An upcoming documentary film depicts the ongoing burden for evacuees from a village situated close to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
An upcoming documentary film depicts the ongoing burden for evacuees from a village situated close to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
"Wasurenai Fukushima" (We'll never forget Fukushima) profiles the residents of the village of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, which was evacuated in the wake of the March 2011 nuclear disaster.
"I couldn't return even if I wanted to, until I could grow rice and vegetables like before," said one woman interviewed.
The film will premiere March 2 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography Hall in Meguro Ward. It will then play to audiences in Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya and elsewhere.
The movie's director, 54-year-old Hiroshi Shinomiya, is a native of Sendai who now lives with his family in Tokyo. When the quake and tsunami struck, he dropped the film he was working on at the time and set off from the capital, arriving in his hometown in late March. From there he went to Iwate, followed by Miyagi and Fukushima, filming the destruction wrought by the tsunami.
At first he thought the movie would focus on the tsunami.
But in April, Shinomiya learned that the entire village of Iitate, 40 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 plant, had been ordered to evacuate on account of the airborne contamination falling there.
He recalls the eerie sight of a deserted farming village, which were it not for the lack of life, might otherwise have been Japan's most beautiful village.
"Whatever became of the people who left?" he wondered.
Shinomiya spent the next four months in Fukushima Prefecture, meeting evacuees and documenting their lives. He then returned to Tokyo, but kept visiting the region through 2012, equipped as always with his camera.
One of the people he met was a construction worker who lives with his Filipino wife, their three children and his mother. Before the evacuation, the six had been leading a halfway self-sufficient lifestyle in the mountains.
Then everything changed. His mother's health declined in the cramped temporary housing in an unfamiliar area; his weary wife said she wanted to return to the Philippines.
Radioactive contamination meant forestry, agriculture and dairy farming are now restricted in Iitate. And residents deprived of income are living in limbo.
And yet, until the very last minute, life in the village continued as normal: even as preparations were under way for evacuation, children continued to play outside.
When the disaster struck, Shinomiya too became a migrant. He, his wife and three children fled Tokyo for Okayama Prefecture for about five days, fearing that radiation would reach the nation's capital.
"We thought we should evacuate simply because we didn't know what the outcome would be," he said.
Now the fields around Iitate are reportedly overgrown with weeds and the village has an air of dereliction.
"We must not forget the fact that evacuees have been robbed of their beautiful, rich lives," said Shinomiya. "I hope people will watch the film, think about this, and do what they can to help."