve their farms, the Japanese government launched an official politics of revitalisation in Fukushima, investing trillions of yen to clean and decontaminate the region before repatriating evacuees. Part of the cleanup involved storing tainted topsoil in large black plastic bags known as furekonbaggu (literally ‘flexible container bags’), which were then stacked in piles throughout the countryside. To keep residents safe, the government also promised to track contamination through a monitoring system. At the time, the possibility of a pristine Fukushima seemed within reach.
In June 2015, after four years of forced evacuation, Tanizaki was finally allowed to return to his farm. But the decontamination efforts had failed. He and many others felt they had been returned to a region abandoned by the government. The landscape was now covered in millions of bags of radioactive topsoil – black pyramids of the Anthropocene – while the government waited for a permanent disposal site. Also, the plastic in some furekonbaggu had already broken down, spilling radioactive soil over freshly decontaminated land. The state’s monitoring efforts were equally inadequate. In Tanizaki’s village, the monitoring of airborne radiation produced measurements that were rarely precise enough to give a complete picture of shifting contamination. Villagers lived with constant uncertainty: is the garden contaminated? Are the trees behind the house safe? Are mushrooms in the forest still edible?
I saw dead sunflowers rooted in irradiated fields – withered emblems of dreams to retrieve Fukushima
For some, the uncertainty was too much. Tens of thousands relocated to other parts of Japan rather than returning. In 2010, the region registered 82,000 people whose main income came from farming. But by 2020, that number had fallen to around 50,000. Abandoned greenhouses and fields can still be found dotted across the landscape.
Withered sunflowers in irradiated fields.
Knowing that government efforts weren’t going to help, some returnees began to decontaminate their own villages and farms. There was hope that the region could be returned to its former uncontaminated glory. One proposed method involved planting sunflowers, which were believed to absorb radiation as they grew. Yellow flowers bloomed across the farmlands of Fukushima. However, the results were unsatisfactory. Even during my time in Japan, years after the disaster, I saw dead sunflowers still rooted in irradiated fields – withered emblems of early dreams to retrieve a pre-disaster Fukushima. I also witnessed decontamination experiments in rice paddies: farmers would flood their fields, and then use tools to mix the water with the irradiated topsoil below, stirring up and dislodging radioactive pollutants such as caesium. The muddy water was then pushed out of the field using large stiff-bristled brushes. This project also failed. Some paddy fields are still so contaminated they can’t grow rice that’s safe for human consumption.
These failures significantly affected the morale of Fukushima’s farmers, especially considering the importance of the region as a rice-growing capital. Once easy decontamination efforts failed, returnees were forced to ask themselves difficult questions about their homes, livelihoods and identities: what will happen if farming is impossible? What does it mean to be a rice farmer when you can’t grow rice? What if life has been irrevocably altered?
Even the mushrooms tasted different. One farmer, Takeshi Mito, told me he had learned to grow shiitake mushrooms on artificial tree trunks, since real trees were too contaminated to produce edible fungi. ‘Now the taste of the shiitake has changed,’ he mumbled, a strange sadness filling his voice. The ‘real’ trees had given the mushrooms a special flavour, just like ageing a whisky in a sherry cask. ‘Yeah,’ he said, pausing to remember. ‘They were good.’
A new reality was emerging. Farmers were learning to accept that life in Fukushima would never be the same. Small details are constant reminders of that transformation, like the taste of mushrooms, or the library in Tanizaki’s home, which is now filled with books on Chernobyl, nuclear power, radioactive contamination, and food safety. This is new terrain, in which everyone carries a monitoring device, and in which everyone must learn to live with contamination. A former way of life may be impossible to retrieve, and attempts at decontamination may have failed, but farmers such as Tanizaki are learning to form new relationships to their irradiated environment. They’re forging new communities, reshaping notions of recovery, and reimagining their shared identities and values. Contamination may appear to have divided Fukushima’s farmers, but it has also united them in strange and unexpected ways.
By the time the evacuees were allowed to return to their homes, government mistrust had become widespread. Official promises were made to Fukushima residents that a nuclear disaster was impossible. These promises were spectacularly broken when radiation spread across the region. A lack of information from state sources made things only worse, leading to a growing sense that the government was unable to provide any real solutions. Not trusting state scientists, but still wanting to know more about the invisible harm in their villages, farmers reached out to academics, nongovernmental organisations and independent scientists in the hope of better understanding radioactivity.
These new relationships quickly changed social life in rural communities, and brought an influx of radiation monitoring devices. Rather than asking for additional state resources (or waiting endlessly for official responses to questions), farmers worked with their new networks to track radiation, measuring roads, houses, crop fields, forest areas and wildlife. Everyone learned to use radiation monitoring devices, which quickly became essential bodily extensions to navigate a changed Fukushima. Many rural communities even began to use them to develop their own maps. I remember the walls of Tanizaki’s home being covered in printed images showing the topography of the local landscape, with up-to-date information about radiation often provided by farmers. Local knowledge of the environment, combined with the technical savoir faire of independent scientists, produced far more accurate representations of contamination than the state maps made by government experts.
Sharing the work of living with contamination provided a feeling of communal life that returnees had so missed
Thanks to these maps, Tanizaki now knew that radiation doses were higher at the bottom of a slope or in ditches (where radionuclides could accumulate, forming ‘hot spots’). He also knew that the trees outside someone’s home increased the radiation levels inside. Through this mapping work, many farmers developed a kind of tacit knowledge of radiation, intuitively understanding how it moved through the landscape. In some cases, it moved far beyond the colour-coded zones around the reactors, or even the boundaries of Fukushima itself. A major culprit of this spread has been inoshishi (wild boar), who eat contaminated mushrooms before migrating outside irradiated areas, where their highly contaminated flesh can be eaten by unsuspecting hunters. To address this problem, monitoring programmes were developed based on the knowledge of farmers, who were familiar with the feeding and migration patterns of wild boar. Once a delicacy, inoshishi have become what the anthropologist Joseph Masco calls ‘environmental sentinels’: a new way to visualise and track an invisible harm.
But monitoring is more than a pragmatic tool for avoiding harm. In many instances, it also became a means of forging new communities. After returning, farmers began to share their knowledge and data with scientists, gathering to talk about areas that need to be avoided, or holding workshops on radiation remediation. Ironically, sharing the work of living with contamination provided a feeling of communal life that returnees had so missed. Ionising radiation can ‘cut’ the chemical bonds of a cell. Based on the experiences of Tanizaki and other farmers, it can also create novel connections.
Many farmers told me of their amazement at the sheer diversity of people who had come to support the revitalisation efforts. And it wasn’t only former evacuees who were drawn into these new communities. It was also the volunteers who came to help from other parts of Japan. One scientist I spoke with, who specialised in radiation monitoring, ended up permanently moving to a village in Fukushima, which he now considers his hometown. There are many similar cases, and they’re especially welcome in the aftermath of a disaster that has deeply fragmented Fukushima’s rural community. Some farmers told me there were times when they would go weeks without speaking to anyone. Life in a polluted, post-disaster landscape can be lonely.
Monitoring might have helped residents avoid harmful radiation, but it didn’t necessarily help with farming. Often, the new maps revealed that crops grown in certain areas would fall beyond the official permissible thresholds for radiation in food. And so, farmers who could no longer farm were forced to develop alternatives. In collaboration with university scientists, some former rice farmers began growing silver grass as a potential source of biofuel that would provide energy for their region. ‘If we can’t grow food, we can at least make energy!’ one scientist told me.
Other farmers now use their irradiated fields to grow ornamental flowers. In the solarium of an elderly man named Noriko Atsumi, I saw rows of beautiful Alstroemeria flowers that are native to South America. When I visited in 2017, Atsumi was happy to talk about his flowers with me, and eager to show his solarium. ‘At the beginning,’ he told me, ‘it was really hard to try to grow flowers all alone, especially in these horrible conditions, but now I’m happy I did.’ Another elderly Fukushima farmer, Masao Tanaka, who lives alone on his farm, also dreamt of having a personal flower garden. I saw hundreds of narcissus flower bulbs he’d planted in a small field once used to grow commercial crops.
The flower gardens of Fukushima are an attempt to forge new relationships
For farmers such as Atsumi and Tanaka, growing flowers has become a new hobby. But ‘hobby’ is the key word here: Japan remains anxious about radiation in Fukushima produce, so most flowers are simply given away rather than sold. Though these ornamental flowers are not commodities like rice, they fall within an aesthetic of revitalisation. They’re little sprouts of precarious hope – the dream of a Fukushima that a new generation of farmers might one day call home. One village official explained this hope (and its complexities) to me like this:
I don’t know what kind of impression you have of our village. It used to be one of the top 10 prettiest villages in Japan. Now, there are 1.5 millionfurekonbaggu across it. They are left right next to paddy fields. Citizens are seeing these bags every day and asking themselves: ‘Can we really go back?’ They are being told that everything is safe, but when they see those bags, how can they be sure?
In a landscape of black bags, the flower gardens of Fukushima are an attempt to forge new relationships – an attempt to bring colours back to a post-disaster landscape and to the lives of those who live in it. Flowers represent a communal attempt to reshape the narrative of village life, which has been shadowed by tragedy. Flowers have allowed communities to make their villages beautiful again, and allowed farmers to take some pride in their decision to return to what many believed was a ‘ruined’ agricultural region.
On one trip to Fukushima, I visited a long plastic greenhouse where fire-red strawberries were being cultivated by a group of farmers and scientists. Inside, I saw rows of strawberries growing on the ground, fed by filtered water from a system of tubes. This watering system ran in and out of soil that was thick with pebbles, which a scientist told me were ‘volcanic gravels from Kagoshima’ on the other side of Japan, hundreds of kilometres away. They were using these gravels, he said, because the soil in Fukushima was ‘too contaminated to harvest safe products’. In fact, almost everything that the strawberries needed to grow, from the plastic greenhouse to the filtered water, had come from elsewhere. I couldn’t help asking: ‘Can you really say these strawberries came from Fukushima?’
One scientist working in the greenhouse seemed offended by my question. ‘We are using the safest technology in the world!’ he said. ‘It cannot be safer than that. The bad part is that people don’t write about this. All they write about are the plastic bags that you see everywhere!’
I was confused. I’d asked a question about provenance but was given an answer about safety. In the post-disaster landscape, safety had paradoxically become an integrated component of the products of Fukushima. The new agricultural products of Fukushima have become known not merely by the environment they grew in, but by the technologies that have allowed them to resist that environment. The scientist’s response showed some of the ways that Fukushima is embodying new values after the disaster. New products, like little red strawberries grown with imported soil, are becoming symbols of resilience, adaptation and recovery – part of the fabric of solidarity in a new Fukushima.
