Bontaro Dokuyama’s ‘Even After
1,000 Years’
Jason Waite
November 2023
Issue 9TitleBontaro Dokuyama’s ‘Even After 1,000 Years’
Author(s)Jason Waite
Article DOI
doi.org/10.31452/bcj9.waite.dokuyamaUrl
https://contemporary.burlington.org.uk/journal/journal/bontarodokuyamas-even-after-1000-years
ISSN
2631-5661
Cite asJason Waite: ‘Bontaro Dokuyama’s ‘Even After 1,000 Years’’, Burlington
Contemporary Issue 9 (November 2023),
doi.org/10.31452/bcj9.waite.dokuyama
About the author(s)is a curator, researcher and cultural worker focused on forms of practiceproducing agency. He has recently been working in sites of crisis amid the
detritus of capitalism, looking for tools and radical imaginaries for different
ways of living and working together. He is part of the collective Don‘t Follow
the Wind, who curate an ongoing project inside the uninhabited Fukushimaexclusion zone. Waite has co-curated The Real Thing? at Palais de Tokyo,
Paris; Chim↑Pom: Threat of Peace at Art in General, New York; and Adelita
Husni-Bey: White Paper: The Law by at Casco Art Institute, Utrecht. He
holds a PhD in Contemporary Art History and Theory from the University of
Oxford, an MA in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, London, and was a
Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American
Art Independent Study Program. He is the editor of Art Review Oxford andco-editor of Don‘t Follow the Wind (2021).

Cover image:Bontaro Dokuyama’s ‘Even After
1,000 Years’by Jason Waite • November 2023 • Journal article

Introduction
There have been a number of artistic responses to the triple
reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power
Station, owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO),
which began on 11th March 2011. These include an ongoing, largely
invisible exhibition in the Fukushima exclusion zone by thecollective Don’t Follow the Wind; Les Nucléaires et les Choses(2019), a video installation by Hikaru Fujii (b.1976) that examines
the collections and documents left behind in archives andmuseums in what has been designated the ‘difficult-to-returnzones’; and the work of the artist Kota Takeuchi (b.1982), who
acquired a job as a clean-up labourer at the plant and produced anumber of projects on the area’s history and its changing present.1
However, there are only a handful of artists born and raised in
Fukushima who have exhibited outside of the area, such as the
documentary photographer Shuji Akagi (b.1967) and the painterMiki Momma (b.1981). This intrinsic perspective is important, as
the sociologist Hiroshi Kainuma (who was born in Iwaki, Fukushima)states: ‘there is always a perception gap between those who lookout from and those who look into any given place’.2

FIG. 1 Over There, by Bontaro Dokuyama. 2015. Video, photography,masks, watercolour and newspaper, dimensions variable. (Courtesy theartist).

3

FIG. 2 LInCCAi-chan, by Bontaro Dokuyama. 2014. Video installation,

duration 7 minutes 11 seconds. (Courtesy the artist; photograph Kenji
Morita).

This article addresses the practice of the Fukushima-born artist
Bontaro Dokuyama (b.1984), who traces experiences of thedisaster in his work. In Over There FIG. 1, for example, he exploredthe mass displacement of people from their homes, working withresidents living in temporary housing, who designed masks fromcut up pages of a local newspaper. The residents – most of whomwere elderly – each donned their mask and were filmed andphotographed by the artist pointing in the direction of their home
town. In LInCCAi-chan FIG. 2, the artist examined the economies
that were bolstered in the wake of the disaster, in particular thesex shops of Iwaki. Striking a parallel with the commodification ofpeople, Dokuyama visited the factory of a popular children’s dollcalled Licca-chan, adopting her as a tool for his own healing.3 In the
4th branch, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry FIG. 3 FIG. 4,
the artist collaborated with the anti-nuclear protest movementthat had long-been established in tents outside of the thegovernment building in Kasumigaseki. Dokuyama’s work helps toshed light on the temporality of the nuclear disaster, as
experienced by an artist whose knowledge of the land traverses
the period before and the contaminated fallout afterwards. This
article focuses on the documented performance Even After 1,000
Years (2015), and on the way it explores the multiple temporalities
at work in the low-level irradiated landscape surrounding thenuclear power plant.
The space–time matrix of contamination is defined by the invisible
presence of radiation on the land. Due to differing radioactive halflives – the length of time it takes for half the radioactive atoms ofa radionuclide to decay – this is durational in nature. Analysing
Even After 1,000 Years, which was made four years after the4nuclear accident, this article will explore the temporal schism of
the disaster through the lives of local residents. As of 2023 many
locals surrounding the plant have been forcibly evacuated, or – asis the case with Dokuyama’s family – evacuated for a short period,
before returning to their homes in the low-level irradiatedlandscape, which is outside of the mandatory evacuation zone.
There have been multiple reports on the views of local residents
who used to live in areas surrounding the power station, who
continue to be displaced by the fallout or who have returned toirradiated areas, with some later surveys shifting towards anassessment of what it means to have lived in the area in the ten
years since the disaster.4 This article will demonstrate that Even
After 1,000 Years helps to convey the residents’ sentiment in the
period before and immediately after the disaster. The work also
addresses one of the most important ‘invisible’ effects of thenuclear disaster on the inhabitants: the mental health damage
among the local population, one of its most enduring legacies.

