Ex-Futaba mayor sues state, Tepco over Fukushima nuclear disaster
Katsutaka Idogawa, the former mayor of Futaba in Fukushima Prefecture, filed a lawsuit against the central government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Wednesday for exposing him to excessive radiation since the March 2011 nuclear disaster.
Seeking ¥148.5 million in damages, Idogawa, 69, claimed that sloppy management by the central government and Tepco caused him to receive radiation over the annual limit during the early phase of the disaster, when hydrogen explosions and the venting of steam from reactor containment vessels took place.
Futaba is one of the two municipalities that host Tepco’s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the site of the disaster.
At a news conference, Idogawa expressed regrets for his inability to protect local residents from radiation. He also asked Futaba residents to join the lawsuit.
In his petition, Idogawa claimed to have received the excessive radiation between March 11, 2011, when the disaster started, and March 19 that year, when residents evacuated Futaba for Saitama Prefecture.
This was because as Futaba mayor he took part in work to collect information, secure places to which local residents could evacuate, and instruct and guide fleeing locals, according to the petition.
The suit, filed with the Tokyo District Court, is the first seeking compensation for health damage from events early in the nuclear crisis, according to Idogawa’s attorney.
Ex-mayor sues state, TEPCO for stress caused by nuclear disaster
A former mayor who was exposed to high levels of radiation after the 2011 nuclear disaster is suing the central government and the operator of the wrecked Fukushima power plant for stress.
Katsutaka Idogawa, the former mayor of Futaba in Fukushima Prefecture, filed the lawsuit on May 20 at the Tokyo District Court. He is seeking 148.5 million yen ($1.22 million) in compensation.
“Even after the accident, I was forced to stay in the town as mayor and thus exposed to a high dose of radiation from the plant,” the complaint said.
“The central government delayed giving evacuation orders and even when they were issued, the areas under evacuation orders were inappropriate.”
Idogawa, 69, said the excessive radiation he was exposed to caused him to become stressed over health concerns.
His written complaint pointed out the central government failed to issue evacuation orders to the town appropriately following the March 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant.
Idogawa also lambasted the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator, for their reluctance to take necessary measures to protect against future tsunami disasters.
“The government and TEPCO bear responsibility for neglecting to implement advance countermeasures against potential tsunami, even though they recognized such need,” the complaint said.
Four years after the disaster, evacuation orders are still in place for Futaba town, which co-hosts the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. Most areas are designated as “difficult-to-return” zones because annual accumulated radiation levels exceed 50 millisieverts.
During a news conference in Tokyo on May 20, Idogawa said: “We could not protect the town residents because we believed in the words the government and TEPCO said that the nuclear accident would never happen. I hope I can guide those suffering from concerns over radiation exposure.”
Fukushima Voice, May 19, 2015: The Thyroid Examination Evaluation Subcommittee… came to a conclusion [that this] clearly represents an excess incidence… by an order of magnitude(At the November 11, 2014 subcommittee meeting, it was described as “61 times“)… this increase can be a result of either excess occurrence due to radiation exposure or over-diagnosis… “it is not possible to conclude if thyroid cancer cases detected during the screening are radiation-induced… it is unlikely these cases are the effect of radiation exposure… the exposure dose is far less than the Chernobyl accident and that there have been no cancer cases in children younger than 5… early internal exposure dose from radioactive iodine is extremely critical in assessing the effect of the accident.”
The subcommittee and Asahi article discount the link between these cancers and the Fukushima disaster due to a lack of cases among infants. Asahi claims this is unlike Chernobyl, where “many cases of thyroid cancer in infants” had developed. Is this accurate? According toShinichi Suzuki, who was in charge of the Fukushima Thyroid Examination, March 2015: “There is a striking similarity between the [age] profiles of patients diagnosed during the period of latency after Chernobylin Ukraine and currently in Fukushima.”
Also, the subcommittee noted “the early internal exposure dose from radioactive iodine is extremely critical in assessing the effect of the accident” — what does that dose data show?
Japan Focus, Dec 8, 2014: Sakiyama Hisako, former senior researcher at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences… observed that power was deployed to stop measurements of thyroid exposure being taken… Professor Tokonami Shinji of Hirosaki University… tried to measure exposure levels immediately after the explosions [but] was halted by Fukushima Prefecture, which accused him of stirring up trouble… Tokonami went on to test 65 Fukushima residents one month after the explosions [and] found radioactive iodine in the thyroids of 50 out of the 65 (77%)… He estimated the equivalent dose to the thyroid [was up to] 87 mSv [and] infants who remained in areas with high iodine levels may have been exposed to over 100 mSv.
FUKUDEN (pdf), Dec 31, 2014: Prof. Toshihide Tsuda, an epidemiology specialist [said] “When we analyzed the results of the thyroid cancer survey conducted in the Fukushima Prefecture according to location, it is obvious that there are more numbers of thyroid cancer cases in the Nakadori area (middle area), and we urgently need to take necessary measures.”
Prof. Tsuda, Eiji Yamamoto & Etsuji Suzuki of Okayama Univ.: [The thyroid cancer] incidence rate ratio was 26.98… in the nearest area, and in Fukushima city, it was 19.41… compared with the Japanese mean… [E]xcess incidence rate ratios were observed… Dose-response relationship by distance from the plant was indicated… countermeasures against the suspected outbreak are necessary in Fukushima and the neighboring areas.
