Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japanafter the Fukushima Disaster
Brian Earl
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
Course Reader no. 5
2013

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

1

VOLUME EDITORBRIAN EARL
Northwestern University

SERIES EDITORLAURA HEIN
Northwestern University

EDITORIAL BOARD
Mark Caprio
Lonny Carlile
Parks Coble
Sabine Frühstück
Tom Grunfeld
Laura HeinJames Huffman
Jeffrey Kingston
Susan Long
Laura Miller
Mark Ravina
Mark Selden
Stephen Vlastos

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster2

The copyright of all material in this course reader is held by the respective authors, except whereotherwise noted.
The article “Hard Choices: Japan's Post-Fukushima Energy Policy in the 21st Century” by PaulJ. Scalise was originally published in Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response
and Recovery after Japan’s 3/11, pages 140-155, edited by Jeff Kingston and published by
Routledge (2012). Many Taylor & Francis and Routledge books are now available as eBooks at
www.tandf.co.uk and www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. Used with permission.
The volume editor can be contacted at BrianEarl2014@u.northwestern.edu.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster3

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster
Introduction

5

Ran Zwigenberg

7

Ran Zwigenberg, “‘The Coming of a Second Sun’: The 1956 Atoms for
Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan’s Embrace of Nuclear Power,” The
Asia-Pacific Journal 10.6.1, February 6, 2012.
Gavan McCormack

24

Gavan McCormack, “Hubris Punished: Japan as Nuclear State,” The AsiaPacific Journal 9.16.3, April 18, 2011.
ANZAI Ikuro

33

Anzai Ikuro, “An Agenda for Peace Research after 3/11,” The Asia-Pacific
Journal 9.46.1, November 14, 2011.
Aileen Mioko Smith and Mark Selden

42

Aileen Mioko Smith and Mark Selden, “Bringing the Plight of Fukushima
Children to the UN, Washington and the World,” The Asia-Pacific Journal
9.41.4, October 10, 2011.
Makiko SEGAWA

47

Makiko Segawa, “After The Media Has Gone: Fukushima, Suicide and theLegacy of 3.11,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10.19.2, May 7, 2012.
David H. SlaterDavid H. Slater, “Fukushima Women Against Nuclear Power: Finding a
Voice from Tohoku,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, November 9, 2011.

56

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

HIROSE Takashi

4

61

Hirose Takashi, “Japan’s Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster
Syndrome: An Unprecedented Form of Catastrophe,” The Asia-Pacific
Journal 9.39.1, September 26, 2011.
Justin Aukema

66

Justin Aukema, “A Problem for all Humanity: Nagasaki Writer Hayashi
Kyoko Probes the Dangers of Nuclear Energy,” The Asia-Pacific Journal
9.52.3, December 26, 2011.
SON Masayoshi and Andrew DeWit

79

Son Masayoshi and Andrew DeWit, “Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan:
The Energy Future,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 9.38.2, September 19, 2011.
Paul J. Scalise

89

Paul J. Scalise, “Hard Choices: Japan's Post-Fukushima Energy Policy inthe 21st Century,” Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response
and Recovery after Japan’s 3/11, Jeff Kingston, ed., Nissan Monograph
Series (Oxford University), Routledge, London, 2012.
Recommended for Further Reading

106

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster5

Introduction
These articles explore public opinion on nuclear power from a variety ofperspectives, emphasizing the change in attitudes among Japanese following the March 11,2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the subsequent tsunami, and the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear disaster.
Only Japan has experienced four major nuclear disasters, giving the society a uniqueperspective. The first two were the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Then, in 1954, a U.S. Hydrogen Bomb test near Bikini Atoll accidentally contaminatedfishermen aboard the Japanese ship Lucky Dragon 5, resulting in injuries and one death.
Although the number of people directly affected by the Bikini bombing was small, theirplight had a major impact on public opinion at the time. In the 1940s and 50s, then,Japanese public opinion was predominantly anti-nuclear.
The most recent nuclear disaster occurred when the March 11 earthquake severely
damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant; three of the six reactors melted down andhuge amounts of radiation were released into the environment. One significant difference
between Fukushima and the previous disasters is that the atomic power at Fukushima was
generated for peaceful purposes, while the first events were intentionally destructive. Yet
the scale of the disaster was huge; the Fukushima accident is only the second in history,
after Chernobyl, to be rated a 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the highest rating
possible.
This set of articles traces the changes over time of public opinion about nuclear
power, particularly since the Fukushima disaster. For decades, most Japanese werecomfortable with using nuclear power for electricity, although Japan has been firmly antinuclear weapons since 1945. After a slow start in the 1950s, Japan became one of the mostnuclear-energy-dependent nations in the world, and was one of the few places to step up
its nuclear energy investment after the Chernobyl meltdown in the Soviet Union. The
Fukushima disaster, however, has now forced a new reassessment of nuclear power.
There is a significant conflict in Japan between public opinion and government
policy regarding atomic power. In 2011 and 2012, surveys showed huge margins (often
close to 80%) opposing nuclear power.1 However, the “nuclear village”—a term used todenote the combination of forces that support nuclear power—is still a very potent force inJapan, promoting pro-nuclear policies; to this day, the national government, the pronuclear business elite, local governments, major media outlets, and some scholars continue
to work together to support atomic energy.
In contrast to the Japanese pro-nuclear establishment, the writers of these articles
are almost all opponents of nuclear power, some long-standing and some who haverecently changed their minds. Each author asks whether the world should continue to use
this source of energy; they offer a variety of reasons and justifications for their positions,
ranging from humanitarian to economic, but the consensus is that nuclear power should bephased out. The articles provide examples of people changing their minds about nuclear
power and throwing their support to alternative energy policies, usually deriving power1