FIG. 3 The 4th branch, Ministry and Economy, Trade and Industry, byBontaro Dokuyama. 2016. Video installation, duration 18 minutes 37
seconds. (Courtesy the artist; photograph Kenji Morita).

Among the artists who have responded to the nuclear disaster,Dokuyama has the unique perspective of a deeper relationship withthe land. The effects of the disaster are not abstract to him, as his
family lives constantly with the potential threat of radiation. The
present author argues that this has produced an increased
sensitivity to the landscape, and its relationship to the bodythrough the recognition of its capacity to cause damage. Thus,
Dokuyama’s work on Fukushima has a distinctive character thatmeshes a longer temporality with the landscape and the body torepair how the lived environment is understood.
The disaster was also formative to Dokuyama’s decision to become5an artist. Although he grew up in proximity to the nuclear power
plant, he was living in Tokyo in 2011, working as an interior
designer. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, he felt thatthe voices of the inhabitants of Fukushima were not being heard in
the media and their experiences were under-represented in wider
culture. Reflecting on the communicative capacity of his
occupation at that time, Dokuyama noted that ‘a building interior
cannot convey the voices of the Fukushima people to the outside’,and decided to quit his job to become an artist.5 It is clear from hisstatement that even though he was based in Tokyo, he strongly
identified with his hometown and its residents. Moreover, his turnto a different kind of creative practice was predicated on his belief
in the capacity of art to convey the experience of what it means tobe from Fukushima.

FIG. 4 The 4th branch, Ministry and Economy, Trade and Industry, byBontaro Dokuyama. 2016. Video installation, duration 18 minutes 37
seconds. (Courtesy the artist; photograph Kenji Morita).

Given the lasting nature of the nuclear disaster, the aftermath ofwhich is still ongoing, for Dokuyama, art could not be undertaken ina casual or temporary way. He committed himself to becoming an
artist full-time and began studying Buddhist and still-life painting.
In 2013 he joined the alternative art school Bigakkō, Tokyo, where
he studied under Ryuta Ushiro of the Chim↑Pom collective.
Dokuyama became part of Tensai High School!!!!, a group of
Ushiro’s students, along with the artist duo Kyun-Chome. It washere that he experimented with expanded forms of artmaking, suchas performance, video and installation, which have come to be
central to his practice. Dokuyama’s continuing commitment to art
also speaks to the importance of maintaining the position of being
an artist in order to communicate the changing effects of theradioactive fallout over time. His desire to share the voices andexperiences of the people from Fukushima has taken shape both in6his collaborations with fellow residents and through performancethat involves the deployment of his own body and voice, as in thecase of Even After 1,000 Years.