The government will instruct Tokyo Electric Power Co. to terminate compensation payments to 54,800 evacuees from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2018, regardless of radiation levels in their hometowns, sources said.
The new compensation plan of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is based on the assumption that decontamination work will lower radiation levels and enable the government to lift evacuation orders in those areas, the sources said May 18.
Currently, the homes of about 80,000 evacuees are located in three zones designated by the government in terms of severity of radiation contamination.
Around 31,800 evacuees’ homes are in “zones being prepared for the lifting of evacuation order,” while 23,000 people have fled their homes in what are now “no-residence zones.”
TEPCO currently pays each of these 54,800 evacuees 100,000 yen(about $834) in compensation a month.
The new plan will affect evacuees from these two zones.
The remaining 24,400 people have homes located in“difficult-to-return zones,” where there are no prospects of lifting the evacuation orders. TEPCO has paid a total of 14.5 million yen to each of these evacuees.
The government’s current guidelines on compensation stipulate that payments should end one year after evacuation orders are lifted.
Under the new plan, the government and ruling parties assume that the evacuation period for people in the first two zones will end “six years after the March 2011 nuclear accident.” That assumption is based on another assumption that decontamination work will be completed by March 2017 and evacuation orders can be called off by that time.
As a result, compensation payments for people from the two zones will end in March 2018. Each of the evacuees will have received atotal of 8.4 million yen during the seven years since the accident started at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The current compensation system allows evacuees to receive additional compensation payments if their evacuation periods are extended. Some critics say evacuees are hoping for a continuation of evacuation orders so that they can receive more money.
But the new plan will terminate compensation payments for the two zones in 2018 without exception. If the evacuation order is lifted five years after the nuclear accident, the evacuees from the area can still receive compensation for two more years, even though they are qualified for only one additional year under the current system.
Adoption of the new plan will make it easier for the government to work out support measures for people who return to their hometowns in the two zones, the sources said.
“The lifting of evacuation orders will proceed,” a government official said. “We will be able to construct houses and attract plants and firms (to the areas) more positively.”
However, it is not clear whether radiation levels will drop as expected by March 2018.
Even if evacuation orders remain in place because of delays in decontamination work, the compensation payments will still end in 2018 for the two zones, the sources said.
Nearly 70 percent of evacuees from areas around the damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have family members complaining of physical or mental problems, a recent survey showed.
Released by the Fukushima prefectural government, the survey covering fiscal 2014 revealed that 66.3 percent of households that fled the disaster area–after the nuclear crisis triggered by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami–have at least one member suffering health problems. The figure was 67.5 percent in the previous survey covering fiscal 2013.
In February, the prefecture sent questionnaires to all 59,746 households that evacuated for the latest study–the second of its kind–and received responses from 18,767 households, or 33.6 percent.
Of the respondents, 13,703 households, or 73 percent, said they were forced to evacuate, while 5,054, or 27 percent, said they voluntarily evacuated.
The survey covered about 20 categories, such as the state of the lives of the evacuees, their health conditions and their intent to return to their homes.
Asked about what bothers them, 57.9 percent said they cannot sleep well. While 56.6 percent said they are unable to enjoy their daily lives as they did before the disaster, 49.3 percent said they tire more easily.
Households that are still in temporary housing or rented apartments for evacuees accounted for 62.1 percent, a 10-percentage-point decrease from the previous survey. Meanwhile,19.7 percent–10 points higher than the first study–said they live in their own homes.
Although in the fiscal 2013 survey, 40.4 percent hoped they would be allowed to continue living in temporary housing longer than originally planned, 48.7 percent hope so in the latest findings.
In the latest study, 55.8 percent said they hope to continue living in temporary housing because the evacuation order has yet to be lifted for their hometowns. While 42.1 percent said they are currently unable to rebuild their homes on their own, 40.0 percent said they do not have sufficient funds to leave temporary housing.
In March, the central government released results of its survey of nine municipalities ordered to evacuate since the onset of the Fukushima crisis. The prefectural survey asked evacuees from areas other than the nine municipalities where they hoped to reside in the future. The latest findings show 37.3 percent of households that are evacuees living within Fukushima Prefecture said they hope eventually to return to their homes. Those who want to settle where they currently reside accounted for 16.5 percent, and 11.7 percent said they have yet to decide where to live in the future.
In contrast, 31.6 percent of households that evacuated outside the prefecture said they have not determined where to live in the future, whereas respondents who want to settle where they now live or return to their hometowns accounted for 24.2 percent and 19.8 percent, respectively.
Sixteen young people who lived near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, prefectural authorities said May 18, although they added it is “unlikely” a direct result of the nuclear accident.
Fukushima Prefecture has been conducting thyroid tests on about 385,000 residents and others who were 18 years old or younger at the time of the onset of the March 2011 nuclear disaster caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
A prefectural panel said the results of the first round of tests that concluded in March 2014 revealed the ratio of those diagnosed orsuspected of having thyroid cancer who live near the Fukushima plant was no different than the ratio of the same age group from elsewherein Japan.
The 16 new cases were detected between January and March, and bring the total number of young people diagnosed with the disease in the testing program to 103. Thyroid cancer can be confirmed only after surgery.
The prefecture is currently conducting its second survey of test subjects, which will be concluded in March 2016.
The latest 16 include 12 individuals who were suspected of having the disease during the first study, and four who were believed to have the disease during the second study.