Toxic solidarity has been encouraged by the same organisations responsible for the disaster
But not everyone can share the embrace of toxic solidarity. In Tanizaki’s village, many young people have permanently left, wary of the health risks of residual radiation. These risks are especially concerning to new parents. During my fieldwork, I heard mothers complain about strange ailments their children experienced right after the disaster: chronic diarrhoea, tiredness, and recurrent nosebleeds that were ‘a very dark and unusual colour’. Concerns are not only anecdotal. After the disaster, thyroid cancers among children increased in Fukushima, which some believe was caused by exposure to iodine-131 from the meltdown. For some parents, leaving has been the only way to protect themselves and their children.
Complicating the binary between those working with or against contamination, toxic solidarity has been encouraged by the same organisations responsible for the disaster. For example, Japanese state ministries and nuclear-related organisations have increasingly encouraged returnees such as Tanizaki to become responsible for keeping their dose of radiation exposure as low as possible. In this way, safe living conditions become the responsibility of citizens themselves, as tropes of resilience are conveniently deployed by the state, and financial supports for disaster victims are gradually cut off. Those who refuse to participate in these projects have been labelled hikokumin (unpatriotic citizens), who hamper the revitalisation of Japan. What we find in this co-option is an unreflexive celebration of farmers’ resilience – a celebration that serves the status quo and the vested interests of state agencies, corporate polluters and nuclear lobbies. Through this logic, disaster can be mitigated, free of charge, by the victims themselves.
These blind celebrations of toxic solidarity only legitimise further polluting practices and further delegations by polluters. In a way, it is no different to the strategies of tobacco lobbies in the mid-20th century, who tried to market smoking as a form of group bonding, a personal choice or an act of freedom (represented by those many Marlboro Men who would eventually die from smoking-related diseases). While toxic solidarity can be applauded as a grassroots act of survival and creativity, it is also the direct result of broader structural patterns: the fact that polluting industries are often installed in peripheral, poor and depopulated regions; the repeated claims of government that toxic disasters can never happen; and the over-reliance on technological fixes that rarely solve social problems. When all else fails, it is always up to the ‘small’ people to pick up the pieces as best they can.
Contamination isn’t going away. Radiation will continue to travel through the landscape, pooling in rice paddies, accumulating in mushrooms and forests, and travelling in the bodies of migrating boar. Some areas remain so irradiated that they’re still bright red on the government maps. These are the prohibited ‘exclusion zones’, known in Japanese as kikan konnan kuiki (literally, ‘difficult-to-return zones’). They may not be reopened in our lifetimes.
One afternoon, someone from Tanizaki’s village took me to see the entrance to the nearby exclusion zone, which is blocked by a wide three-metre-long metal gate, barricades, and a guard. By the gate, in a small wooden cabin, a lonely policeman acted as a watchman. The gate, painted bright green, is supposed to separate people from an environment that is considered dangerous, but almost anybody can easily cross into the forbidden zone. Some farmers even have official access to the kikan konnan kuiki, so that they can check on the condition of their homes in the red zone. Cars and small pickup trucks go in and out, without any form of decontamination.
As I took a picture of the gate, the guard looked over and a farmer, perhaps worried I would get in trouble, came to explain: ‘He’s a foreigner you know, he just wants to see.’ It was forbidden for a non-Japanese person like me to enter the area. The same interdiction did not apply to locals. One Japanese citizen who had come with us was critical of this double standard: ‘The people of Fukushima are no longer normal people.’
In the post-disaster landscape, we can begin to see novel forms of community, resistance, agency and innovation
In the years since that day at the edge of the red zone, I have pondered this phrase many times. In the Anthropocene, when Earth has become permanently polluted – with microplastics, ‘forever chemicals’ and other traces of toxicity accumulating in our bodies – are any of us still ‘normal people’? The problems of Tanizaki and other Fukushima farmers will soon become everybody’s concern, if they haven’t already. How might we respond to this new reality?
The current mode of governing life in an age of contamination is built on a promise that we can isolate ourselves from pollution. This is a false promise. So-called decontamination measures in Fukushima are a crystal-clear example that this doesn’t work. There’s no simple way to ‘decontaminate’ our world from ubiquitous pollution: from mercury in sea life, endocrine disruptors in furniture, pesticide in breast milk, heavy metals in clothing, alongside an almost neverending list of other toxicants.
The experiences of Fukushima’s farmers show us how to navigate the uncharted, polluted seas of our age. Their stories show how new communities might express agency and creativity, even in toxic conditions. They also show how that agency and creativity can be co-opted and exploited by dubious actors. In the post-disaster landscape of rural Fukushima, we can begin to see the outlines of novel forms of community, resistance, agency and innovation that might shape our own future – a future that will hopefully be better, in which economic prosperity is not pitched against environmental wellbeing. In the end, these stories allow us to think about the kinds of toxic solidarity that we can nurture, as opposed to those that have historically been imposed on the wretched.
Someday, when we acknowledge we are no longer ‘normal’, Tanizaki’s story is one we must all learn to tell.
Maxime Polleri is an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Université Laval, in Quebec City, Canada. He is working on a book about the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, ‘Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization after Fukushima’.
Edited byCameron Allan McKean
Our contaminated future
A rice field in Iitate, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, 2016.
is an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Université Laval, in Quebec City, Canada. He is working on a book about the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, ‘Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization after Fukushima’.
As a farmer, Atsuo Tanizaki did not care much for the state’s maps of radioactive contamination. Colour-coded zoning restrictions might make sense for government workers, he told me, but ‘real’ people did not experience their environment through shades of red, orange and green. Instead, they navigated the landscape one field, one tree, one measurement at a time. ‘Case by case,’ he said, grimly, as he guided me along the narrow paths that separated his rice fields, on the outskirts of a small village in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture.
The author examines maps of radioactive contamination in Fukushima.
It was spring in 2016 when I first visited Tanizaki’s farm. The air was warm. The nearby mountains were thick with emerald forests of Japanese cedar, konara oak and hinoki cypress. A troop of wild red-faced monkeys stopped foraging to watch us as we walked by. And woven through it all – air, water, land, plants, and living bodies – were unseen radioactive pollutants. Almost everything now carried invisible traces of the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Tanizaki began taking measurements. With his Geiger counter, he showed me how radioactive elements were indifferent to the cartographic logic of the state. In some places, the radiation level dropped low, becoming almost insignificant. But here and there, beside a ditch or near a pond, the level was elevated dangerously high. Tanizaki called these areas ‘hot spots’ and they were scattered across the landscape, even within supposedly ‘safe’ zones on government maps. Contamination in Fukushima, he believed, was structured in a way that no state was prepared to solve.
A decade after the 2011 meltdown, the region remains contaminated by industrial pollution. Though attempts at removing pollutants continue, a new realisation has taken hold among many of Fukushima’s farmers: there’s no going back to an uncontaminated way of life.
Watching Tanizaki measuring industrial pollution in a toxic landscape neglected by the state, I began to wonder: is this a future that awaits us all?
As an anthropologist interested in contamination, Fukushima throws into sharp relief the question of what it means to live in a permanently polluted world. That is why I began coming to Japan, and spending time with farmers such as Tanizaki. I wanted to understand the social dynamics of this new world: to understand how radioactivity is governed after a nuclear disaster, and how different groups clash and collaborate as they attempt to navigate the road to recovery.
I expected to find social bonds pushed to breaking point. Stories of post-disaster collapse circulate in our collective consciousness – tales of mistrust, fear and isolation, accompanied by images of abandoned homes and towns reclaimed by plants and wildlife. And I found plenty of that. A sense of unravelling has indeed taken hold in rural Fukushima. Residents remain uncertain about the adverse health effects of living in the region. Village life has been transformed by forced evacuations and ongoing relocations. And state-sponsored attempts at revitalisation have been ineffective, or complete failures. Many communities remain fragmented. Some villages are still abandoned.
Farmers took matters into their own hands, embracing novel practices for living with toxic pollution
In Fukushima, I found a society collapsing under the weight of industrial pollution. But that’s only part of the story. I also found toxic solidarity.
Rather than giving up, Tanizaki and other farmers have taken matters into their own hands, embracing novel practices for living alongside toxic pollution. These practices go far beyond traditional ‘farming’. They involve weaving relationships with scientists, starting independent decontamination experiments, piloting projects to create food security, and developing new ways to monitor a changing environment. Among rice fields, orchards and flower beds, novel modes of social organisation are emerging – new ways of living from a future we will one day all reckon with.
But the story of toxic solidarity in Fukushima doesn’t begin among rice fields and farms. It begins under the Pacific Ocean, at 2:46pm on 11 March 2011. At that moment, a magnitude 9.0-9.1 earthquake off the coast of northeastern Japan caused a devastating tsunami that set in motion a chain of events leading to the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Soon, Fukushima would find its place alongside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl as an icon of nuclear disaster – and an emblem of the Anthropocene, the period when human activity has become the dominant influence on environmental change. As the reactors began to meltdown, pressure mounted in the power station’s facilities, leading to explosions that released dangerous radionuclides into the air, including caesium-134, caesium-137, strontium-90 and iodine-131. These isotopes, with lifespans ranging from days to centuries, blew across Fukushima and northeastern Japan. And as they accumulated, health risks increased – risks of cancers and ailments affecting the immune system. To protect the population, the Japanese state forced tens of thousands of citizens living near the reactors to evacuate.
Furekonbaggu, bags of contaminated soil, piled neatly in the Fukushima countryside.
At first, Tanizaki believed he had escaped the worst of the radiation because his village was not in the mandatory evacuation area. But when the wind carried radionuclides – invisible, tasteless, odourless – far beyond the government models, his village became one of the most contaminated areas in Fukushima. He learned he had been exposed to harmful radiation only when the government forced him to leave.
Tanizaki and other evacuated villagers were relocated to ‘temporary’ housing. As the months became years, Tanizaki longed to return to his life as a farmer. But what would he farm? His land had been irradiated, and no one wanted to eat food grown in radioactive topsoil. To help Fukushima’s rural citizens retrieve their farms, the Japanese government launched an official politics of revitalisation in Fukushima, investing trillions of yen to clean and decontaminate the region before repatriating evacuees. Part of the cleanup involved storing tainted topsoil in large black plastic bags known as furekonbaggu (literally ‘flexible container bags’), which were then stacked in piles throughout the countryside. To keep residents safe, the government also promised to track contamination through a monitoring system. At the time, the possibility of a pristine Fukushima seemed within reach.
In June 2015, after four years of forced evacuation, Tanizaki was finally allowed to return to his farm. But the decontamination efforts had failed. He and many others felt they had been returned to a region abandoned by the government. The landscape was now covered in millions of bags of radioactive topsoil – black pyramids of the Anthropocene – while the government waited for a permanent disposal site. Also, the plastic in some furekonbaggu had already broken down, spilling radioactive soil over freshly decontaminated land. The state’s monitoring efforts were equally inadequate. In Tanizaki’s village, the monitoring of airborne radiation produced measurements that were rarely precise enough to give a complete picture of shifting contamination. Villagers lived with constant uncertainty: is the garden contaminated? Are the trees behind the house safe? Are mushrooms in the forest still edible?