Is this sky the real sky?
The documented performance Even After 1,000 Years took place
not far from Dokuyama’s family home in Fukushima, atop thedormant volcano of Mount Adatara. It is a site made famous by theavant-garde artist Chieko Naganuma (1886–1938), who was alsoborn nearby. On the mountain apex is a carved wooden post with
the inscription ‘This sky is the real sky’, which is attributed to her
in a poem written in 1928 by her husband, Kōtarō Takamura (1883–
1956). In the performance, Dokuyama reads the inscription aloud inthe pouring rain, declaring that this is indeed the real sky FIG. 5 andproclaiming that all other skies are fake. He then vacillates, asking
Naganuma whether this is really the true sky that she loved. The
title of the work comes from a line in another poem by Takamura,about a posthumous sculpture he made of Naganuma, which issituated in Tohoku, at the edge of Lake Towada. The poem speaksof the conditions that the sculpture must endure, being exposed tothe open air and the harsh northern elements.
On Mount Adatara low-level radiation from the nuclear fallout
prevails. Fukushima has a long history of extractivism andaccidents prior to the 2011 meltdown, and Mount Adatara is no
exception. The summit crater was the site of a large-scale sulphur
mine and in 1900 an eruption killed over eighty workers.6 In Even
After 1,000 Years the mountaintop is shown littered with broken
rocks, among which Dokuyama stands. It is unclear whether thisdebris is related to the eruption however; given the context of thesite, it is not difficult to interpret the rocks as an evocation of thehistory of extractivism in Fukushima. Thus, one can understandthe setting as rife with mining collateral and low-level radiation:
two by-products of the catastrophic condition in Fukushima.

7

FIG. 5 Still from Even After 1,000 Years, by Bontaro Dokuyama. 2015.

Video, duration 2 minutes 32 seconds. (Courtesy the artist).

Much has been written about the cultural and political significanceof landscape. For the purposes of this article, W.J.T. Mitchell’s
writings are most instructive, in his focus on not just whatlandscape reveals but also what it obscures. He understands
landscape not as a noun but as a verb akin to a ‘cultural practice’.7
For Mitchell a landscape is more than a signifier of power relations.
Rather, he positions it as a ‘cultural media’ with the role ofnaturalising ‘cultural and social construction’, which consequently
produces an ‘artificial world’ that is received as ‘given’.8 Moreover,for Mitchell, the landscape always exists in relation to the humanfigure; whether the figure is present in it or viewing it from afar,
the landscape is an anthropogenic formation.9 And yet, it often
obscures this reality by appearing as it always has. Applying thisunderstanding, what can one see on Mount Adatara in Dokuyama’s
work? The site has clear evidence of human intervention in theform of a large wooden marker. However, the trees, grass andshrubs that surround the clearing are dwarfed by the artist andthe marker FIG. 6. It is not clear whether this constitutes a higher
altitude wilderness of low-level growth or whether the foliage isindeed smaller as the result of recent growth in wake of humancaused destruction. This ambiguity can be understood as a
substantiation of Mitchell’s description of landscape as a cloaking
mechanism for the history and present of a place.
Dokuyama’s performance questions whether the surrounding
landscape is what it appears to be. In the opening line of
Takamura’s poem, Chieko says ‘there’s no sky in Tokyo’, instead
she wants ‘to see the real sky’, the blue sky ‘high above Mount
Adatara’.10 Takamura titled the poem ‘Talking like a child’, whichappears to allude to a bemusement or bewilderment at his wife’s
statement, delivered while looking up at the sky in Tokyo. At thesame time, the poem was written in the early twentieth century,
when the burgeoning metropolis of Tokyo, the centre of8extractivism, had one of the most polluted atmospheres on earth.
The city was ensconced in grey skies, caused by the plentiful
smokestacks of heavy industry.11 The sharp contrast of thisdichotomy – between the industrially choked city sky and theimagined idyllic rural atmosphere – might not have been so evident
to the Tokyo-born Takamura. These factories were burning coal,much of which would have come from Fukushima on the newrailways. This accelerated not only the extraction of resources but
also the arrival of people, including Naganuma, who took the train
in 1920 as part of this early migration. Almost a hundred years
later, Dokuyama followed in her footsteps, continuing the
migration of the prefectures’ youth to the metropolis.
The contrast of skies presented in Takamura’s poem is contested
in Dokuyama’s performance, in part due to the stormy conditions.
Instead of undertaking his performance on a clear day with a viewof the surrounding area, Dokuyama places himself in the midst of arainstorm. Footage of the artist, as he struggles to complete thework, complicates any nostalgic view of an idyllic environment. It is
his figure in the storm that not only disrupts the site, but also, thepresent author contends, plays an important role in gesturing
towards the new conditions of recent irradiation of the landscape,which is pervasive but invisible. Dokuyama’s performance sets up aparallel between the historical, polluted skies of Tokyo and thepresent-day one over Mount Adatara. Thus, the artist’squestioning of the sky brings the nuclear fallout to the foreground.