According to prefectural officials, 112 young people were diagnosed or suspected of having thyroid cancer during the first study, with the figure at 15, thus far, in the second survey, bringing the total to date to 127 people.
Because babies and small children are particularly susceptible to the effects of radiation, many cases of thyroid cancer in infants were reported after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. However, this has not proven to be the case so far with regard to the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
The prefectural panel will further study the impact of radiation exposure on the frequency of thyroid cancer cases by comparing the findings of the first survey with results of the second study and future check-ups.
Testing conducted in February and March of 2015 found cesium in many tap water samples collected around Japan. In the readings, Tokyo had higher tap water contamination levels than Fukushima City.
One reading that may cause confusion is the reading for Ichihara Chiba. It indicated iodine 131 was found in that tap water sample. The reading is isolated, no other cities found iodine 131 in their water. This same problem was encountered in the US soon after the disaster were iodine 131 was being found in some east coast municipal water supplies. What may be happening is linked to medical treatments.
People receiving iodine 131 radiation therapy treatments, used for certain thyroid disorders excrete the substance in their urine. This is intended to allow any iodine 131 in the waste water to decay away. If a containment system is not used or not properly operating, iodine 131 can flow into waste treatment plants and eventually to the waterways. This directly adds contamination to waste water.
If that treated waste water is released into a water way and picked up soon enough downstream it could then contaminate public drinking water supplies.
FUKUSHIMA – The Fukushima Prefectural Government may stop providing free accommodations at the end of March 2017 for people who voluntarily left areas in the prefecture not subject to nuclear evacuation advisories, sources said.
Officials hope to encourage people who evacuated on their own to return home, but the proposed end to the assistance will certainty draw objections from them.
There have been calls in some Fukushima municipalities that are worried about the lack of progress in the return home of evacuees for an end to the support program.
The prefecture will decide after listening to the opinions of local officials later this month, the sources said.
Of about 115,000 people who have taken refuge in and outside the prefecture, some 36,000 are believed to be from areas that are not covered by the central government’s evacuation advisories for radiation from the nuclear crisis that started in 2011.
Many voluntary evacuees are people with children as well as former residents of such areas as the town of Hirono, the village of Kawauchi and the city of Minamisoma, all geographically close to the government-designated evacuation zones.
They sought refuge outside their hometowns mainly due to concerns over exposure to radiation from the reactor meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 plant.
Under the Disaster Relief Act, the prefectural government provides prefabricated temporary housing for nuclear evacuees for free and fully finances their rent for private apartments.
The aid program was originally supposed to run two years, but it was extended by a year twice, with the current version set to expire at the end of next March. For voluntary evacuees, the prefecture hopes to terminate the assistance after another one-year extension, the sources said.
It is looking at continuing the free accommodations for people who fled the designated evacuation areas, the sources said. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/05/18/national/fukushima-may-end-free-accommodations-voluntary-nuclear-evacuees-2017/#.VVoO40ZZNBR
Fukushima c’est eux Fukushima c’est nous
A group of parents who has been hosting children from Fukushima since summer 2012 are now organizing another round of crowd funding for summer 2015.
Details on their crown funding site. http://fr.ulule.com/fukushima-nous/
Here is the information about the previous year’s achievement. http://fr.ulule.com/fukushima/
JCSシドニーレインボープロジェクト JCS Sydney Rainbow Project
2015年夏、東北の震災孤児・遺児を10人、シドニーに保養に呼ぶ計画です
Summer camp 2015 for children who lost parents/family members
詳細はこちら For donation details https://readyfor.jp/projects/sydney
FUKUSHIMA KIDS DOLPHIN CAMP 2015 フクシマドルフィンキャンプ2015 御蔵島
“Dear eARThist family,
Oak to all relations Tokyo would like to present 2015 Fukushima Kids Dolphin Camp in Mikura Island this summer for children to release their stress from radiation fear caused by 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and give them an opportunity to play in the mother nature. And WE ARE COLLECTING DONATIONS!
See more at http://www.oak-to-all-relations.org/fukushima-kids-dolphin-camp2015/
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou says Taiwan’s tightened controls on food imports from Japan will only be temporary.
Taiwanese health authorities had banned food imports from Fukushima and 4 nearby prefectures in the wake of the March 2011 nuclear accident.
But it was revealed in March that some food from the prefectures was being imported to Taiwan. This prompted calls by consumer groups for stricter regulations.
The authorities further tightened their rules on food imports from Japan last Friday. The measures include requiring that all Japanese food products bound for Taiwan carry certificates proving the prefecture of origin.
President Ma stressed to reporters on Monday that priority lies on dispelling consumer fears over the labeling of food products in Japan. He described the measure as being temporary, and added that health authorities are eager to resolve the issue.
Ma expressed his readiness to ease the restrictions after authorities determine how the banned products reached Taiwanese consumers and steps are taken to prevent similar reoccurrences.
The Japanese side has been urging Taiwan to lift the tougher regulations, calling the steps scientifically groundless. Japanese food exporters have expressed the fear that the revised regulations may increase export costs and make them less competitive in Taiwan.
Taiwanese supermarkets have also voiced concern over a possible decline in the volume of Japanese food they sell.
It’s an ancient question. “Thou shalt not kill,” says the Bible — war in God’s service being an implicit exception. Then there’s Don Quixote, lover of justice, upholder of virtue, who founders on the impossibility of doing good without committing outrages. His name became an adjective — quixotic — for a certain kind of activism that fails to allow for the practical limits life imposes on ideals.
