After Susumu Takagi retired, he rented about 3,000 square meters of farmland and converted it into a park called Tatsunokomura (Tatsunoko village) in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, in 2006.
After Susumu Takagi retired, he rented about 3,000 square meters of farmland and converted it into a park called Tatsunokomura (Tatsunoko village) in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, in 2006.
There, the 74-year-old taught children about the outdoors, set up work shops and gave them valuable experiences of surviving in a natural environment. He also provided advice for new parents.
But attendance has dropped sharply at the once-popular park.
Since the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March last year, many parents have refused to let their children play outside, fearing radiation contamination. But parents are also torn because playing outside is considered indispensable for children’s growth.
Kazuko Osato, 51, a homemaker from Sakura, says she also has anxieties about radiation. But she keeps bringing her three children to Tatsunokomura.
“It is not only good for their physical development, but they can also learn various things by gaining experience in unexpected situations in the natural environment,” she said.
But she does acknowledge: “There have been days when only my children are taking part in the programs. Actually, I want them to play with other children.”
Children can take part in the playground’s programs twice a month for a fee of 100 yen (about $1.30) per person.
A total of 167 parents registered their children with the playground before the accident at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. That number has decreased to 10.
Another program that Takagi teaches at Tatsunokomura is caring for babies. Up to 20 parents had taken part in the program with their children before the nuclear accident. The figure has since dropped to four or five, forcing Takagi to reduce the child-care activities from twice a week to once a month.
In June last year, 38-year-old homemaker Momoko Hori, who had taken part in the activities with her two children aged 1 and 4, brought a dosimeter to the park.
The device continued to sound alarms and registered radiation levels higher than 0.23 microsievert per hour, the government’s standard for decontamination.
Hori said she thought, “If the radiation level is left as it is, we cannot play here.”
She asked Takagi to decontaminate the playground. But due to a shortage of funds, he could not clean up the entire area, and instead removed the topsoil in the more popular spots and buried the soil in a corner.
The radiation level declined from around 0.25 microsievert to 0.16 microsievert per hour. But some parents said they would no longer bring their children to Tatsunokomura. Other regulars at the park moved to western Japan, fearing the radiation from Fukushima.
Citizens’ groups trying to promote “playing outside” in the Tokyo metropolitan area face similar problems.
They often invite Hirofumi Harada, a member of the anti-nuclear organization No Nukes Plaza Tokyo, to give lectures at study meetings.
According to Harada, it is necessary for the groups to regularly measure radiation levels and avoid “hot spots,” where radiation levels are relatively high. But he also warns against overreacting.
“Radiation levels in the Tokyo metropolitan area are not so serious as to prohibit children from playing outside,” Harada said. “What people should do are such things as hand-washing, gargling and dressing cuts if they suffer injuries.”
Closer to the crippled nuclear power plant, in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, a large indoor playground opened late last year to let children play without the fear of radioactive contamination.
PEP Kids Koriyama features an athletic field with 30-meter-long tracks, a 70-square-meter sand pit and other playground equipment.
The facility is operated by the Koriyama city government. More than 30,000 people used the free playground during the first three weeks of its operation.
A 28-year-old company employee brought his two children, aged 5 and 6, to PEP Kids Koriyama. He has not allowed his children to play outdoors in the city since the nuclear accident started.
“My children are becoming stressed out. As a result, they are fighting more. We, the parents, have also become irritable,” he said.
Before the indoor playground opened, he sometimes took the children to the Aizu region in western Fukushima Prefecture on weekends and holidays to let them play outside where the radiation levels are relatively low.
In May last year, pediatrician Shintaro Kikuchi, who has urged the Koriyama city government to set up indoor playgrounds, studied weight changes in 33 kindergarten pupils in the city.
He found that 4 and 5 year olds were gaining 1 kilogram less than the average increase of 30 children of the same age before the nuclear accident.
“The causes for the smaller increase are unknown. But there is a possibility that stress and the change of food are having an influence on their growth,” Kikuchi said.
Some children he has examined have become obese due to an increase in snacks consumed. Other children have stiff shoulders because of a lack of physical exercise.
“From the viewpoint of health, I think that the risk of not playing outside is bigger than the risk of radiation,” Kikuchi said.
Back at Tatsunokomura, Takagi is starting to see people trickling back to his park.
Around 9 a.m. on Jan. 14, eight children gathered in the playground for the first time in a long while. A fifth-grade girl of an elementary school, said, “I brought my friends here.”
It was the first activity day this year for Takagi. He taught the children how to make kites and build a bonfire. The children also drew pictures on “washi,” or traditional Japanese paper, and chopped bamboo with small knives.
All eight of the children enthusiastically joined the activities.