FIG. 6 Still from Even After 1,000 Years, by Bontaro Dokuyama. 2015.

Video, duration 2 minutes 32 seconds. (Courtesy the artist).

By calling into question the ‘realness’ of the site, and highlighting
its cultural binds with Tokyo through the figure of Naganuma,
Dokuyama undoes the obscuring effects that Mitchell sees as
intrinsic to landscape. As such, the landscape in Dokuyama’s work
is not just seen through the present, but also through another’s
past relationship to it. This helps to break down the presumption

9

that the landscape, in the words of Mitchell, is ‘given’.12 This dual
temporality opens the possibility of the site having been different
in the past. In this way, it not only refracts time but also space. By
evoking early industrial Tokyo and overlaying it on the volcano,Dokuyama demonstrates the deep historical relationship between
the two and how they have affected one another: firstly, inconnection to the mining industry, and secondly, from the nuclear
fallout after the TEPCO plant disaster, both part of extractivist
industries to service Tokyo’s development. This relationshipbetween the city of Tokyo and the landscape of Fukushima is alsopart of Dokuyama’s life and artistic identity.

FIG. 7 Still from Innocent Tale of the Sky, by Bontaro Dokuyama. 2019.

Video, 3 minutes 3 seconds. (Courtesy the artist).

In 2019 Dokuyama created a follow-up, companion work to Even
After 1,000 Years, titled Innocent Tale of the Sky FIG. 7. Here, anactor yells up to the sky in Tokyo, rather than in the rurallandscape of Fukushima. Filmed on various construction sites forthe 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, it shows a man pacing in front of
cranes and lorries transporting building materials. The man isagitated, shouting angrily, with evident irony: ‘Could you build me
more buildings?’ and ‘I want to see the sky full!’. Both documented
performances were exhibited in the group show Plans for TOKYO
2019 at Gallery aM, Musashino Art University, continuing
Dokyuama’s interest in the connection between the very different
sites of Tokyo and Fukushima.

Low-level radiation
While studying art at Bigakkō, Dokuyama met the artist Sachiko
Kazama (b.1972), who decided that Dokuyama’s birth name was too
ordinary – not fit for an artist – and so gave him his present nom
d’artiste. 13 Dokuyama means ‘poison mountain’, a reference to thefact that it was the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima that propelled
Dokuyama to become an artist. The performance atop Mount

10

Adatara can be seen as him embodying and enacting this new
identity. The name can also be seen as a reference to thecontaminated landscape in the performance. The radioactivity inthe area – caused by fellow humans – is a burden that he carries
with this moniker. Yet at the same time, the name also points to
the geological figure of the mountain. There is, therefore, aparadox in the name Dokuyama, which signifies both thecontamination and the land, but does not figure the artist’s
relation to either. Rather, the ‘poison mountain’ can be read as theground on which he and his practice struggle.
However, this was not just a symbolic enactment of his artistic
identity – his presence also embodies the ‘poison’ of low-level
radiation on the mountain. The performance on Mounta Adatara
has the potential to leave traces by altering his DNA. Stochastic
effects are the possible outcome of any radiation exposure, but
although there have been studies that show the increase in certain
types of cancer caused by low-level radiation, a recent review on
the effects of the Fukushima disaster by the United National
Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation found that
it would be difficult to discern a population-wide impact as a resultof the low-level radiation experienced in the area.14 Therefore,
while the stochastic effect is omnipresent, it is doubtful that there
would be health impacts for Dokuyama, especially from a short
exposure. Yet, by situating his own body in the prefecture’s
historical location, the performance highlights the potential risks
for himself and his family.
Being in low-level radiation every day produces the possibility –albeit remote – of one photon of energy from the radionuclide
altering a cell, which later could cause a cancerous growthafflicting the body or even a genetic alteration with effects thatcan span generations. This threat occurs every moment inside anirradiated landscape and, in the present author’s experience, canchange the perception of time.15 The self-awareness of being in thislocation can engender a nebulous anxiety, as it is not possible tosee the physical danger. This can induce a hypersensitivity to time,
wherein a short period feels much longer. In addition – as one
second might have repercussions that emerge years, or even
decades, later – there is not a clear understanding of the causality
at work. This can evoke a sensation of non-linear, elastic time. Overlong periods, these sensations can become commonplace, as one
returns to the same places and leaves with no obvious effects.
Thus, the impossibility of knowing the exact consequences frombeing in the low-level irradiated area can, paradoxically, normalise
the experience of these conditions. The threat is parallax innature: in the immediacy of exposure – although its effects might
not become apparent at once – and the long half-lives of theradionuclides, which ensures the landscape will be irradiated for
centuries, or even millennia. It is this temporal dilemma that
Dokuyama and his family inhabit.