“Quixotic” is a word Shukan Bunshun magazine applies to the self-described “Kantei Santa” — kantei meaning the prime minister’s official residence, Santa needing no introduction, surprising though it is to see him at work so far from Christmas. “Kantei Santa” was the signature on a warning note attached to a miniature drone found in late April on the roof of the prime minister’s residence. “Radioactive,” said the note. The stunt, it explained, was a protest against the government’s drive to restart nuclear power stations idled in the wake of the meltdown catastrophe in Fukushima in March 2011. A quantity of earth in a container attached to the drone was in fact found to be mildly radioactive. “Santa” reportedly told police he dug it up in Fukushima.
The “Santa” police have in custody is 40-year-old Yasuo Yamamoto of Obama, Fukui Prefecture. In Shukan Bunshun’s profile, Yamamoto comes across as sufficiently idiosyncratic to beg the question: Is the crime attributed to him explicable simply as the work of one emotionally unstable individual, or is there a broader significance?
Many people are against the nuclear restarts; Yamamoto is not alone there. Japan is a democracy. Democracy means the government is responsive to the popular will, as freely expressed via the media, demonstrations, elections. In undemocratic societies, citizens must resort to crime to make themselves heard. Insisting on being heard is itself a crime.
Japan is a democracy but, as many observers have been noting lately, a flawed one. It comes perilously close, for one thing, to being a one-party state, the Liberal Democratic Party having held power for all but three of the past 60 years. Gerrymandered electoral districts are unrepresentative to the point that the Supreme Court last November, following numerous lower courts, cast doubt on their constitutionality.
Seemingly undemocratic government initiatives lately are growing increasingly bold, conspicuous among them a new state secrets Law that potentially criminalizes a key aspect of a journalist’s job — namely, the pursuit of public information.
Proposed revisions to the 68-year-old Constitution seem to weaken its protection of democratic rights while strengthening the national military. Some at least among those old enough to remember Japan’s undemocratic and militarist past, and some younger people attentive enough to listen to them, are not reassured by the benign official phrase “proactive pacifism.” Should they be?
Elections are the lifeblood of democracy, and Japan has just been through two of them — one national, the other a nationwide series of local ones. The first, in December 2014, gave Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a resounding victory in spite of widespread unease, consistently surfacing in opinion polls, over the course he is charting. The second, in April, was marred by a curious fact unworthy of a vigorous and healthy democracy — 22 percent of incumbents ran unopposed. No wonder voter turnout sank to record lows — less than half on average. Turnout for the national election in December was little better — 52.66 percent, also a record low.
Can democracy survive public apathy? Japan is not the only developed nation facing that question. Democracy prolonged is democracy taken for granted. Infant democracies do better in that regard. Voters take courage from situations that demand courage, streaming en masse to the polls in defiance of army thugs, terrorist threats, even terrorist bombs.
“Sato! Sato! Sato!” Anyone who has lived through a Japanese election campaign will know what that refers to — the incessant screeching of candidates’ names into loudspeakers mounted on campaign vans that roll through your neighborhood and mine, turning daily life into a nightmare of cacophony. Again: No wonder people don’t vote; they feel belittled and insulted. In 70 years of democracy, can campaigning have failed to mature beyond this?
Don’t blame the candidates, said the Asahi Shimbun in a pre-election report. The rules that bind them are strict, minute and seemingly meaningless. “No other country has campaign rules as strict as Japan’s,” Waseda University professor Minoru Tsubogo tells the newspaper. No door-to-door campaigning. No ad balloons. No candidates’ speeches from moving vehicles. No posters larger than 40×30 cm. Each individual poster must bear a certifying seal. Internet campaigning was finally permitted in 2013 but seems not to have caught on. So it’s “Sato-Sato-Sato,” rookie candidates being the worst offenders because the incumbents are already known. The system doesn’t change because the incumbents who can change it are its beneficiaries — which may have something to do with Japan’s virtual one-party statehood.
A society so rigid in some respects can be curiously lax in others. If drones were regulated half as closely as election campaigning, Kantei Santa would never have got off the ground. Granted, technological progress this rapid is bound to outpace legislation; still, Japan, having received a sharp lesson in vulnerability from the Islamic State terrorist group last winter, appears curiously inattentive to the security risks involved.
A former Air Self-Defense Forces enlistee with special skills in electronics, Yamamoto had ample opportunity to ponder the implications of nuclear power — his native Fukui hosts more reactors than any other prefecture. On his blog he named Ernesto “Che” Guevara — not Don Quixote — as his inspiration. Che’s personality and revolutionary zeal were magnetically charismatic. They still are, nearly 50 years after his death. Did pretending to be Che fill a void in Yamamoto’s apparently humdrum, lonely life? Or was he, in his own mind, offering himself, Che-like, as a sacrificial victim to a nation he saw going astray?
Democracy. The Asahi, apropos the April “Sato-Sato” elections, offered its own reflections on the subject. Its exemplar of living democracy was the county council of Cornwall, England, where citizen participation is frequent and impassioned. When local libraries were being closed last year due to budget deficits, the council heard an earful — with respectful attention — from a 10-year-old boy defending his right to read. An Internet campaign was launched to save the libraries.
Imagine that happening in Japan! And yet why shouldn’t it? They’re closing libraries here too.
