MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima Prefecture--Poet Jotaro Wakamatsu has long waged a campaign against nuclear power, but at first he remained silent, not writing a single poem during the first month after the outbreak of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima Prefecture--Poet Jotaro Wakamatsu has long waged a campaign against nuclear power, but at first he remained silent, not writing a single poem during the first month after the outbreak of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
When Wakamatsu eventually started writing again, he asked himself what he should write, and has never stopped asking this question.
The resident of this city, not far from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, has published "Waga Daichi yo, Aa" (Alas, our Earth), his first book of poetry after the outbreak of the nuclear accident triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
The book brings together 33 poems the 79-year-old has crafted over the past three and a half years.
Part of the opening poem “Mieru Saiyaku, Mienai Saiyaku” (Visible disaster and invisible disaster) starts with dozens of district names in Minami-Soma, from north to south, as well as the history and people's lives each place name connotes: “Minami-Yunoki, Yasawaura, Kita-Yakata, Kita-Ebi …”
A place name is no mere noun or sign, but rather "carries traces of a variety of lives of the people who lived there," the poem says.
The nuclear disaster deprived residents of their normal lives and hampered search efforts for people missing due to the tsunami.
The poem goes on to point the finger at nuclear power generation for its "inhuman nature," reading, "Many of them may have died/ and are likely left under dirt and debris .../ without being laid to rest."
Wakamatsu insists on using the terms "nuclear disaster" and "nuclear power plant" in his works.
"I can't accept the expression 'nuclear power plant accident' when it was a hazard caused by humans," he said. "Using the term nuclear energy is dubious, suggesting it is for peaceful purposes, despite being the same nuclear fuel cycle (used to create plutonium for bombs)."
Wakamatsu has been concerned about nuclear power plants for many years. In May 1994, eight years after the Chernobyl accident, the poet visited Pripyat in the Ukraine. Many people who live within 30 kilometers of the nuclear power plant were forced to relocate, with fences and gates separating the areas inside and outside of the evacuation zone.
At the time he could not help but wonder whether the same tragedy could befall Fukushima.
Immediately upon returning home, he wrote “Kami Kakushi Sareta Machi” (The town that was spirited away).
As the poem names places that were to be stricken by the Fukushima nuclear crisis, it was considered prophetic following the disaster.
Noted singer and songwriter Tokiko Kato even put the words to music. However, Wakamatsu was bemused by the sudden attention. "My poems are far from prophecy," he said.
Shortly after the crisis started, a number of poems and songs praying for reconstruction were created in Fukushima. However, Wakamatsu did not--or felt unable to--write poems for many weeks.
He said he was overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness and a sense of loss that no one was able to curb nuclear power generation. He felt regret, wishing his prediction had been wrong, and
He finally picked up a pen and started writing poems to deal with the unacceptable event. One poem titled "Mark of a human being" reads, "Imagine, after a certain point, that making an agricultural product becomes impossible/ That keeping livestock is prohibited even though it's there/ And fishing is a no-no, even though fish are there." The poem continues, "When this happens, I'm afraid humans are no longer human anymore."
The poems in Wakamatsu's collection can be read as a record of lost lives, as well as an epic poetry of wrath.
"I ask myself whether they're really poems," he said. "But whatever they are, I want to convey a message to my contemporaries that ordinary lives have been uprooted."