11

In his performance, Dokuyama utilises the relationship between his
own body and the weather as a metaphor for the invisible radiationenveloping the landscape. Through this, he not only underscores
the present contaminated state of the mountain and thesurrounding region but also helps to bring us closer tounderstanding the experience of living there. His body, standing on
the mountain drenched in the rain, symbolises the radionuclides
that drench the area and its inhabitants in low-level radiation. It
can, therefore, be understood that Dokuyama’s question iswhether this contemporary atmosphere replete with radionuclides
is indeed the ‘real sky’. Has the irradiated atmosphere of
Fukushima transitioned the idyllic mountain in Naganuma’s poem
into an unreal landscape of nuclear aftermath? If this is the case,then how does the artist convey the experience of inhabiting thisnew landscape?

Weathering deep time
The radioactive elements present in the landscape from thenuclear disaster range from iodine-131 (with a half-life of aroundeight days) to plutonium-239 (with a half-life of approximately
24,100 years). The most prevalent radioactive isotope in theregion is caesium-137, with a half-life of just over thirty years. The
title of Dokuyama’s performance, Even After 1,000 Years, canperhaps be interpreted as an allusion to the temporalities of deeptime that the nuclear disaster evokes. This concept incorporates
vastly larger scales of time that extend beyond humanity and also
includes the social, political and technological entanglement of
humans as a presence that has exerted a planetary force.
Appealing to deep time might signify Dokuyama’s emotional
relationship to the temporal as it was in 2015, four years after thedisaster, with no indication of an end point. This sense of
exhaustion from enduring the massive upheaval of the Daiichi
Nuclear Power Station disaster, and the subsequent years ofnavigating the uncertainty of living among nuclear fallout, would
certainly take its toll. Indeed, the temporalities of some of theradionuclides mean they will persist for an epic duration, spanninggenerations.
In adopting a line from the poem by Takamura as the title of hiswork, Dokuyama further overlaps the life of Naganuma and her
sculptural effigy, which carries forth her memory for future
generations. Thus, it can be seen as not only a reference to alonger temporality, but also what it might mean to endure longterm hardship. While Even After 1,000 Years g estures to an
extensive timespan, it also alludes to the resilience of Fukushima
and its inhabitants and the collective concern that they may becoexisting with radiation for millennia to come.

12

In the performance, the vulnerability of Dokuyama’s body isemphasised by his casual country attire, sporting a T-shirt
emblazoned with an image of Mount Adatara, shorts and sandals,
so that he remains largely exposed to the elements. The artist
struggles with the rain, coughing, squinting and rubbing his face, as
he attempts to talk through the onslaught. Highlighting thedifficulty and its emotional toll, the artist’s physical struggle withthe elements can extend the affective sensation to the viewer.
This partakes in what Sara Ahmed has called the ‘contingency of
pain’, whereby, seeing a distressed body, one connects to it andthe site where the struggle occurs.16 She describes this response
as an alignment between the observer, the struggling body and thesite of the action. In the context of his performance, therefore, it isDokuyama’s very real struggle that brings the location closer tothe viewer, traversing geography and experience.
Dokuyama breaks down the remoteness and alienation of thedurational struggle of coexisting in low-level contamination by
utilising one set of environmental conditions to stand in foranother: a rainstorm for low-level radioactivity. In doing so, theartist can physically demonstrate a struggle with the elements
acted out in real time. The deluge of the rain is overwhelming,
covering his body and inundating his mouth to the point where hecannot speak, and has to halt to spit out the water. This halting
endurance can provide a glimpse into the true experience of theartist and his family in the longue durée of nuclear disaster.