A task force in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party plans to ask the government to lift evacuation orders for areas with “relatively low” radiation around the meltdown-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant by the end of fiscal 2016.
The politicians want to speed up residents’ return to radiation-tainted areas and discussed measures, including lifting the evacuation orders, at a general meeting Thursday.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant was heavily damaged by a triple meltdown after losing all power following submersion by tsunami spawned by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. The resulting radiation contamination tainted wide swaths of Fukushima and other parts of east Japan.
The group now hopes the government will give evacuated residents the option of returning to risk doses as high as 50 millisieverts a year, by the end of March 2017.
Lifting the orders would give about 55,000 residents the option of recovering their homes.
According to the outline, the orders would be lifted no later than six years after the nuclear crisis began.
By setting a deadline, the LDP wants raise evacuees’ hopes of returning.
The LDP plans to discuss the idea with its coalition ally, Komeito, and submit it to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as a joint proposal by the end of this month.
The outline also calls for accelerating infrastructure recovery and decontamination in the areas. It says the government should instruct Tepco to duly consider providing financial compensation for psychological pain even if the evacuation orders are lifted earlier than the March 2017 deadline.
Source: Japan Times http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/05/15/national/fukushima-evacuation-orders-lifted-low-radiation-areas-end-fiscal-2016-ldp/#.VVZNgZNZNBQ
Ian Thomas Ash and Hitomi Kamanaka are perhaps the two most widely viewed filmmakers who have produced documentaries about the effects of radioactivity in Fukushima since the March 11, 2011, disaster. Ash’s commitment to the subject arose after the multiple nuclear meltdown. Kamanaka, on the other hand, has been Japan’s designated nuclear documentarian for nearly two decades.
In a number of ways, they are each the other’s mirror image. Ash is a foreign filmmaker who produces films in Japanese. Kamanaka also made her first widely distributed film about radiation exposure by traveling abroad: She went to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state and to Iraq, where she documented the effects of depleted uranium on Iraqi citizens after the first Gulf War. She has continued to travel since, making films in Sweden and, most recently, Belarus.
Kamanaka has considered herself an activist filmmaker from nearly the beginning, and her films are consciously critical of the nuclear energy industry. Ash’s films, however, are narrative in nature. His camera stays firmly planted in the lives of his individual subjects.
In this way, as well, the two filmmakers’ careers have converged: Kamanaka’s new film, “Little Voices from Fukushima,” eschews a commentary structure in favor of a larger cast of subjects and a similarly narrative style. The film’s subject matter — the effects of radiation on the thyroid glands of children following nuclear meltdowns — also brings Kamanaka into alignment with Ash, whose two post-Fukushima documentaries address this issue exclusively.
Neither filmmaker is unfamiliar with the polarized nature of public discussion about nuclear energy: Kamanaka has lost government-administered funding for her films as a result of their content, and during a period of particularly heated media debate surrounding Ash’s films, his distributor was dissolved by its parent company in an attempt to avoid involvement in any potential controversies.
We asked the two filmmakers — American and Japanese, storyteller and activist — to discuss their work and their films, and to consider the notion of “being a ‘foreign’ filmmaker.” Below is an edited version of their discussion at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. (Dreux Richard)
Ian Thomas Ash: Let’s talk about that now: being a “foreign filmmaker” and how much that affects the work.
I have a few questions about language. I am also a foreign filmmaker. I make films in Japanese in Japan. And you make films in Japan, but you go abroad to make films and you do that in English. You said maybe people feel disarmed by the fact that you are foreign, that it’s a little bit easier for you.
Hitomi Kamanaka: They’re not protective. They become relaxed.
ITA: Your English is not perfect, nor is my Japanese perfect. So I think on some level people sense that they have to speak more straight. They can’t bull—-t, because it won’t work.
HK: In Japanese society, in our culture, we have a sophisticated, indirect way of communicating.
ITA: One of the things in my film “A2-B-C” is “Tadachi ni eikyō wa arimasen to omowaremasu.” It means—
HK: Nothing.
ITA: Yeah: “I believe that at this point in time there will probably be no health effects.” That doesn’t mean anything. You’re just playing with words.
HK: It’s bull—-t.
ITA: Exactly. It’s bull—-t. In 10 years, 20 years, we don’t know. So it’s using language as a weapon — to try to cover things up. But when you are speaking with a foreign person, you can’t do that so much.
HK: (miming confusion) “What? What?”
ITA: I often pretend I don’t understand. People ask me about being a foreign filmmaker, and to be honest, I am not always conscious of the fact that I am foreign. I don’t think all the time, “I’m foreign. I’m foreign.” And how do you feel? When you go abroad, do you always feel like a foreigner? I don’t. Until someone says to me, “Ah, you are a foreigner.”
HK: I think since I was small, I see everyone — American people, Iraqi people or people from any other country — as the same. It’s just a problem of language.
ITA: To prepare for this discussion, I watched “Hibakusha: At the End of the World.” You went to Iraq, and you have been to America. What was that like? Because when you go to Iraq, not only are you foreign, but you are a woman.
HK: I think images about Iraq have been exaggerated and distorted by the mass media, especially the United States mass media — that Iraqis are stubborn people, or narrow-minded. But when I met them, they were warm and kind and full of love for their families. And they were open-minded toward foreign people. Everyone was, from normal citizens to bureaucrats.