I saw dead sunflowers rooted in irradiated fields – withered emblems of dreams to retrieve Fukushima
For some, the uncertainty was too much. Tens of thousands relocated to other parts of Japan rather than returning. In 2010, the region registered 82,000 people whose main income came from farming. But by 2020, that number had fallen to around 50,000. Abandoned greenhouses and fields can still be found dotted across the landscape.
Withered sunflowers in irradiated fields.
Knowing that government efforts weren’t going to help, some returnees began to decontaminate their own villages and farms. There was hope that the region could be returned to its former uncontaminated glory. One proposed method involved planting sunflowers, which were believed to absorb radiation as they grew. Yellow flowers bloomed across the farmlands of Fukushima. However, the results were unsatisfactory. Even during my time in Japan, years after the disaster, I saw dead sunflowers still rooted in irradiated fields – withered emblems of early dreams to retrieve a pre-disaster Fukushima. I also witnessed decontamination experiments in rice paddies: farmers would flood their fields, and then use tools to mix the water with the irradiated topsoil below, stirring up and dislodging radioactive pollutants such as caesium. The muddy water was then pushed out of the field using large stiff-bristled brushes. This project also failed. Some paddy fields are still so contaminated they can’t grow rice that’s safe for human consumption.
These failures significantly affected the morale of Fukushima’s farmers, especially considering the importance of the region as a rice-growing capital. Once easy decontamination efforts failed, returnees were forced to ask themselves difficult questions about their homes, livelihoods and identities: what will happen if farming is impossible? What does it mean to be a rice farmer when you can’t grow rice? What if life has been irrevocably altered?
Even the mushrooms tasted different. One farmer, Takeshi Mito, told me he had learned to grow shiitake mushrooms on artificial tree trunks, since real trees were too contaminated to produce edible fungi. ‘Now the taste of the shiitake has changed,’ he mumbled, a strange sadness filling his voice. The ‘real’ trees had given the mushrooms a special flavour, just like ageing a whisky in a sherry cask. ‘Yeah,’ he said, pausing to remember. ‘They were good.’
A new reality was emerging. Farmers were learning to accept that life in Fukushima would never be the same. Small details are constant reminders of that transformation, like the taste of mushrooms, or the library in Tanizaki’s home, which is now filled with books on Chernobyl, nuclear power, radioactive contamination, and food safety. This is new terrain, in which everyone carries a monitoring device, and in which everyone must learn to live with contamination. A former way of life may be impossible to retrieve, and attempts at decontamination may have failed, but farmers such as Tanizaki are learning to form new relationships to their irradiated environment. They’re forging new communities, reshaping notions of recovery, and reimagining their shared identities and values. Contamination may appear to have divided Fukushima’s farmers, but it has also united them in strange and unexpected ways.
By the time the evacuees were allowed to return to their homes, government mistrust had become widespread. Official promises were made to Fukushima residents that a nuclear disaster was impossible. These promises were spectacularly broken when radiation spread across the region. A lack of information from state sources made things only worse, leading to a growing sense that the government was unable to provide any real solutions. Not trusting state scientists, but still wanting to know more about the invisible harm in their villages, farmers reached out to academics, nongovernmental organisations and independent scientists in the hope of better understanding radioactivity.
These new relationships quickly changed social life in rural communities, and brought an influx of radiation monitoring devices. Rather than asking for additional state resources (or waiting endlessly for official responses to questions), farmers worked with their new networks to track radiation, measuring roads, houses, crop fields, forest areas and wildlife. Everyone learned to use radiation monitoring devices, which quickly became essential bodily extensions to navigate a changed Fukushima. Many rural communities even began to use them to develop their own maps. I remember the walls of Tanizaki’s home being covered in printed images showing the topography of the local landscape, with up-to-date information about radiation often provided by farmers. Local knowledge of the environment, combined with the technical savoir faire of independent scientists, produced far more accurate representations of contamination than the state maps made by government experts.
Sharing the work of living with contamination provided a feeling of communal life that returnees had so missed
Thanks to these maps, Tanizaki now knew that radiation doses were higher at the bottom of a slope or in ditches (where radionuclides could accumulate, forming ‘hot spots’). He also knew that the trees outside someone’s home increased the radiation levels inside. Through this mapping work, many farmers developed a kind of tacit knowledge of radiation, intuitively understanding how it moved through the landscape. In some cases, it moved far beyond the colour-coded zones around the reactors, or even the boundaries of Fukushima itself. A major culprit of this spread has been inoshishi (wild boar), who eat contaminated mushrooms before migrating outside irradiated areas, where their highly contaminated flesh can be eaten by unsuspecting hunters. To address this problem, monitoring programmes were developed based on the knowledge of farmers, who were familiar with the feeding and migration patterns of wild boar. Once a delicacy, inoshishi have become what the anthropologist Joseph Masco calls ‘environmental sentinels’: a new way to visualise and track an invisible harm.
But monitoring is more than a pragmatic tool for avoiding harm. In many instances, it also became a means of forging new communities. After returning, farmers began to share their knowledge and data with scientists, gathering to talk about areas that need to be avoided, or holding workshops on radiation remediation. Ironically, sharing the work of living with contamination provided a feeling of communal life that returnees had so missed. Ionising radiation can ‘cut’ the chemical bonds of a cell. Based on the experiences of Tanizaki and other farmers, it can also create novel connections.
Many farmers told me of their amazement at the sheer diversity of people who had come to support the revitalisation efforts. And it wasn’t only former evacuees who were drawn into these new communities. It was also the volunteers who came to help from other parts of Japan. One scientist I spoke with, who specialised in radiation monitoring, ended up permanently moving to a village in Fukushima, which he now considers his hometown. There are many similar cases, and they’re especially welcome in the aftermath of a disaster that has deeply fragmented Fukushima’s rural community. Some farmers told me there were times when they would go weeks without speaking to anyone. Life in a polluted, post-disaster landscape can be lonely.
Monitoring might have helped residents avoid harmful radiation, but it didn’t necessarily help with farming. Often, the new maps revealed that crops grown in certain areas would fall beyond the official permissible thresholds for radiation in food. And so, farmers who could no longer farm were forced to develop alternatives. In collaboration with university scientists, some former rice farmers began growing silver grass as a potential source of biofuel that would provide energy for their region. ‘If we can’t grow food, we can at least make energy!’ one scientist told me.
Other farmers now use their irradiated fields to grow ornamental flowers. In the solarium of an elderly man named Noriko Atsumi, I saw rows of beautiful Alstroemeria flowers that are native to South America. When I visited in 2017, Atsumi was happy to talk about his flowers with me, and eager to show his solarium. ‘At the beginning,’ he told me, ‘it was really hard to try to grow flowers all alone, especially in these horrible conditions, but now I’m happy I did.’ Another elderly Fukushima farmer, Masao Tanaka, who lives alone on his farm, also dreamt of having a personal flower garden. I saw hundreds of narcissus flower bulbs he’d planted in a small field once used to grow commercial crops.
The flower gardens of Fukushima are an attempt to forge new relationships
For farmers such as Atsumi and Tanaka, growing flowers has become a new hobby. But ‘hobby’ is the key word here: Japan remains anxious about radiation in Fukushima produce, so most flowers are simply given away rather than sold. Though these ornamental flowers are not commodities like rice, they fall within an aesthetic of revitalisation. They’re little sprouts of precarious hope – the dream of a Fukushima that a new generation of farmers might one day call home. One village official explained this hope (and its complexities) to me like this:
I don’t know what kind of impression you have of our village. It used to be one of the top 10 prettiest villages in Japan. Now, there are 1.5 millionfurekonbaggu across it. They are left right next to paddy fields. Citizens are seeing these bags every day and asking themselves: ‘Can we really go back?’ They are being told that everything is safe, but when they see those bags, how can they be sure?
In a landscape of black bags, the flower gardens of Fukushima are an attempt to forge new relationships – an attempt to bring colours back to a post-disaster landscape and to the lives of those who live in it. Flowers represent a communal attempt to reshape the narrative of village life, which has been shadowed by tragedy. Flowers have allowed communities to make their villages beautiful again, and allowed farmers to take some pride in their decision to return to what many believed was a ‘ruined’ agricultural region.
On one trip to Fukushima, I visited a long plastic greenhouse where fire-red strawberries were being cultivated by a group of farmers and scientists. Inside, I saw rows of strawberries growing on the ground, fed by filtered water from a system of tubes. This watering system ran in and out of soil that was thick with pebbles, which a scientist told me were ‘volcanic gravels from Kagoshima’ on the other side of Japan, hundreds of kilometres away. They were using these gravels, he said, because the soil in Fukushima was ‘too contaminated to harvest safe products’. In fact, almost everything that the strawberries needed to grow, from the plastic greenhouse to the filtered water, had come from elsewhere. I couldn’t help asking: ‘Can you really say these strawberries came from Fukushima?’
One scientist working in the greenhouse seemed offended by my question. ‘We are using the safest technology in the world!’ he said. ‘It cannot be safer than that. The bad part is that people don’t write about this. All they write about are the plastic bags that you see everywhere!’
I was confused. I’d asked a question about provenance but was given an answer about safety. In the post-disaster landscape, safety had paradoxically become an integrated component of the products of Fukushima. The new agricultural products of Fukushima have become known not merely by the environment they grew in, but by the technologies that have allowed them to resist that environment. The scientist’s response showed some of the ways that Fukushima is embodying new values after the disaster. New products, like little red strawberries grown with imported soil, are becoming symbols of resilience, adaptation and recovery – part of the fabric of solidarity in a new Fukushima.
Toxic solidarity has been encouraged by the same organisations responsible for the disaster
But not everyone can share the embrace of toxic solidarity. In Tanizaki’s village, many young people have permanently left, wary of the health risks of residual radiation. These risks are especially concerning to new parents. During my fieldwork, I heard mothers complain about strange ailments their children experienced right after the disaster: chronic diarrhoea, tiredness, and recurrent nosebleeds that were ‘a very dark and unusual colour’. Concerns are not only anecdotal. After the disaster, thyroid cancers among children increased in Fukushima, which some believe was caused by exposure to iodine-131 from the meltdown. For some parents, leaving has been the only way to protect themselves and their children.
Complicating the binary between those working with or against contamination, toxic solidarity has been encouraged by the same organisations responsible for the disaster. For example, Japanese state ministries and nuclear-related organisations have increasingly encouraged returnees such as Tanizaki to become responsible for keeping their dose of radiation exposure as low as possible. In this way, safe living conditions become the responsibility of citizens themselves, as tropes of resilience are conveniently deployed by the state, and financial supports for disaster victims are gradually cut off. Those who refuse to participate in these projects have been labelled hikokumin (unpatriotic citizens), who hamper the revitalisation of Japan. What we find in this co-option is an unreflexive celebration of farmers’ resilience – a celebration that serves the status quo and the vested interests of state agencies, corporate polluters and nuclear lobbies. Through this logic, disaster can be mitigated, free of charge, by the victims themselves.
