IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--A group of researchers and students at Fukushima University are offering a rare chance to see firsthand the problems facing this hard-hit prefecture.
IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--A group of researchers and students at Fukushima University are offering a rare chance to see firsthand the problems facing this hard-hit prefecture.
The “Fukushima-gaku Kochiku Project” (Project to construct Fukushima-gaku studies) gives tours of the area impacted by the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant accident.
Eight people from the Tokyo metropolitan area, including an employee in charge of corporate social responsibility at a major trading company and an official at the central government agency, attended the first excursion of the program on Nov. 16.
Taking a bus from Iwaki in the southern part of the prefecture, the group arrived in the town of Naraha, mostly inside the 20-kilometer restricted zone of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The town’s residents can visit only in the daytime, but are forbidden from living there.
Yuki Morita, a first-year student at Fukushima University and a Naraha native, told the group about his experience as the Fukushima nuclear plant accident unfolded.
“I left home only bringing my pet hamster and study tools with me, assuming I would be able to return in a week or so,” Morita, 19, recalled. “It turned out to be two years.”
Black bags containing radiation-contaminated soil, a result of decontamination work, were seen here and there in town.
Next, the tour visited Yonomori, a neighborhood famous for cherry blossoms, in nearby Tomioka, also in the restricted zone. “Off limit” signs could be seen on barricaded houses.
“Without people living here, the town is losing its color,” said Toshiyuki Kanno, a town official acting as tour guide.
He is especially upset over the infestation of rats, including ones measuring 30 centimeters, he said.
“The Fukushima crisis has yet to end, but the Japanese people are losing interest in the accident,” Kanno, 56, said. “To show the present status firsthand is a way to return our thanks for supporting us after the disaster.”
After visits to Naraha and Tomioka, participants returned to Iwaki and exchanged opinions and discussed various issues.
“Which is the goal--to have residents return to their hometown or to create a new community?” one participant asked.
“The situation differs community by community,” said another. “What should we start with?”
Struck by the power of what they had just witnessed, it seemed as if the participants were having trouble collecting their thoughts.
Saiko Matsunuma, a 42-year-old employee at a major food manufacturer in Tokyo, has participated in events to support Fukushima evacuees in the Tokyo area.
“I was able to realize the worsening conditions of the vacant houses evacuees had lived in,” Matsunuma said. “I want to utilize what I have seen for support activities from now on.”
A month after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and the nuclear power plant accident, Fukushima University set up the Fukushima Future Center for Regional Revitalization.
The center, run by subsidies from the central government and corporate donations, deals with problems including education for child evacuees; reconstruction of municipalities whose residents are evacuating and community revitalization; and rice planting on an experimental basis in areas where rice growing is limited.
It has 63 researchers, and more than 50 students joined the center in October as supporters.
The center places greater emphasis on aiding the affected area over research.
Hiroshi Kainuma, a sociologist and a member of the center, pointed out, “The issues of the Fukushima nuclear accident-affected areas have become more and more complicated and understanding what the real problems are has become difficult to fathom from outside (the prefecture).”
With more than 1,000 days having passed since the disaster and the onset of the nuclear accident, anxieties are heightened about possible decreases in reconstruction budget and corporate support.
Kainuma said his group launched the excursion as “a system to exchange people and information between the disaster-affected areas and the areas outside Fukushima Prefecture.”
By Fukushima-gaku studies, Kainuma does not simply mean studies on reconstruction.
It aims at “consistently compiling intelligence that is born through reconstruction of Fukushima and presenting to society universal values,” according to Kainuma.
Building on the uniqueness of the nuclear plant accident, the study aims to understand the accident-afflicted area as a site where problems common to society had existed since pre-accident days.
To that end, Kainuma said, the group wants to build a sustainable study program.
The group will hold excursions on an irregular basis, as well as carry out interviews with 2,000 Fukushima residents.
For information about the excursions, send an e-mail to (