ITA: In the movie, there’s a farmer [in Washington state] named Tom, who is leading this group of downwinders who are—
HK: Plaintiffs. In a trial.
ITA: There is a scene in the film where he is making a joke about the fact the government is saying, “It’s all right, it’s all right.” He says, “I’m just a farmer.” He says, “I’m not supposed to say anything. The government says it’s all right, so it must be all right.” You’re in the back of the car, laughing. It’s a really funny moment. He’s saying, “The government says the radiation stops at the barbed wire fence.”
HK: It’s a kind of black joke. He knows everything. But what he’s saying is the reality, how he sees the reality going on around the Hanford area. The farmers are pretending.
ITA: Then Dr. Shuntaro Hida, who is a hibakusha from Hiroshima, at that time he is 85. He talks about compensation only being for people within a 2 km radius. That is true for Fukushima as well, where they had zones. Initially it was 10 km and then it was 20 km, 30 km. If you live outside of 20 km, no compensation.
HK: Society has a different way of facing the truth, I think. Physics says it is impossible to stop radiation, and that anywhere you draw a line, there will be no difference between the two sides. But you must draw the line somewhere. In between, people are trapped.
ITA: In your film “Rokkasho Rhapsody,” there is a woman, Kikukawa-san. Her friend is growing organic foods. I want to read you her quote, because I think it’s important. She says, “There’s no proof that it is OK. But if you don’t like something, you shouldn’t do it. I can’t offer an explanation. It’s only the way I feel. The decision comes down to me, not some university professor.” She, as a farmer, just has this sense.
HK: When I had a press conference and screening for that film, maybe 30 journalists came. I was waiting outside the door [during the screening]. And they came out, and I expected somebody — anybody —to talk about the contents of the film. Everybody was silent. And then they just left. Nobody stopped to talk to me. Nobody.
ITA: I had the same experience with both of my films. I made “In the Grey Zone” in 2012, and it came out one year after the nuclear meltdown. Looking back, I think maybe it was too early. Then I did “A2-B-C,” and again I had a lot of trouble finding a distributor. I decided, “OK, I’m going to show it around the world and then bring it back to Japan,” which is what I did. Now “A2-B-C” is better-known and people say, “Can we see ‘In the Grey Zone?’ Can we see the other film?”
HK: In “A2-B-C” you begin with Yamashita-san. I wondered how you could do that shooting. That is very difficult, to access Yamashita-san. He was so protected.
ITA: Dr. Shunichi Yamashita was an adviser to the government who helped after the nuclear meltdown to create policy. He is from Nagasaki and his parents were hibakusha in Nagasaki. He had been doing research in Chernobyl.
HK: He is a very famous researcher of Chernobyl. Internationally.
ITA: So he came here to the [Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan] press club about 12 days after the nuclear meltdown and he gave a press conference. He gave the press conference in English, which I think is very important, because his English is not very good. I have to tell you that Dr. Yamashita’s English is not very good. This is important.
HK: Why did he not have a translator?
ITA: It’s part of his act. He gives this speech, and of course none of the Japanese journalists understand what he is saying. So all of the foreign journalists leave the room and they go write their articles. Only the Japanese reporters remain in the room. He was still at the table. All the Japanese reporters stayed and he gave an off-record press conference in Japanese. But it’s all off-record. I was there. He looks at me and I am the only white person in the room. He thinks I don’t speak Japanese, and I am sitting there recording the whole thing.
HK: That’s how you could do it.
ITA: This goes back to the thing about being a foreign filmmaker. I want to make a connection between Dr. Yamashita, and Dr. [Michael] Fox, who you interviewed, who works at the Hanford nuclear facility. And one of the things he says is—
HK: “Evidence. Scientific evidence.”
ITA: Exactly. “I’m a scientist. I sort things out based on data. Data should decide these issues. Not propaganda. Not fear.” It really reminded me of Dr. Yamashita. This way of thinking: that it is only about numbers, it’s only about data. When you talk about any of these issues — when you talk about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Iraq, Fukushima — if we only talk about numbers, we forget that each number represents a person. People say things like, “Only one person will become sick.” But to that one person, it’s 100 percent.
HK: That kind of sensitivity is always missing in those kind of scientists. But with Dr. Fox, I made a mistake. I had read the history of Hanford. A whistleblower had said they were doing bad things there. They are polluting the area and people. But [Hanford employees] had pride. They were working for a national purpose, protecting the United States from communism, or something. So they had pride, and then their pride had been broken. They became so protective, and that is why I pushed a kind of button when I—
ITA: I don’t think you made a mistake.
HK: But I made him angry about it.
ITA: I made Dr. Yamashita angry. You have to break through that sometimes. That’s why you’re a good filmmaker. I mean, if you don’t break through that, then we have no film.
HK: When I want to ask something, I ask.
ITA: I think of so many things. One is my own struggle when people refer to me as an activist filmmaker. I have not been able to embrace the word ‘activist’ yet. What I am doing, I hope that it can help people. But I feel like if I am only an activist filmmaker, then only other activists will watch the films.
HK: That’s the problem.
ITA: There are people in America who need to see “Hibakusha: At the End of the World,” but the people who need to see this film are not going to seek it out. The people who do seek it out already know there is a problem. I feel this is true for my films as well.
HK: I’ve been thinking about the same thing for a long time. If people think, “Oh, this is my story” or “He is like me,” it will make people interested in seeing this kind of film. The people who are in my new film are very, very ordinary people. They are not activists. The only thing in their mind is “We need to protect children.”