Schizophrenic temporality
The complex experiences relating to living among nuclear fallout
has also contributed to mental illness in the area. Even before theevents of 11th March 2011, studies showed that Fukushimaresidents often grappled with mental illness, but after the disaster
this was exacerbated.17 In addition to a high rate of suicide, there
have been reports of depression, PTSD, chronic anxiety and sociopsychological issues, all of which are prevalent among those
displaced, as well as residents who chose to remain in thesurrounding area.18 Particularly challenging for mental well-being
has been the urgency of the contamination coupled with the long
duration of its existence, along with the forced separation ofresidents from their homes. These more ‘invisible’ effects havealso accounted for a number of deaths attributed directly to the
nuclear disaster, demonstrating its multidimensional impact.19
As demonstrated by the Chernobyl disaster, which started in
1986, schizophrenia spectrum disorders can also develop in
accident survivors.20 Dokuyama highlights this potential
repercussion of the Fukushima nuclear disaster through theperformance’s symbolic location. Mount Adatara is site boundtogether with Naganuma – both through her words, recorded in

13

Takamura’s poetry, and the wooden marker now erected there –but, for many, Naganuma herself is inextricable from her mental
illness. Takamura’s collection Chieko’s Sky (1941) charts theirmarriage, as well as her diagnosis of schizophrenia, for which she
was hospitalised in 1935 until her death three years later, fromtuberculosis, at the age of fifty-two. In recalling Naganuma’s
condition, Dokuyama evokes the distorted sense of time that it canengender. The critical theorist Fredric Jameson – through areading of Jacques Lacan – has written about schizophrenia as abreakdown between the signifier and signified, which undoes the
temporal unity of understanding:
If we are unable to unify the past, present, and futureof the sentence, then we are similarly unable to unify
the past, present, and future of our own biographicalexperience or psychic life. With the breakdown of thesignifying chain, therefore, the schizophrenic is
reduced to an experience of pure material signifiers,or, in other words, a series of pure and unrelatedpresents in time.21
Jameson argues that the temporal experience of schizophrenia is
one of eternal and fragmented presents. Because there is no pastand no expectation of a future, the perception of the present worldcomes with a ‘heightened intensity, bearing a mysterious charge ofaffect’.22 This can certainly be applied to Dokuyama’s performance:a man standing in the rain questioning whether this is the ‘truesky’. Perhaps it is a schizophrenic intensity that Dokuyama
manifests through the immanence of his struggle with the rain.

Conclusion
The disorientation of time that low-level radiation can cause iscentral to Dokuyama’s work. Even After 1,000 Years effectively
conveys the multiple temporalities of nuclear fallout: the long halflives of radionuclides, the pervasive threat to the body in every
moment and the potential changes to human DNA, which could
take years to reveal themselves. The artist’s work is situated inthis entanglement between the past landscape and present
contaminated environment, between deep time and the single
moment that could affect human and non-human life. Instead ofstaying away from the area after the disaster, Dokuyama returned
again and again. The work dwells in this landscape, not simply tomemorialise it or question its changes, but arguably as areparative act. Perhaps he set out to rebuild his relationship tothe changed land and to express – for himself and for those of us
outside of the area – that it is more than a terrain of disaster.
This repair is tangible for Dokuyama and his family, who continue
to live in the area. In their case, low-level radiation is not a14

dislocating force but rather a condition that must be
accommodated. This is not to undermine its potential threat, butrather a heuristic approach to living in such an environment, which
continues to be a daily reality for those in the area. What does thisnew assemblage of landscape and environment mean for our futureentanglement of life on this planet?

Footnotes
1

See N. Hirsch and J. Waite, eds: Don’t Follow the Wind, London 2021.

2

Reiji Yoshida: ‘Fukushima researcher says region still “stigmatized” by 2011 disaster’,The Japan Times (11th March 2016), available at features.japantimes.co.jp/march-11-r
adiation/#part2, accessed 20th November 2023.

3

See Bontaro Dokuyama: artist text for LInCCAi-chan, dokuyama.jp (2014), available
at dokuyama.jp/english, accessed 24th November 2023.

4

See Kyoko Ohba: ‘Report on the basic survey on disaster recovery on eight towns andvillages in Futaba-Gun’, The Experience and Technology of Russia, Ukraine and OtherCIS Countries on Remediation and Restoration of Environments 3–4th February
2012, Tokyo, Nuclear Energy Agency, available at www.oecd-nea.org/rp/meetings/IST
C-STCU/docs/5-feb-fukushima/13%20K_Oba(Japan)_English.pdf, accessed 20th
November 2023; and ‘65% of Fukushima evacuees have no intention of returning
home: survey’, Japan Times (28th November 2020), available at www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/11/28/national/fukushima-evacuees-survey, accessed 20th November
2023.

