Filmmaker reveals enduring cost of Fukushima contamination

An upcoming documentary explores Japan's nuclear crisis through the eyes of an artist who exposes photographic paper to polluted soil and finds it stained with radiation.

It is a physical manifestation of the damage done, and the movie, "Cpm-703," tries to show the size of the problem for residents and farmers in affected areas. In Fukushima Prefecture alone, an estimated 160,000 people are still living in temporary accommodation.

The film tells the story of Fukushima-born Shimpei Takeda, who spent 10 years working as a visual artist in New York and returned to his native district after the events of March 11, 2011.

It shows him trying to come to terms with what happened and making pictures with a signature technique: He lays photosensitive materials on farmland contaminated by fallout or on contaminated topsoil removed by clean-up workers.

The beautiful pictures that result are reminiscent of a starry night sky. Takeda calls them "Trace."

His work led to a successful exhibition last year in Fukushima.

And he caught the eye of U.S. filmmaker Jake Price, who lived in Tohoku for a year after the tsunami struck.

Price had himself recorded the disaster's impact using unconventional methods. His "Unknown Spring," an online photography project, won plaudits as an "interactive" documentary. But he felt that people in the affected areas were still isolated and wanted to tell a personal story about the aftermath.

"It was gnawing at me to cover Fukushima and what was happening," he said. "What really hooked me about Shimpei was his personal connection to the land. I think if it was just somebody doing an amazing technique I probably wouldn't have embarked on the film."

The movie's title, "Cpm-703," refers to the abbreviation of "counts per minute" and 703 million years, the half-life of the uranium-235 isotope.

But even as Price followed Takeda trying to document the extent of the physical damage, Price was astonished to meet people who had refused to abandon their homeland.

"There are people within the zone who would just rather die on their land. One of the main characters in my film, he was evacuated for about a month, and he couldn't take it anymore. He thought that being away from his land was killing him, so he decided that he would rather die on his land sooner, with the risk of cancer, and be a part of his heritage, than die somewhere faraway and not have any connections."

Although both men are strong advocates for alternatives to nuclear power, they found themselves drawn to reflect on the region's dying culture rather than attend anti-nuclear protests. Price felt that this loss of heritage was missing from coverage by mainstream media outlets.

"I think the nuclear issue in the film is actually almost secondary," he said. "It's a very human film. We're looking at families never coming back there, and mainly elderly people just living out their last days. It's tremendously sad. And thousands of years of history and tradition effectively end with this generation.

"That was a global trend already. Young people were not farming, and they want the modern conveniences. It's the same in China, India, Africa, so many places that I've been. The difference is that the tsunami expedited that trend, so instead of 30 years it took one day."

The film was independently funded, firstly through Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website, and subsequently through other fund-raising efforts. It will be finished by the end of the year and submitted to various major film festivals.

But regardless of the distribution it achieves, Price's goals remain clear.

"Ultimately, the purpose is really to shine a spotlight on Fukushima--I don't want those people to feel they've been left alone. And I do hope the film will spark a more humane coverage of what's going on. This is not over by a long shot."

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The author is in Japan on a Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation scholarship. He is currently a journalism intern with The Asahi Shimbun AJW.