These blind celebrations of toxic solidarity only legitimise further polluting practices and further delegations by polluters. In a way, it is no different to the strategies of tobacco lobbies in the mid-20th century, who tried to market smoking as a form of group bonding, a personal choice or an act of freedom (represented by those many Marlboro Men who would eventually die from smoking-related diseases). While toxic solidarity can be applauded as a grassroots act of survival and creativity, it is also the direct result of broader structural patterns: the fact that polluting industries are often installed in peripheral, poor and depopulated regions; the repeated claims of government that toxic disasters can never happen; and the over-reliance on technological fixes that rarely solve social problems. When all else fails, it is always up to the ‘small’ people to pick up the pieces as best they can.
Contamination isn’t going away. Radiation will continue to travel through the landscape, pooling in rice paddies, accumulating in mushrooms and forests, and travelling in the bodies of migrating boar. Some areas remain so irradiated that they’re still bright red on the government maps. These are the prohibited ‘exclusion zones’, known in Japanese as kikan konnan kuiki (literally, ‘difficult-to-return zones’). They may not be reopened in our lifetimes.
One afternoon, someone from Tanizaki’s village took me to see the entrance to the nearby exclusion zone, which is blocked by a wide three-metre-long metal gate, barricades, and a guard. By the gate, in a small wooden cabin, a lonely policeman acted as a watchman. The gate, painted bright green, is supposed to separate people from an environment that is considered dangerous, but almost anybody can easily cross into the forbidden zone. Some farmers even have official access to the kikan konnan kuiki, so that they can check on the condition of their homes in the red zone. Cars and small pickup trucks go in and out, without any form of decontamination.
As I took a picture of the gate, the guard looked over and a farmer, perhaps worried I would get in trouble, came to explain: ‘He’s a foreigner you know, he just wants to see.’ It was forbidden for a non-Japanese person like me to enter the area. The same interdiction did not apply to locals. One Japanese citizen who had come with us was critical of this double standard: ‘The people of Fukushima are no longer normal people.’
In the post-disaster landscape, we can begin to see novel forms of community, resistance, agency and innovation
In the years since that day at the edge of the red zone, I have pondered this phrase many times. In the Anthropocene, when Earth has become permanently polluted – with microplastics, ‘forever chemicals’ and other traces of toxicity accumulating in our bodies – are any of us still ‘normal people’? The problems of Tanizaki and other Fukushima farmers will soon become everybody’s concern, if they haven’t already. How might we respond to this new reality?
The current mode of governing life in an age of contamination is built on a promise that we can isolate ourselves from pollution. This is a false promise. So-called decontamination measures in Fukushima are a crystal-clear example that this doesn’t work. There’s no simple way to ‘decontaminate’ our world from ubiquitous pollution: from mercury in sea life, endocrine disruptors in furniture, pesticide in breast milk, heavy metals in clothing, alongside an almost neverending list of other toxicants.
The experiences of Fukushima’s farmers show us how to navigate the uncharted, polluted seas of our age. Their stories show how new communities might express agency and creativity, even in toxic conditions. They also show how that agency and creativity can be co-opted and exploited by dubious actors. In the post-disaster landscape of rural Fukushima, we can begin to see the outlines of novel forms of community, resistance, agency and innovation that might shape our own future – a future that will hopefully be better, in which economic prosperity is not pitched against environmental wellbeing. In the end, these stories allow us to think about the kinds of toxic solidarity that we can nurture, as opposed to those that have historically been imposed on the wretched.
Someday, when we acknowledge we are no longer ‘normal’, Tanizaki’s story is one we must all learn to tell.
https://aeon.co/essays/life-in-fukushima-is-a-glimpse-into-our-contaminated-future
A Survey on the Concentration of Radioactive Cesium in Japanese Milk Samples (2021)
by Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center · Published December 4, 2022 · Updated December 4, 2022
Investigating the origin of the contamination and assessing the risks of cases where the radioactive cesium level is below the Standard Limits for Radionuclides in Foods
By Tanimura Nobuko (NPO Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center) and Fuseya Yumiko (NPO Shinjuku Yoyogi Citizen Monitoring Center)
- Introduction
Radioactive contamination of food due to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident
The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident occurred in March 2011, resulting in the contamination of the environment and food by radioactive materials. At that time, no standard limit of radiation levels of food distributed in Japan existed, and a temporary standard was therefore set by the government. In April 2012, about one year after the accident, new standard limits were established, in which radiation exposure due to the consumption of food was limited to 1mSv per year, thus making the standard value of radioactive cesium 100Bq/kg for general food, 50Bq/kg for milk and baby/infant food and 10Bq/kg for drinking water. While this was supposed to regulate contaminated food, there were many reports of the discovery of food that was over the standard limit being distributed. In fiscal year 2020, twenty-two cases of food over the standard limit were recognized.
Due to inadequate food contamination checks and distribution management systems, some people who refused to be unnecessarily exposed to radiation decided to select food according to the area in which it was produced in order to avoid risks of radiation exposure. The Japanese government terms this action—avoiding the food produced in the affected area of the Great East Japan Earthquake—‘reputational damage,’ something which must be eliminated if reconstruction is to proceed.
Risks of radiation and risks of chemical materials
However, is making a choice of avoiding a health risk an unfair act that prevents the reconstruction of the affected areas?
The cancer risk of chemicals in tap water and other substances is regulated to a level of 1 in 100,000 per substance, which is usually the risk for a lifetime of ingestion of such substances. But those who do not want to take the risk of developing cancer from chemicals in food are able to buy organic products at some additional cost. This consumer action is not criticized by the government as ‘reputational damage.’
The standard for radiation exposure from consuming food is set at 1mSv/year. According to the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) the fatality risk is about 5% per 1Sv and ‘the standard is based on the hypothesis that the probability of radiation-induced cancer or hereditary effects increases in direct proportion to the increase in dose.’ In addition, it estimates that the fatality risk is 0.4% if a person continues to be exposed to radiation at 1 mSv per year throughout his/her lifetime.
Adding five hundred-thousandths per year (0.005% for 1mSv/year) means that if we take 80 years as the average lifetime, four hundred people’s deaths are added per hundred thousand people, a risk that is two digits higher than that for chemical materials.
It is sometimes claimed that as the risk of radiation exposure is the total of the risks of various radionuclides, comparing the regulation for one chemical material to the regulation for radiation exposure is improper, since there are thousands of chemical materials that we may come into contact with in daily life. However, the radiation exposure standard of 1mSv per year is not the ‘total’ amount of exposure but an ‘additional’ exposure. The following are all conveniently used to explain that exposure of 1 mSv or less is safe: a) the radiation dose limit for the public from nuclear facilities under pre-accident conditions, b) the new standard for radioactive cesium in food, c) the standard of 8,000 Bq/kg for “designated waste” introduced to handle the large amount of radioactive waste generated by the Fukushima nuclear accident (exposure of workers disposing of the waste), and d) the standard for the disposal of radioactively contaminated water, which has been the focus of attention at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, now undergoing decommissioning. The fact that these exposure risks add up, as well as the effects of this addition, have not been explained to civil society by the regulators, and of course have not been discussed.
In addition, the risk assessment of carcinogenic chemical materials is based on ‘causing cancer,’ but the risk assessment of radiation exposure is based on ‘deaths from cancer’; it is impossible to compare the two risks. ICRP estimates that the risk of ‘developing cancer’ is twice as high as that of ‘death from cancer.’
Further, it is the user who decides whether or not to use chemical materials, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of use, but in the case of exposure due to nuclear power plant accidents, there are no direct advantages to anyone.
Research and objective
We would like to support people’s right of choice to avoid the risk of radiation exposure by measuring even low levels of radioactive cesium contained in milk and disclosing the areas of production and levels of contamination.
Even though many people avoided milk produced in the Tohoku district and chose milk produced in Hokkaido to avoid risks of radiation exposure. In FY2020 our research revealed the unanticipated fact that the milk produced in Hokkaido is also contaminated due to the Fukushima accident. The survey was therefore expanded to include western Japan products in order to compare contamination on a national scale.
Each measurement sample was 22kg of commercial milk which had an identifiable production location. In FY2021, the milk produced in 11 areas was included in the survey: Iwate (K), Miyagi (L), Ibaraki (M), Tokyo (N), Shizuoka (O), Ehime and Kochi (P), Miyazaki and Kagoshima (Q), Nagasaki (R), Oita (S), Shimane (T), and Ishikawa (U). (See Table 1. Areas A to J indicate areas surveyed in FY2020).
In measuring the concentration of radioactive cesium, 2kg of the sample was used as a direct measurement sample and the remainder (20kg) was used as a concentrated measurement sample. In order to detect small amounts of radioactive cesium, we performed the ammonium phosphomolybdate (AMP) method on whey after separating the whey from the milk.
The germanium semiconductor detector (BSI Co. GCD70-200) was used for gamma ray detection in these radioactivity measurements.
The results of the measurements are shown in Table 1. In FY 2021, the production areas in which cesium 137 was detected in the direct measurement were Iwate (K) and Miyagi (L). No cesium 134 was detected in any areas in the direct measurement. In the concentrated measurement, cesium 137 was detected in all areas including the Kyushu district. The most contaminated area was Miyagi (L) with 152mBq/kg. This figure was higher than the 135mBq/kg found in Fukushima (H). The second most contaminated was the milk produced in Iwate (K), 79mBq/kg. These were followed by Shizuoka (O) (16mBq/kg), Ibaraki (M) (11mBq/kg), Tokyo (N) (7.3mBq/kg), Miyazaki and Kagoshima (Q)(7.0Bq/kg), Oita (S) (5.7mBq/kg), Shimane (T) (5.4mBq/kg), Nagasaki (R) (5.2mBq), Ehime and Kochi (P) (5.1mBq.kg) and Ishikawa (U) (3.9mBq/kg). Cesium 134 was detected only in Miyagi (L) (4.4mBq.kg) and Iwate (K) (2.0mBq/kg).
Please note that about 90% of cesium in milk exists in the whey, and therefore adopting this cesium concentration method indicates figures that are 10% lower in the concentrated measurement than in the direct measurement.
- Discussion
Origin of cesium 137
At the time the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident occurred, cesium 134 and cesium 137 were emitted into the environment at the ratio of about 1:1. The half-life of cesium 137 is about 30 years, and that of cesium 134 is about 2.1 years. By taking into account the half-life of cesium 134 and 137, and the length of time from the disaster to the measurement, it is possible to calculate a cesium ratio (cesium 134/cesium 137) of cesium that was emitted as a result of the accident at the time of the measurement. Five years after the accident (March 2016), the cesium ratio had fallen to 0.21, Ten years after (March 2021), it had decreased to 0.046.
The cesium ratio differs slightly according to each reactor. Thus the cesium ratios due to the accident in the fallout in each location are different. The initial cesium ratios in the atmospheric fallouts in each area from March to May in 2011 were calculated using data from the environmental radiation database.
The proportions of cesium-137 (derived from the Fukushima nuclear reactor / total in the milk sample) were derived by calculating the measured value of cesium 134 concentration and calculated cesium 134/137 ratio at the time of measurement.