5

Bontaro Dokuyama, in email correspondence with the author, 30th October 2019.

6

See Akihiko Fujinawa et al.: ‘Reconsideration of the 1900 explosive eruption at
Adatara volcano, northeastern Japan’, Bulletin of the Volcanological Society ofJapan 51 (2006), pp.311–25, doi.org/10.18940/kazan.51.5_311.

7

W.J.T. Mitchell, ed.: Landscape and Power , Chicago 2002, p.2; see also T. Smith:Transformations in Australian Art, Sydney 2002; and K. Karatani: Origins of Modern
Japanese Literature, Durham 1993.

8

Mitchell, op. cit. (note 7), p.1.

9Ibid., p.2.

10

Kōtarō Takamura: ‘Talking like a child’, transl. P. Archer, available at www.paularcher.
net/translations/kotaro_takamura/the_chieko_poems/talking_like_a_child.html,
accessed 20th November 2023.

15

11

J.R. McNeill: Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the World in
the 20th Century, London 2001, p.236.

12

Mitchell, op. cit. (note 7), p.2.

13

The artist prefers that his legal name not be published, Dokuyama, op. cit. (note 5).

14

S. Choudhary: ‘Deterministic and stochastic effects of radiation’, Cancer Therapy &Oncology International Journal 12, no.2 (2018), doi.org/10.19080/CTOIJ.2018.12.5558
34; K. Suzuki and S. Yamashita: ‘Low-dose radiation exposure and carcinogenesis’,
Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology 42 (2012), pp.563–68, doi.org/10.1093/jjco/hys
078; K. Leuraud et al.: ‘Ionising radiation and risk of death from leukaemia andlymphoma in radiation-monitored workers (INWORKS): an international çohort
study’, The Lancet Haematology 2, no.7 (July 2015), e276–81, doi.org/10.1016/S2352-3
026(15)00094-0; ‘Levels and effects of radiation exposure due to the accident at the
Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station: implications of information published since
the UNSCEAR 2013 report’, United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects ofAtomic Radiation (2020), available at www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html,
accessed 20th November 2023; and ‘Fukushima Daiichi 2011–2021’, Greenpeace,
available at www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-japan-stateless/2021/03/ff71ab0b-fin
alfukushima2011-2020_web.pdf, accessed 24th November 2023.

15

The present author first visited Fukushima in April 2013 and has returned multiple
times a year from 2013–23.

16

S. Ahmed: The Cultural Politics of Emotion , Edinburgh 2014, p.28.

17

See Masaharu Maeda et al.: ‘Fukushima, mental health and suicide’, Journal of
Epidemiology and Community Health 70 (2016), pp.843–44, doi.org/10.1136/jech-2015-207086; and Masatsugu Orui et al.: ‘Suicide rates in evacuation areas after the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster: a 5-year follow-up study in Fukushima
Prefecture’, Crisis 39 (2018), pp.353–63, doi.org/10.1027/0227-5910/a000509.

18

See Masaharu Maeda and Misari Oe: ‘Mental health consequences and social issues
after the Fukushima disaster’, Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health 29, no.2 (March2017), pp.36S–46S, doi.org/10.1177/1010539516689695.

19

Ibid.

20

See K.N. Loganovsky and T.K. Loganovskaja: ‘Schizophrenia spectrum disorders inpersons exposed to ionizing radiation as a result of the Chernobyl accident’,Schizophrenia Bulletin 26 (2000), pp.751–73, doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.schbul.a0
33492; and idem: ‘1319 – psychiatric legacy of Chernobyl: Fukushima projections’,
European Psychiatry 28, supplement 1 (2013), doi.org/10.1016/S0924-9338(13)763739.

21

F. Jameson: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism , London
2008, p.26.

16

22

Ibid. This temporality of schizophrenia is distinct from Delueze and Guattari’s
account of a ‘schizophrenic cogito’, which they describe as breaking down ‘a semiotic
machine’ constructed through fixed word order meaning. Although Jameson also
describes a breakdown in the signifier, it is highlighting the undoing of a temporalorder that this rupture produces, which is more salient to the argument in thisarticle, see G. Deleuze and F. Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism andSchizophrenia, Minneapolis 1987, pp.83–84.

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