ITA: In your films, you often go to different places and you make connections. When you edit, you don’t give the audience any chance to adjust: We’re in Iraq and now we’re in Hanford, and in Hanford you’ve brought someone with you from Hiroshima. In your new film, is it only filmed in Fukushima or did you go to other places?
HK: The film [“Little Voices from Fukushima”] is about mothers who want to protect their children from radiation exposure, which has occurred in Fukushima. And the other place is Belarus. So I combined two places in one film. I expect a kind of chemical reaction.
ITA: Among the audience?
HK: Yes. After you watch the film. This is a 25-year delay — 1986 and 2011. Twenty-five years separate Fukushima and Belarus.
ITA: I remember now what I was going to ask you. In this world of documentary film in Japan, and especially films that deal with nuclear issues, you are quite well-known.
HK: Because nobody was making these films.
ITA: How does that affect your ability to make another film? When I went somewhere while I was making “A2-B-C,” for example, people didn’t know who I was. It was easy. Now if I go back to make another film: “Ah, you’re the guy that made ‘A2-B-C’. ” You made “Hibakusha,” you made “Rokkasho Rhapsody.”
HK: For “Rokkasho Rhapsody,” Madarame-san [Haruki Madarame] is in it.
ITA: He’s the geneticist, or the University of Tokyo professor.
HK: And also the head of the [now-defunct] Nuclear [Safety] Committee in Japan. So he doesn’t know me. He just thought I was a small woman bringing a small camera. He could speak freely. But now the [trade ministry]—
ITA: Know who you are.
HK: They hate me.
ITA: Because you got some cultural funding from the Japanese government to make your films.
HK: That’s why they were angry. Later, when my film got famous, then they thought, “This film got a grant from the government? Who gave it?” I guess they were angry with the ministry of culture. Since then, I can’t get this kind of grant. People develop an image about you. It’s difficult.
ITA: Interesting. We were just talking about professor Madarame. He says something like—
HK: “It’s money.”
ITA: Exactly. He says, “Regardless of whether the path we are on is the right one, this is the path that we have chosen. And it all comes down to money.”
HK: Documentary film production in Japan is not easy. Mass media is taking over whole fields and people believe what mass media says, even after March 11. So we are making a smaller type of media. But this media only can tell the things that mass media doesn’t talk about. That’s why I think it’s important.
Ian Thomas Ash is currently touring in Japan and abroad to support his latest film “-1287,” about a late friend’s terminal cancer. He is also in production for two feature documentary films: The first is about a rarely explored niche in Japan’s sex industry; the other is the third installment in his series about Fukushima. More information on his films can be found at www.documentingian.com.
Hitomi Kamanaka’s most recent documentary “Little Voices from Fukushima” is now showing in theaters (www.kamanaka.com/canon). A screening with English subtitles will be at 10:45 a.m. on 20 May at Uplink in Shibuya, Tokyo (www.uplink.co.jp).
Special thanks to Dreux Richard. Your comments and story ideas: community@japantimes.co.jp
Minister of Health and Welfare Chiang Been-huang yesterday said that Taiwan is within its rights to tighten regulations on imported Japanese foodstuffs.
Japan’s WTO case a bad recipe: officials
Amid reports that Japan could challenge Taiwan’s decision to tighten regulations on imported Japanese foodstuffs at the WTO, Minister of Health and Welfare Chiang Been-huang （蔣丙煌） yesterday said that Taiwan is within its rights to take such an action.
“The new measure will be enforced as scheduled [tomorrow]. Even if Japan plans to file a case with the WTO, our action will stand up to scrutiny,” Chiang said.
“The ministry will continue to communicate with Japan and help it understand why it was necessary to tighten regulations,” he said, adding that the measures “will benefit both sides.”
The new measures were adopted after it was discovered in March that food items from five Japanese prefectures from which imports are banned had made their way into Taiwan with the help of false labels, Chiang said.
Food products from Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba prefectures have been banned in Taiwan since those areas were suspected of radiation contamination the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011.
Under the new laws, importers of Japanese food products would be required to present certificates of origin to prove that the items did not originate in the five prefectures.
For imports such as tea, baby food, and dairy and aquatic products, radiation inspection certificates are also to be required.
How measures are enforced remains to be seen, as the Food and Drug Administration （FDA） had not received any certificates of origin issued by official Japanese agencies or authorized bodies as of yesterday, Chiang said.
Japan has also not supplied a list of its inspection organizations, he said.
The FDA has inspected more than 8,000 shipments of Japanese food so far this year, agency statistics showed.
If related documents are not presented before tomorrow, items such as tea from Shizuoka and some aquatic and dairy products would not be allowed into Taiwan, officials said.
Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Yoshimasa Hayashi on Tuesday said that Japan has demanded that Taiwan retract its decision, but has yet to see any tangible progress, and that Japan has not ruled out taking the case to the WTO.
Association of East Asian Relations chairman Lee Chia-chin （李嘉進） said that he would advise Japan not to threaten to take the case to the WTO.
With such friendly bilateral relations between the two sides, he said: “We can talk about everything, but taking the case to the WTO could sour bilateral ties.”
Lee added that Taiwan is a major consumer of Japanese agricultural products and can certainly ask Japan to heed its food safety concerns.