In the survey conducted last fiscal year (2021), the production areas where cesium 134 was detected were Hokkaido, Fukushima, Gunma, Tochigi, Iwate and Miyagi. The cesium 134/137 ratios in the atmospheric fallouts soon after the Fukushima nuclear disaster were as follows: Hokkaido 1.05, Fukushima 0.94, Gunma 1.00, Tochigi 1.01, Iwate 1.00 and Miyagi 1.00. The cesium 134/137 ratios (at the time of the measurement) were calculated by using the figures for the half-life of each cesium radionuclide and the number of years from the disaster to when the measurements were taken. The following figures were obtained: Hokkaido 0.053, Fukushima 0.044, Gunma 0.045, Tochigi 0.045, Iwate 0.035 and Miyagi 0.036. Dividing the cesium 134 concentration of the measurement by the cesium 134/137 ratio (at the time of the measurement) of the sample production area, the results of cesium 137 concentrations that derived from the Fukushima nuclear disaster were obtained and are shown in Table 2.
The following is one calculation example for Iwate. The cesium 134/137 ratio measured on November 19 in 2021 which was derived from the Fukushima nuclear disaster was calculated as 0.035 in Iwate. As the result of the measurement, 2.0±0.1mBq/kg of cesium 134 was detected and therefore cesium 137 derived from Fukushima reactor should be 56±3.9mBq/kg on the basis of the cesium 134/137 ratio. However, the measurement result of the concentration of cesium 137 in the sample was 79±0.8mBq/kg. The reason why it was higher than expected is because it contained cesium 137 that traces back to nuclear weapon tests and other sources. Thus, out of the total cesium 137 contained in the milk produced in Iwate, it was concluded that the ratio of 0.71±0.05 was derived from the Fukushima nuclear accident.
The origins and concentrations of cesium 137 in the samples were compared based on the production areas (Figure 2). In western Japan (P-U), which was supposed to have been mostly uninfluenced by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the concentrations of cesium 137 were below 7mBq/kg. This cesium 137 was thought to be derived from various nuclear weapon tests and the Chernobyl disaster.
By contrast, in eastern Japan (except Hokkaido) H-O, the cesium concentrations derived from nuclear weapon tests and the Chernobyl accident were 7-19mBq/kg, and in Hokkaido the cesium concentration tends to be higher (15-66mBq/kg) than those in eastern Japan.
Consideration of health risk
Assuming that the radioactive contamination level of milk is 50Bq/kg of and also assuming that radiation exposure from all food is up to 1mSv per year, what is the additional risk of cancer death caused by radiation exposure through food based on the concentration of Cs137 in the milk measured in this study?
The concentration of cesium in milk in this survey was found to be 4-150mBq/kg, and when milk is at the contamination level of 150mBq/kg, this is equivalent to 0.003mSv per year. Under these conditions the lifetime risk of dying from cancer increases by 1.2 people per 100,000.
As noted at the beginning of the article, in general, carcinogenic chemical materials are regulated so that their concentration causes one person per 100,000 to develop cancer in his/her lifetime. If people are to face an equivalent risk of cancer death from consuming radioactively contaminated food, the detection limit should be lowered to 0.1Bq/kg (100mBq/kg), and this information should be published to allow citizens who wish to avoid exposure to make choices on what products to buy. A sufficient number of detections are also required to support this choice of citizens to avoid exposure.
- Summary
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident has caused serious environmental radiation contamination to Fukushima and surrounding areas. Since then, some people have selected and purchased food that is produced in western Japan and Hokkaido in preference to food produced in the affected area in order to avoid radiation exposure through food.
The concentrations of radioactive cesium in milk produced in specific areas across Japan were measured using the AMP method and the germanium semiconductor detector. This procedure made it possible to compare contamination in each area.
In all measurements, figures were considerably lower than the new standard limit of radioactive cesium contained in food (50Bq/kg), but the commercially available milk produced in Miyagi measured in 2021 was more highly contaminated than that produced in Fukushima measured in 2020, which suggests that Fukushima products are not necessarily the most contaminated. The milk produced in Hokkaido tended to contain more cesium than that produced in western Japan.
The risk of dying from cancer caused through food intake 10 years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in the contaminated area was calculated based on the measurement values obtained this time, and was found to be of around the same order as the management standards for carcinogenic chemical substances, even though we are talking about a risk of suffering from cancer with chemicals and a risk of dying from cancer with radiation exposure.
Every person’s sense of values, what he/she thinks is the highest priority and what risk he/she wants to avoid, should be respected. The option of avoiding the risk of exposure to radiation should be thought of as important as the option of avoiding the risk of chemical substances and a mechanism must be established to allow this.
Western Japan, which was not so much affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, has also been contaminated by radiation from a historical angle; the harsh fact is that the past contamination caused by atmospheric nuclear weapons tests is still contained in food. We must become more aware that the mistake which the current generation has made by causing serious environmental radiation contamination from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident will continue to affect generations in the future.
Source: https://cnic.jp/english/?p=6377
Hong Kong to follow mainland China on regulations on Japanese imports if water from Fukushima nuclear disaster released into Pacific
Japan plans to release over 1.25 million tonnes of treated waste water contaminated by wrecked Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into Pacific
Since nuclear disaster, Hong Kong has prohibited imports of vegetables, fruits, milk, milk-based beverages and milk powder from Fukushima prefecture
11 Oct, 2022
If mainland China steps up regulations on food products imported from Japan when it releases treated water from Fukushima into the Pacific next year, Hong Kong will follow suit, the city’s environmental minister has said.
The remark made by Secretary of Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan on Tuesday referred to Tokyo’s plans, which were revealed last year, to release over 1.25 million tonnes of treated waste water contaminated by the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific in 2023.
Tse said at a Legislative Council panel meeting that, because marine pollution involved international relations, the administration had expressed its concerns to the foreign ministry’s Hong Kong office.
“We will carry out closer ties and communication with the mainland and see what the mainland will do politically in the future. In this regard, Hong Kong will definitely be politically consistent with the mainland,” he told lawmakers.
Tse said the Centre for Food Safety tested more than 760,000 food samples imported from Japan from March 2011 to December 2021. None exceeded the radiation guideline levels suggested by the Codex Alimentarius under the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
After the Japanese authorities announced the radioactive waste water discharge plan, the Hong Kong government requested more information and specific information from the country and paid close attention to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s assessment, he added.
Hong Kong prohibited the imports of all vegetables, fruit, milk, milk-based beverages and milk powder from the Fukushima prefecture after the 2011 nuclear disaster.
Food from four nearby prefectures – Ibaraki, Tochigi, Chiba and Gunma – is only given entry after obtaining a radiation certificate and an exporter’s certificate issued by the Japanese authorities.
The Centre for Food Safety has published a monthly report, which includes radiation surveillance data on products from Japan.
Government statistics have shown that food imports from Japan amounted to about 1.5 per cent of the total food supply in Hong Kong last year. Aquatic products and poultry eggs had the highest import volume, accounting for about 6.3 per cent and 9.7 per cent of the city’s total food imports respectively.
Tse said at the panel meeting that authorities would continue to communicate with local food importers to ensure the industry understood the plan and made preparations as soon as possible.
Tokyo announced in April last year that it intended to discharge the water used to cool the nuclear reactors at Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean after treatment in 2023, causing concern among neighbouring countries, including China and South Korea.
Environmental groups and fishery operators have also warned that the waste water discharge would compromise the region’s marine ecosystem, the food chain and food safety.
In Beijing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has raised grave concerns and strong opposition to the plan, urging Japanese authorities to consult stakeholders and relevant international organisations.
The Consulate-General of Japan in Hong Kong said it “strongly” hoped city authorities could lift the import restriction on food products from the country since all the samples sent for inspection had proved safe for consumption.
“Japan has been taking measures strictly abiding by relevant international law and working closely with [the International Atomic Energy Agency] to give due consideration to international practice, and will continue to do so,” a spokesman said.
“Food safety for Japanese food lovers in Hong Kong is as important to the Japanese government as food safety for the Japanese people … We will also continue to explain to Hong Kong, based on a scientific manner, that the safety of Japanese food products is ensured.”
Fukushima beach in former evacuation zone reopens after 11 years
Located 25 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant… Madness!
July 16, 2022
Naraha, Fukushima Pref. – The Iwasawa swimming beach in the town of Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, reopened Saturday for the first time since it was shut down after the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.
The beach became the first swimming beach to reopen in areas once covered by evacuation orders issued after the triple meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The beach is located about 25 kilometers from the nuclear plant.
Before the disaster, the beach was popular among local surfers, attracting some 30,000 visitors every year.
Due to the tsunami, most of the beach’s facilities, such as a watch tower and revetment blocks, were destroyed.
As an evacuation order was issued for the whole of Naraha following the nuclear disaster, the beach had been left untouched.
After the evacuation ordered was lifted for Naraha in 2015, the town started fixing the damaged facilities in 2019 and completed the reconstruction work in March this year.
The town decided to reopen the beach after no problems were found in monitoring surveys of water quality and radioactive materials.
“We had to rebuild almost everything from scratch,” a town official said. “While preserving the atmosphere from before the disaster, we rebuilt beach facilities that are easier to use.”
Naraha Mayor Yukiei Matsumoto said, “We want the beach to once again become a popular tourist spot.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/07/16/national/fukushima-beach-reopens/
Fukushima Beach in Former Evacuation Zone Reopens
Too close, way too close. The effluent from the plant is still pouring into the ocean j_ust up the coast…
July 16, 2022
The Iwasawa swimming beach in the town of Naraha in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, reopened on Saturday for the first time since it was shut down after a major earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident hit the region in March 2011.
The beach became the first bathing resort to reopen in areas once covered by evacuation orders issued after the triple meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The beach is located some 25 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
Before the disaster, the beach was popular among local surfers, attracting some 30,000 visitors every year.
Due to the tsunami, most of the beach’s facilities, such as a watch tower and revetment blocks, were destroyed.
Young people bring new energy to revive fortunes of town devastated by Fukushima disaster
Bruce Brinkman: “It’s not a good use of time, money, or energy to encourage people to enter a radiologically contaminated area, any more than it would be wise to encourage visits to an area contaminated with chemicals like mercury or an area contaminated with biohazards. Living here should be discouraged and the area set aside as a long-term National Park for the Study of Environmental Radiation. With 90% of the country losing population, why not save other uncontaminated communities? Property owners in the “Difficult” zone should be compensated with comparable properties purchased in other underpopulated communities in Japan.”
FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Kyodo) — In the more than a decade since reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant exploded, the nearby town of Futaba has tried to pick up the pieces of a community shattered by the disaster.
Now, young people from other parts of Japan and elsewhere are playing a part in resurrecting a community to which they have few links.
Since last year, Tohoku University undergraduate student Masayuki Kobayashi has teamed up with his Indian schoolmates and a Futaba-based association to rehabilitate the Fukushima Prefecture town’s tarnished image.
