FUKUSHIMA--With newly added captions in English, the touching student drama "Message from Fukushima," delivering a message of hope after the March 11 disaster, is generating interest around the world on the video-sharing website YouTube.
FUKUSHIMA--With newly added captions in English, the touching student drama "Message from Fukushima," delivering a message of hope after the March 11 disaster, is generating interest around the world on the video-sharing website YouTube.
The drama was played in August at the opening ceremony for the 35th All Japan High School Cultural Festival in Fukushima Prefecture, which had high school cultural clubs from throughout Japan participating.
"We incorporated the students' frank and forward-looking words into the drama. I think that those words have been moving for many people," said Akio Endo, 18, a senior at Asaka High School in Koriyama city, who served as head of the organizing committee for the festival.
In the one-hour theatrical performance, local high school students affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent nuclear crisis discuss their thoughts on their way of life, communities and neighbors, and show their determination to work for the reconstruction of their prefecture.
In the drama, one of the students said, "I was born in Fukushima, raised in Fukushima, worked in Fukushima, married in Fukushima. ..."
The line was cited by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in his policy speech in the Diet in September.
Immediately after the five-day cultural festival ended on Aug. 7, the organizing committee put the drama video with no English captions on YouTube. Even in that form, it received hundreds of hits.
To convey the message overseas, the committee attached English captions on the video in late October.
Most of the lines in the drama are the thoughts held by the organizing committee's 49 student members after the March 11 disaster and the start of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The video with English captions is accessible through the cultural festival's official website: (http://www.fukushimasoubun.gr.fks.ed.jp).