“Once Japan has fully investigated the false labeling, Taiwan will certainly feel less pressure to impose stricter regulations,” Lee said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that Takeo Hiranuma, a senior Japanese lawmaker and head of the Japan-Republic of China Diet Members’ Consultative Council, recently canceled a scheduled visit to Taiwan, but said that the move was not related to conflict over the planned regulations.
Ministry spokesperson Anna Kao （高安） said that Hiranuma postponed his planned visit because he was concerned that Typhoon Noul might cause travel disruptions on his way home.
Kao made the remarks in response to a report by the Chinese-language Liberty Times （the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper） yesterday saying that Hiranuma was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, but that he canceled the trip after he was told by the ministry that his visit would not change the government’s decision to implement the rules this week.（Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan）
Like a canary in a coalmine, birds are a good indicator of the quality of an environment. A study has found that Fukushima prefecture has not been friendly to our feathered friends since that fateful day four years ago, and things are not getting better.
Using animals as environmental indicators is not a new idea, particularly when it involves studying the after effects of radiation. The flora and fauna in and around the site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster have been studied for years.
Now it is Fukushima’s turn to be studied. Starting a few months after March 11, 2011, when the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant disaster occurred, University of South Carolina biologist Tim Mousseau and his colleagues have been monitoring the avian population in and around the Fukushima plant.
Lasting three years, and studying the populations of bird species at over 400 sites around Fukushima, Dr. Mousseau’s team found that half the populations of 57 species of birds had suffered declines. But what they discovered is very interesting. The populations have continued to decline, even though the radiation threat has dropped.
“There are dramatic reductions in the number of birds that should be there based on the overall patterns,” Mousseau told CBS News. “In terms of barn swallows in Fukushima, there had been hundreds if not thousands in many of these towns where we were working. Now we are seeing a few dozen of them left. It’s just an enormous decline.”
Not only have barn swallows been hit hard, but so have the great reed warbler, Japanese bush warbler, and the meadow bunting. Researchers are working to pinpoint the exact cause of the continuing decline.
Earlier field work by Dr. Mousseau showed the nuclear disaster had severe effects on a wide range of species, causing genetic damage to butterflies, monkeys, and other creatures.
Disputing the results of Mousseau study
In 2000, Robert Baker and Ron Chesser of Texas Tech University published a paper saying the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site had turned into a marvelous “game preserve,” thanks to the absence of humans.
Both men assert that in the long term, biodiversity and the abundance of species at Chernobyl and Fukushima are not being affected by radiation. “Despite our best efforts, post-accident field studies aren’t sufficient to give us a clear picture,” says Chesser. “They offer no good controls because we aren’t working with data from before the accident.”
Mousseau found patches of bleached-white feathers on many of the birds he captured at Fukushima, and this told an important story. “The first time I went to Chernobyl in 2000 to collect birds, 20 percent of the birds [we captured] at one particularly contaminated farm had little patches of white feathers here and there—some large, some small, sometimes in a pattern and other times just irregular,” said Mousseau.
The white patches are believed to be due to radiation-induced oxidative stress. This stress depletes the bird’s reserves of the antioxidants that control the color of feathers and other body parts. It was also found and documented that birds suffered other abnormalities from radiation exposure, including cataracts, tumors, asymmetries, developmental abnormalities, reduced fertility and smaller brain size.
Mousseau thinks the studies at both Chernobyl and Fukushima are evidence of the cumulative effects of prolonged radiation exposure on wildlife at different stages after a nuclear disaster. Jim Smith, the editor and lead author of Chernobyl: Catastrophe and Consequences, says he doesn’t believe the white patches have anything to do with radiation because the levels are considered “low-dose.” He remarks, ” This would mean the white feather patches—and perhaps the overall bird declines—are being caused by something other than radiation.”
But Mousseau is sticking to his belief that something is, indeed going on. He says, “The relationship between radiation and numbers started off negative the first summer, but the strength of the relationship has actually increased each year. So now we see this really striking drop-off in numbers of birds as well as numbers of species of birds. So both the biodiversity and the abundance are showing dramatic impacts in these areas with higher radiation levels, even as the levels are declining.”
The question on many people’s minds is this: If radiation isn’t causing the decline in the bird populations at Fukushima, then what is causing the decline?
Dr. Tim Mousseau’s paper was published in the Journal of Ornithology, March 17, 2015, under the title: Cumulative effects of radioactivity from Fukushima on the abundance and biodiversity of birds
福島の鼻血「内部被ばくか」 Nosebleed in Fukushima – Internal Exposure 神戸の医師、学会で発表
After the nuclear accident caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, numerous nosebleed cases in children in the prefecture of Fukushima raised immediate worries.
東日本大震災による原発事故の後、福島県では、子どもを中心に鼻血が出る症状が相次いだ。
As it was shown in the now infamous Manga “Oishinbo”, which was heavily criticized for showing these nosebleeds and was accused of spreading “harmful” rumors, these cases can be attributed to internal exposure by inhaling metal radioactive particles substance that cling on the mucosa of the nose. According to Dr. Goji Hideo, about one in two evacuees from Fukushima are experiencing nosebleeds, sometimes entire families. Sudden nosebleed started to subside after evacuation. Goji sensei graduated at the Kobe University School of Medicine and is the Director of the Higashikanbe clinic (Kobe). He continues to treat survivors and serve as a health counselor for the victims of Fukushima. You can follow some of his seminars and speeches on IWJ.
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