They are expanding their network to involve people of various nationalities, ages and skills, many young and without any direct links to the disaster-hit area in Japan’s northeast. They aspire to attract tourists and develop sustainable homegrown businesses.
Soon, Futaba may again be inhabited, with an evacuation order for the reconstruction and revitalization base in the town expected to be lifted possibly as soon as July. But challenges abound.
“The town was said to be impossible to recover but if we can achieve that goal we can say to the world that nothing is impossible,” said 22-year-old Kobayashi, whose involvement in Futaba started from a local walking tour he joined last year.
Joining Kobayashi in the cause are Trishit Banerjee, 24, and Swastika Harsh Jajoo, 25, who are PhD students at the same university in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. All three are interns for the Futaba County Regional Tourism Research Association.
With Futaba seeing an exodus of its residents, estimated at around 7,000 before the March 11, 2011, earthquake-tsunami and nuclear disasters, Kobayashi is determined to change perceptions of the town.
“If we can make more fun activities, then a more diverse range of people will visit,” said Kobayashi whose brainchild, the PaletteCamp, is tailored toward that goal.
The idea of the camp is to have people interact with the local community through visits centered on Futaba and nearby areas, using fun activities like yoga to learn about the local culture and history, in a shift from the disaster-centric tours.
The PaletteCamp has been held three times since October last year, the most recent in May.
Ainun Jariyah, a 21-year-old Indonesian making her first trip to Futaba, was among around 15 participants in the latest program that included a bingo quest game in Namie, next to Futaba, to introduce the town’s local culture and history, and a walking tour in English and Japanese in Futaba.
The group was struck by the contrast seen on the streets of Futaba with decrepit houses and empty lots juxtaposed by walls bearing refreshingly uplifting art.
“I learned that art could be used for peacebuilding and reconciliation and empower people,” Jariyah said.
Jajoo, who provided English translation to Jariyah and a few others, could not be happier to hear such feedback. She wants camp participants to enjoy the fun elements “without imposing” the educational aspect.
Tatsuhiro Yamane, head of the association that supports the three in their project and guided Kobayashi on his walking tour, said, if the social infrastructure is in place, we can encourage more people to return or live in the area.
Yamane, 36, also stressed the importance of having thriving small businesses that are deeply rooted in the community while seeing the potential of tourism in a town that has long relied on the nuclear power plant for sustenance.
Yamane, a former Tokyo resident who eventually became deeply involved in Futaba after his post-reconstruction role there, is now a town assemblyman. He said progress in both hard and soft infrastructure is crucial.
“We must be able to build many things at the same time. It won’t do to just construct a building,” he said. “The key is to create a community that can make use of that structure.”
Jariyah and her fellow participants may have wrapped up their PaletteCamp tour, which ended with a brainstorming session on how to develop Futaba, but their connection to Futaba did not end there.
They kept in touch online and are now exploring a project to make cookies with the Futaba “daruma” (Japanese doll) design, which is the town’s symbol, eventually to sell them as a souvenir. The group has also been publishing newsletters, both in Japanese and English and in print and online, to introduce stories of day-to-day life in Futaba.
Banerjee believes their work to help in rebuilding Futaba is something “which most towns in the world do not get an opportunity to do.”
“We are able to create a story that here is a town and here is something you can do against the impossible and we can do it together,” he said.
While the three students visit Futaba from time to time from Sendai, former resident and musician Yoshiaki Okawa keeps alive the memory of his hometown through his performances across the country.
Okawa, 26, was fresh out of his junior high graduation ceremony when disaster struck in 2011. His family had to evacuate and they settled in Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo, where he attended senior high and fell in love with the “koto,” a traditional Japanese string instrument akin to a zither.
“Back then, I didn’t want people to know that I had evacuated from Fukushima. I was still in pain and I did not want to talk about what I felt. I wanted to lay low.”
During his performances, he often talks about his love for Futaba and its idyllic setting and how the place has inspired his music. Some of his compositions are a tribute to those impacted by the 2011 catastrophe.
Okawa hopes his music will encourage people who are still in pain and struggling from 2011 “to move forward.”
His home in Futaba was torn down after their family decided not to return. Even so, he said, through his music, “I would like to help in mending the hearts of people. I feel I can do that even if I am not there.”
The current state of my hometown…” Residents of the Tsushima area measured radiation levels by themselves as evidence in court (Fukushima Prefecture)
May 10, 2022
Residents of the Tsushima area in the hard-to-return zone in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, have begun measuring radiation levels throughout the area in connection with a lawsuit against the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company.
On the first day of the trial, at 10:00 a.m. on October 10, approximately 10 residents gathered in the Tsushima area, which is in the difficult-to-return zone, to confirm the method and location of the measurements.
Measurements will be taken by dividing the entire Tsushima area into 28 sections of 2 km square, and installing dosimeters in each section. The dosimeters will be placed mainly in areas that have not been decontaminated, and many of these areas are covered with trees and grass.
According to the plaintiffs, this is believed to be the first time such measurements have been made in a class action lawsuit involving a nuclear accident.
Hidenori Konno, leader of the plaintiffs, said, “What we are appealing to the court of appeals is to ‘give back our hometown. In order to do so, we have to come up with concrete evidence of the situation in the Tsushima area…”
Hidenori Konno, the leader of the plaintiffs’ group, said at the meeting on April 4 that he intends to submit the results of the measurements as evidence in the trial.
Although a portion of the Tsushima area has been designated as a restoration site and is being decontaminated, the outlook for more than 90% of the other areas has yet to be determined.
Mr. Konno said, “At the very least, decontamination will restore the environment to near normalcy. In fact, the radiation dose has decreased so much after 12 years. We would like to use the data to prove that we can do it, especially in areas close to our homes.”
The installation work is scheduled to continue until the 15th, and the samples will be collected and analyzed three weeks later.
A Decade On, Fukushima Farmers Fear Nuclear-Tainted Water’s Impact on Business
Nov. 5, 2021
IWAKI, Japan (Reuters) – Fukushima farmers fear the Japanese government’s planned release of water from the crippled power plant could revive concerns about contamination and again hit the price of their produce, undoing a decade of slow recovery from nuclear disaster.
Japan plans to release https://www.reuters.com/article/us-disaster-fukushima-water-release-expl-idAFKBN2C003P more than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water from the plant in the country’s northeast into the sea after treating it, as the site reaches storage limits for the water. Although international authorities support the plan, it has sparked concern from neighbours China and South Korea and worried local fisherman and farmers.
“We’re just about seeing our prices go back to normal after a big drop following the disaster, but now we will have to deal with the potential reputational damage all over again because of the release of the water,” said Hiroaki Kusano, a pear farmer and vice-leader of the local agricultural co-operative.
The water is to be processed to remove radioactive contamination other than from tritium, which cannot be removed. Water with the radioactive isotope diluted to one-seventh of the World Health Organization’s guidelines for drinking water will be released into the Pacific a kilometre out from the plant around spring 2023, under a government plan.
Nuclear plants worldwide routinely release water containing tritium, considered the least-toxic byproduct of atomic power.
Last year, for the first time since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the northeast coast and triggered the nuclear disaster, the average price of Fukushima pears sold in Tokyo overtook those from some other prefectures, fetching 506 yen per kg ($2.00 per pound), data from the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market showed.
A year after the crisis, prices were at 184 yen per kg, 20% below the average of more than 230 yen for other prefectures.
Fukushima’s produce goes through multiple checks for radioactivity, with farmers screening before shipment, while the prefecture also tests regularly.
Over the last decade, local produce has gone through a “thorough testing process, consistently” said Kazuhiro Okazaki of Fukushima’s Agricultural Technology Centre, which has screened produce for radioactive cesium since June 2011.
Fukushima produced 13,000 tonnes of pears in 2020, making it Japan’s fourth-largest source of the popular fruit, official data showed.
DECOMMISSIONING
The Daiichi plant is being decomissioned as part of a clean-up by operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) expected to take decades https://jp.reuters.com/article/japan-fukushima-anniversary-decommission-idINKBN2B40XF.
Some 1,000 tanks, each 12 metres (40 feet) tall, crowd the site and hold enough radioactive water to fill around 500 Olympic-sized swimming polls. The release of water that once passed through contaminated areas of the plant marks a milestone in decommissioning and will free up space for the clean-up.
Tepco will compensate for damages related to the water release, said Junichi Matsumoto, a company official overseeing decommissioning work. Tepco says it has so far paid out some 10.1 trillion yen ($89 billion) in damages from the crisis.
“The first step is to listen to the voices of those impacted adversely by the water release,” Matsumoto said.
There are additional concerns because the Fukushima water has been sitting around for years, said Toru Watanabe, a radioactivity researcher at the Fukushima Fisheries and Marine Science Research Center.
“The water has been in those tanks for a long time. The quality of that water needs to be thoroughly understood before it’s released,” he said.
Farmers say there isn’t much they can do once the water is released. They worry about their tough customers – Japanese shoppers are famously picky about produce and pay close attention to freshness and place of origin.
“All we can do is keep explaining all of the measures we have to ensure the safety of our produce,” said pear farmer Tomoichi Yoshioka. “The final decision lies with the consumer.”
($1 = 113.6700 yen)
Clear vision needed for future of still-evacuated Fukushima areas
September 16, 2021
More than a decade after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant accident, there remains more than 30,000 hectares of land where the evacuation order is still in place and is not expected to be lifted any time soon.
The government recently announced a plan to rebuild ravaged communities in these areas near the crippled plant with high levels of radiation, known as “kitaku konnan kuiki” (difficult-to-return zone).
Under the plan, the government will decontaminate the land and houses of local residents who want to return to their homes so that the order can be lifted by the end of the 2020s.
Initially, the evacuation order covered more than 110,000 hectares. The measure was lifted for some 80,000 hectares by March last year.
In 2017 and 2018, the government thrashed out a plan to designate some 2,700 hectares of land in six municipalities within the zone as reconstruction priority areas eligible for preferential policy support to help improve the living environment. The plan requires the government to make intensive decontamination efforts in the areas and lift the evacuation order by the spring of 2023.
The local administrations involved asked the national government to make clear when the order will be lifted for the remaining areas in the difficult-to-return zone.
The latest plan unveiled by the government may represent a step forward as it offers a specific timeframe for lifting the measure, albeit for only those who wish to return to their homes. The blueprint has brought a ray of hope to local residents who have been facing a distressingly uncertain future outlook.
But the fact remains that the government has yet to offer a realistic road map to deliver on its promise to lift the evacuation order for the entire restricted zone sometime in the future, no matter how long it will take.
The government has pledged to tread carefully in this undertaking, holding multiple meetings with residents to ask about their desire to to return home as well as talks with local administrations on the range of areas to be decontaminated.
But it has yet to announce specifics about the decontamination, such as the areas to be covered or the method to be used.
The residents in these areas have been living as evacuees for more than 10 years. Many of them are likely to find it difficult to decide even if they want to return to where they once lived.
If the government proceeds with the latest plan, it needs to work out details of how it will tackle the challenge in a “careful” manner. The details should cover how the government will confirm the local residents’ wishes and ensure the level of decontamination that can reassure them of the safety of returning to their homes.
Moreover, the land and buildings that nobody wants to return to will not be covered by the plan to lift the order. This will remain a serious issue for the future.
The government has so far spent some 3 trillion yen ($27.45 billion) on decontaminating areas subject to the evacuation order. This effort has allowed some 14,000 residents, or 30 percent of the local population, to return home. It will cost taxpayers a huge additional amount of money to accelerate the cleanup work in the difficult-to-return zone, where nearly 22,000 people are still registered as residents.
The government says the necessary funds will be budgeted from the Fukushima reconstruction special account and other appropriate financing sources. But it admits the total amount of money required cannot be estimated since it depends on the number of local residents who want to return.
In other words, it has no clear and viable plan to raise the necessary funds.
The 2011 special law to deal with contamination by radioactive materials from the Fukushima plant stipulates that it is the government’s “obligation” to deal with radiation pollution caused by the accident.
The government has a duty to offer as soon as possible a clear future vision for tackling this formidable challenge, specifying when and how the evacuation order will be lifted and what kind of policy support will be provided to residents including those who choose not to return to the areas.
Fukushima Prefecture Announces New “High-Quality” Rice, Branding
September 4, 2020
With the announcement of a new variety of top-tier rice, Fukushima hopes to further unravel the unfair stigma of the 2011 tsunami.
On Monday, Fukushima Prefectural Governor Uchibori Masao stood before the gathered press and held aloft an indigo-blue print. The painterly, dark-blue brushstrokes depicted rice fields, mountains, and farmers planting and harvesting grains. Below, in the same vibrant indigo, were the words 「福、笑い」: Fuku, Warai, or “Luck, Laugh.” This was the just-announced official design for Fukushima Prefecture’s new high-quality rice cultivar. Fittingly for Fukushima (福島, literally “Lucky Island”), the brand would bear that same “lucky” kanji in its name.
The global image of Fukushima, of course, is not one most would describe as “lucky.” Indeed, the vast prefecture – Japan’s third-largest by area – is often intrinsically associated with the 3/11/2011 nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Infamously, the disaster resulted in a zone of exclusion which forced 165,000 residents from their homes. Early government mismanagement of the crisis resulted in a Japanese populace who often distrusted official statements about local food safety. With the name “Fukushima” appended to the plant, the reputation of the entire prefecture and its people suffered.
This was doubly true for those who worked in Fukushima’s vaunted agricultural sector.
A Prefecture Recovering, an Industry Besmirched
Nearly a decade on from the disaster, the zone of exclusion has shrunk dramatically. Villages, once ghost towns, are reopening. Less than 3% of the prefecture remains off-limits. (In fact, at its greatest extent, the ZOE covered less than 6% of the prefecture.) Years of stringent testing have long proven Fukushima-grown produce to be safe. Yet, still, the stigma lingers. The South Korea Olympic Committee announced last year that it planned to bring radiation detectors and Korean-produced food to the (now-postponed) 2020 Tokyo Olympics. They aimed to avoid athletes consuming any Fukushima products.
Such fear-mongering has been especially difficult for farmers in Fukushima. This is in part because the prefecture was actually famous for its high-quality produce previous to the disaster, Fukushima produced 20.6% of the country’s peaches and 8.7% of its cucumbers. The prefecture’s real agricultural showstopper, however, is its rice.
Lucky Island, Lucky Rice
Fukushima is a mountainous land. In particular, parts of the western Aizu region have nary a flat plain in sight. Here, snowmelt from the mountain peaks runs down into regional rice paddies. This pure water helps to give Fukushima rice its high-quality flavor.
The soil, too, assists in producing good rice, as do the prefecture’s hot days and cold nights. Popular rice cultivars like Koshihikari and Hitomebore are grown, as well as numerous sake rice varieties. Fukushima rice is of such high-quality that it famously trades off taking first place with neighboring Niigata in national rice flavor competitions most years. Recently, Fukushima rice was honored three years running. The Japan Grain Inspection Association Rice Taste Rankings awarded multiple Fukushima rice brands its “Special A-Class,” leading the prefecture to take first place in 2017 through 2019.
The high-grade rice also yields high-quality sake (日本酒; nihonshu). The perfect combination of rice and water, paired with breweries with long years of experience, has resulted in some of the country’s best rice wines. Subterranean rivers flowing from Mt. Bandai; water sourced from the Abukuma-do cave; Aizu snowmelt; all these waters serve to help make Fukushima’s sake special. In 2018, Fukushima sake won the coveted National Research Institute of Brewing title for an unprecedented sixth year in a row. Breweries like Suehiro, Okunomatsu, and Kokken are just a few of its renowned sake producers.
Yet the perception of Fukushima rice – even that produced in Aizu, more distant from the nuclear disaster than parts of other prefectures – as being potentially contaminated continues to damage the Fukushima agricultural industry. Governor Uchibori almost certainly had this in mind as he sought to create excitement around Fukushima products with the announcement of the prefecture’s new cultivar.
The Birth of Fuku, Warai
Despite the timeliness of its announcement, the prefecture in fact first began designing this new rice strain 16 years ago. According to the rice brand’s official website, “Niigata no.88, descendant of Koshihikari, is its mother; prefectural cultivation-type Gunkei 627, descendant of Hitomebore, is its father.” Quality and taste-testing repeated since 2006. In 2019, the prefecture official decided to promote the rice. After the rice was announced, 6,234 Fuksuhimans submitted possible names for the cultivar; the government chose “Fuku, Warai” so that it might “bring a smile to the faces of those who produce it, those who eat it, and make them all happy.”
More than that, the prefecture announced an even loftier accomplishment. “Through these 14 months and years, we’ve put our all into creating the ideal rice. We’ve arrived at a new rice, brimming with “Fukushima Pride.”
In a promotional video produced by the prefecture, Sakuma Hideaki, head of the horticulture department of the Fukushima Agricultural Research Center, had the following to say regarding the new rice strain: In terms of its flavor, the grain is quite large and possesses a sweet quality. It has a distinct aroma. You could say it has a soft texture as well. These are special qualities that distinguish this rice from previous Fukushima Prefecture original products up until now.
Ritzy Rice
The new cultivar is being produced as a premium rice, meant to compete with the most luxurious rice strains in Japan. The aim is to have the rice on specialty store shelfs by next fall, following a special preview harvest conducted on 6/6 hectares by 13 specially-picked rice producers.
The new packaging announced on Monday was illustrated by Yorifuji Bunpei (寄藤文平), well-known for his “please do it at home” public service posters on the Tokyo metro. Koriyama-native Yanai Michihiko handled the art direction. Regarding the design, Governor Uchibori said, おいしさや魅力がより伝わるよう、関係者と力を合わせてプロモーションに取り組む。 We’ve put together this promotion by joining with those involved in order to properly convey [the rice’s] deliciousness and value.
With any luck, Fuku, Warai will help with the continued rehabilitation of Fukushima’s impressive agricultural industries. Better yet, it may indeed serve as yet another point of pride for the people of Fukushima.
Sources
(2020年09月01日). 福島県オリジナル米「福、笑い」パッケージ青基調 先行販売へ。Fukushima-Minyu Newspaper.
Official Fukushima Prefectural Fuku, Wari Website.
Sternsdorff-Cisterna, N. (2015). Food after Fukushima: Risk and Scientific Citizenship in Japan. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 117, No. 3, pp. 455–467,
Video Testimonies from Fukushima in 7 Languages: “We want to protect the ocean of Fukushima, for the future of the fishing industry”
July 11, 2020
Peace Boat has cooperated with the environmental NGO Friends of the Earth Japan (FoE Japan) to launch the next in their series of video testimonies of the current situation in Fukushima in various languages.
Nine years have passed since the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster, and the damage continues to be incurred. Although this disaster is still ongoing, efforts are made to render this invisible. FoE Japan has conducted video interviews with evacuees, dairy farmers, fishermen and other community members in order to make the ongoing impacts more known as part of the “Fukushima Mieruka Project.”
The next multilingual installment in this series includes interviews with fishermen from Fukushima, who have been pushed back and forth by the policies of the Japanese Government and TEPCO, and who hold great concerns for their future. These are being released simultaneously in English, French, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean and German, as well as Japanese.
The fishermen interviewed told us that they are still struggling to sell their fish due to the impacts of the nuclear accident. They are working to restore confidence step by step, by conducting efforts such as test operations and radiation monitoring themselves. However, the Japanese Government and TEPCO have launched a plan to discharge large amounts of radioactive contaminated materials generated at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, including tritium, into the ocean.
“From now, our worry is the problems for successors. If an unexpected fish is found in the future, the young generation will really suffer, those in the fishing industry. Really. It’s a life-or-death matter.”
Please listen to the voices of concern and anger of the Fukushima fishermen (12mins 31 sec).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSVu_52u7z8&feature=emb_logo
Click on the name of each language to watch the clip on Youtube:
- English
- French
- Korean
- Chinese (traditional)
- Chinese (simplified)
- German
- Japanese
- Spanish (coming soon)
See here for a Q&A of more information on Japanese government plans to release contaminated water into the ocean here.
Sign the petition demanding that contaminated water being stored at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station NOT be discharged into the sea, and instead stored on land and solidified via change.org here
Study: Cesium levels in fish in Fukushima lakes, rivers differ
The Otagawa river, which runs through Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, and elsewhere, was surveyed for cesium levels in fish following the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. (Provided by the National Institute for Environmental Studies)
March 27, 2020
A team of scientists discovered that radioactive cesium released from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant accumulates in freshwater fish differently in lakes and rivers.
How easily cesium is taken into bodies is determined by what the fish consume in lakes, although factors associated with water quality–such as the ratio of mud particles–are more important for those inhabiting rivers, according to the researchers.
The findings are expected to help predict the cesium concentration in aquatic creatures more accurately even when all of them are not examined individually, the researchers from the National Institute for Environmental Studies said.
“The discovery could be used for estimating how the cesium level has lessened in each fish species,” said Yumiko Ishii, a senior researcher at the institution’s Fukushima Branch.
Higher radioactive cesium levels are reported in freshwater fish than those in the ocean in regions contaminated by the nuclear accident that started to unfold at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant in March 2011 following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
While cesium remains mainly in the flesh, how the substance is ingested differs greatly depending on the species, habitat and other elements.
Sweetfish, char, landlocked salmon, carp and other species are still banned from shipping in certain areas, even nine years after the nuclear accident.
The research team studied how cesium accumulated in different species in areas of Fukushima Prefecture, targeting 30 kinds of fish in lakes Hayamako, Inawashiroko and Akimotoko as well as the Udagawa, Manogawa, Niidagawa, Otagawa and Abukumagawa rivers two to four years after the accident.
The results revealed that cesium levels could change in lakes if the fish consume differing foods. Higher readings were measured for landlocked salmon, char and other creatures preying on small fish, likely because cesium becomes concentrated in their bodies by eating tiny creatures.
On the other hand, the kinds of food they consume do not affect the cesium concentration in fish species living in rivers.
The findings showed cesium accumulates more easily when the water contains a smaller amount of tiny mud particles and carcasses of living creatures. The higher the ratio of those particles, the lower the cesium level becomes.
The researchers said the reason is apparently that cesium in water is absorbed into those particles, making it difficult for cesium to remain in the fish bodies as the substance is discharged in the particles through feces.
Meanwhile, higher cesium levels were detected for larger species both in lakes and rivers.
The discovery has been published in the international magazine Journal of Environmental Radioactivity at: (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265931X1830715X).
After ‘miracle recovery’, Fukushima brewers look to the Games to push sake globally
Greedy bloody criminals, having no conscience to poison all the people with their radiation contaminated sake!!!
An employee of Miyaizumi Meijo Brewery picks up a sharaku sake prepared to be packed in crates during a new sake-brewing process in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima prefecture.
AIZU WAKAMATSU, Fukushima: The earth in Fukushima still trembled when Yoshihiro Miyamori drove in the dark towards his sake brewery. When he got back after midnight, he found smashed sake bottles and a crack in the wall of the building. It was Mar 11, 2011.
Miyamori was on his way to visit other sake-makers along Japan’s northeastern coast that day, and barely escaped the tsunami unleashed by a massive earthquake that razed towns and killed thousands, setting off nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima power plant nearby.
“I needed some time to think about how I could recover from this,” Miyamori, 43, told Reuters on a recent tour of his “sakagura,” or sake brewery, Miyaizumi Meijo, in Fukushima’s city of Aizu Wakamatsu.
The breweries’ sales tanked by 66 per cent that month.
An employee of Miyaizumi Meijo Brewery works on rice soaking during a new sake-brewing process in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima prefecture.
“I know people outside Fukushima were concerned about safety of rice and water,” said Miyamori.
With the Tokyo Olympics less than five months away, many spectators, and even some Olympic committees, have expressed concerns about the food from Fukushima.
But nine years after the nuclear meltdowns, Fukushima sake has made a remarkable recovery, winning the most trophies at one of Japan’s most important sake competitions seven years in a row. And Miyaizumi Meijo’s flagship brand Sharaku has become one of Japan’s most famous.
“We just kept doing what we know best – making quality sake,” he said.
But Miyamori’s understated comments hide a sake obsessive who abandoned a safe job in Tokyo to take over his father’s struggling business at 26. He revolutionised the production, renovated the brewery and paid off nearly US$3 million in debt.
After taking over in 2003, Miyamori pushed to directly oversee the sake-making – an anomaly in a business where normally the production is outsourced to brewing teams led by the “toji”, or chief brewer.
Employees of Miyaizumi Meijo Brewery work on rice steaming during a new sake-brewing process in Aizu-Wakamatsu.
He sparked a backlash from the staff after moving to use specially filtered water to wash rice for each bottle, leading to an eventual departure of the toji and most of the brewing staff.
“I wanted to be particular about every single small detail of making sake,” said Miyamori.
He opened up the previously secret production data to staff. Whiteboards covered with numbers and diagrams on temperature, rice condition and alcohol content are scattered throughout the premises to ensure workers know what goes inside each bottle.
Miyamori launched Sharaku, known for its crispness, well-balanced acidity and sweetness, in 2008. The brand started ranking high in the Sendai Sake Summit, a nation-wide competition, before the 2011 earthquake. It became No. 1 in the year of the disaster, greatly aiding the recovery.
Sharaku sake of Miyaizumi Meijo Brewery pass through a filled bottle inspector during a new sake-brewing process in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima prefecture, Japan.
But Miyamori says he could not lead the rebound of the region’s sake on his own. He was first inspired to take over his father’s brewery after coming across Hiroki, a rival sake from the region, also led by a next-generation owner Kenji Hiroki, 53.
Now that his Sharaku has matched Hiroki in popularity, the two brewers drink together and tease each other about reviews of their alcohol.
Miyamori’s next rival is wine, he says, adding that he wants to use the Olympics to popularize sake globally.
Kenji Hiroki says of Miyamori, “you can brew better sake if you have a rival you can respect. Without Sharaku, Hiroki would not be as good as it is.”
The price of staying
Evacuation was not mandatory for these now suffering Fukushima victims
By Akemi Shima
This is a statement of opinion that I, a resident of the city of Date, Fukushima Prefecture, presented to the Tokyo Regional Court as part of an on-going lawsuit.
“We had the desire to raise our children in an environment close to nature and enriching. That’s why we moved from Fukushima City to buy land in the town of Date, where we currently live, to build a house. Loan repayments were heavy but, we lived simply and we were happy.
“Eight years after the construction of our house, on March 11, 2011 the accident of the power plant occurred, and our family life was turned upside down. My husband and I were 42 years old, my son was in elementary school 4th grade (12 years old) and my daughter was in elementary school 3rd grade (10 years old).
“At that time, I had no knowledge about nuclear or radioactive substances. If I had had some knowledge in this area, by running away from it we probably could have avoided being irradiated. I am burdened by this regret. Without any financial leeway, with my sick children and my parents who are here, I could not resolve myself to get away from Date.
“From the 11th of March all life lines were cut and I had to go to the water stations where I took the children. To find food we had to walk outside sometimes soaked in the rain. After several days as we still had no water, we had to go to the town hall to use the toilet, where the water was not cut. It was then that I saw a group of people dressed in white protective suits entering the town hall. We thought that they were probably coming to help the victims of the tsunami. But now, I understand that the radioactive pollution was such that protections were necessary and we, without suspecting anything, were exposed.
“It was the time for the graduation ceremonies at the elementary school and we went there on foot. I think the information we were given was false and because of that we were irradiated. At the time I was convinced that if we were really in any danger, the state would warn us. I later learned that the doses of radioactivity in the air after the accident were 27 to 32 μSv (micro sieverts) per hour. There was no instruction about any restriction to go outdoors. And that is extremely serious.
“In June 2011, I went to the funeral of my husband’s grandmother. I took my children with me. On the way we noticed that the radiation level was very high and that inside the car the dosimeter showed in some places 1.5 micro-sievert per hour. The officials of that area had asked the nearby residents to not cause problems even if the radioactivity was high. From what I heard, the reconstruction vehicles had to be able to continue to use that road. Likewise, the Shinkansen bullet train and the Tohoku highway were not to be closed for these reasons. Despite a level that exceeded the allowable dose limits, instead of being alerted to the dangers, we were assured that we were safe.
“The risk of this exposure was not communicated to us. In June 2011 my son had so many heavy nosebleeds that his sheets were all red. The children with the same symptoms were so numerous that we received a notice containing recommendations through the school’s “health letter”. During a medical examination at the school, my son was found to have a heart abnormality and had to be monitored by a holter. My son, who was 12 at the time of the accident, was also suffering from atopic dermatitis. During the school spring break he had to be hospitalized after his symptoms worsened. Today we still cannot identify the symptoms that cause him to suffer.
“One year after the accident, my daughter complained of pain in her right leg. In the hospital, an extra-osseous osteoma was diagnosed and she had to undergo bone excision the following year. In her first year of junior high school in the winter term, she could not get up in the morning. She had orthostatic dysfunction. In agreement with her we decided that she would go to school three times a week in a system with flexible hours.
“My husband’s favorite hobby was fishing, but since the nuclear accident, it’s now out of question to go to the sea or to the river.
“Before the accident, we were growing flowers in our garden and we also had a vegetable garden. In the summer, we had family barbecues and we would put up a tent so the kids could sleep outside. Now it’s absolutely impossible.
Date is about 60 kilometers from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors.
“In this highly contaminated environment today, cell DNA would be severely damaged. In addition, the effects of exposure we have already experienced are indelible even if we move now. Whenever I think that children are particularly vulnerable to radiation, my heart is torn apart. As a parent, as an adult, it is heartbreaking and unbearable.
“I am also concerned about the current situation of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. My daily routine is to watch out for natural disasters such as earthquakes and to check the condition of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Because today I will not hesitate to evacuate. I changed my job so I could get to my kids quickly if necessary. I had to give up a full time job and it is financially difficult, but the priority is to be able to leave quickly at any time. After verifying all sorts of information, I realized that the government’s announcements were different from reality.
“Living in a radioactive environment requires you to be vigilant tirelessly, whether for shopping, eating, or drinking water, and evaluate the situation yourself to make choices. We had to make up our minds to accept an abnormal lifestyle so that we could continue to live on a daily basis.
“Whatever I do, all pleasure has disappeared from my life. I discovered that there were some hotspots of more than 10 μSv per hour near my home on the way to my children’s school. I reported it to the town hall, but they did not do anything. The reason given is that there is no temporary storage to store it. I had to remove the contaminated soil myself and I stored it in my garden. The city of Date decided on its own decontamination policy and also introduced a standard of 5mSv per year at the end of 2011.
“In my case I wanted to reduce the radioactive pollution as soon as possible and I decontaminated my garden myself. The city encouraged people to decontaminate on their own. I did it too. And that represented 144 bags. The following year I did again. The radioactive debris bags resulting from the decontamination until March 2014 remained in my garden for two years, and were then taken to the temporary storage area.
Akemi Shima had to decontaminate her own radioactive garden.
“But since then, the other decontamination bags have not been accepted and are still in my garden. So we do not want to go there anymore. The contamination of our carport amounted to 520 000 Bq (becquerels) 5 years ago, with 5 μSv / h, but it did not fit the criteria required for cleaning. Decontamination only includes the ground around the home, but the roof and the gutters are not supported. As a result, we can not leave our Velux windows open.
“Claiming to be concerned about the health of the inhabitants, the town of Date provided all residents with dosimeters. We were then invited to undergo examinations, during which our data was collected. Without the authorization of the residents, this data has been entrusted to external researchers who have written reports. These reports have been prepared on the basis of personal information obtained illegally, and furthermore falsification of the data is suspected.
“Based on inaccurate data the report concluded that even at doses of 0.6 to 1 μSv / h per hour in the air, the individual dose received would be less than 1 mSv (millisievert) per year and therefore it was not necessary to decontaminate. This is an underestimation of exposure, and clearly a violation of human rights against the population. This case is still ongoing.
“In this same region, leukaemias and rare cancers of the bile ducts are appearing. I cannot help thinking that before the accident it did not exist.
“Even today, while the state of nuclear emergency is still official, this abnormal situation has become our daily life. I fear that the “reconstruction” advocated by the state, violates the fundamental rights of residents and that this unacceptable life is now considered normal. Our lives are at a standstill.
“This suffering will continue. My deepest wish is that through this lawsuit, the responsibility of the State and Tepco that caused the accident be recognized.”
1.This Month
Small Nuclear Reactors Education Task Force: https://stop-smrs.weebly.com/bulletins.ht
24 May. The Vow from Hiroshima film is coming on PBS, this month https://www.thevowfromhiroshima.com/
6-7 July A summit and a rally in Washington D.C. https://nonatoyespeace.org/
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