For one example, see the Asahi Shimbun Regular Public Opinion Poll from 3/13/2012:
http://mansfieldfdn.org/program/research-education-and-communication/asian-opinion-polldatabase/listofpolls/2012-polls/asahi-newspaper-public-opinion-poll-march-poll/Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster6

from renewable sources. The one exception is Paul Scalise, who continues to support
nuclear power even after the Fukushima disaster; he sees it as a reliable and economicallyefficient source of energy.
This course reader begins with a short history of Japan’s decision to adopt nuclear
power by Ran Zwigenberg. He describes the international enthusiasm, particularly in the
United States and Japan, for what was seen as a futuristic source of energy in the 1950s.
Next, Gavan McCormack, who represents the voice of anti-nuclear scholars, introduces thehuge swing in public opinion away from nuclear power following the Fukushimacatastrophe. The articles that follow explore the sweeping changes in opinion among
various groups of Japanese and further develop McCormack’s arguments. ANZAI Ikuro
writes from the perspective of a nuclear specialist and ex-government employee. Aileen
Mioko Smith represents both long-time anti-nuclear activists and victims of the Fukushimadisaster. David Slater discusses the authority that women can mobilize from their roles as
mothers and caretakers. Makiko SEGAWA interviews local residents one year after the
Fukushima disaster, and HIROSE Takashi represents the informed layperson who uses
common sense to see the dangers of nuclear power. Justin Aukema’s analysis of HAYASHI
Kyoko’s writing reveals the thoughts of one of the hibakusha, survivors of the atomic
bombings. Finally, SON Masayoshi comes from a corporate perspective; he speaks withparticular force because he is a former member of the “nuclear village” whose businessinterests lie in access to abundant cheap energy.
The reader concludes with an article from the opposing viewpoint; Paul Scalise
provides an argument in support of nuclear power. He believes the economic benefits ofnuclear power outweigh its risks. He analyzes the current political situation in Japan, andoutlines the challenges facing Japan’s future energy policy, many of which are inevitable
whether Japan maintains its reliance on nuclear power or not.

Zwigenberg: The Coming of a Second Sun

7“‘The Coming of a Second Sun’: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima andJapan’s Embrace of Nuclear Power”
Ran Zwigenberg
February 6, 2012
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ran-Zwigenberg/3685“Atoms for Peace” was a U.S. government policy in the 1950s promoting nuclear
power around the globe as a safe source of energy. The U.S.A. sponsored an “Atoms for
Peace” museum exhibit for Hiroshima in 1956 as part of this immensely successful effort toconvince the Japanese public of the benefits of nuclear power. The effectiveness of thisinitiative is remarkable, considering the three previous nuclear disasters and the antinuclear movement they sparked. The exhibit was able to accomplish the transformation of
public opinion by stressing the differences between nuclear power and nuclear bombs.
Zwigenberg condemns the “Atoms for Peace” project for making the world lose sight of thedangers of nuclear power. He contends that the exhibit’s festive and fashionable
atmosphere misrepresented nuclear power, since it ignored the problems of nuclear waste
and potential malfunctions.
Zwigenberg identifies key Japanese individuals whose endorsements of nuclear
power swayed Japanese public opinion to accept the new technology. One was the Liberal
Democratic Party’s NAKASONE Yasuhiro, who witnessed the bombing at Hiroshima andwas later Prime Minister (1982-1987). Another was SHŌRIKI Matsutarō, the owner of the
major newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun. Shōriki believed Japan should cooperate with America
as much as possible as a way to resist communism, which is why he supported using
America-endorsed nuclear power. Further, atomic power also gained support because it
was compatible with the image of a “modern” nation. Many media outlets and public
figures proclaimed nuclear power to be the way of the future.
Zwigenberg notes that some Japanese people feared the “irresistible momentum” toadopt nuclear power. For example, American proposals in 1955 to build a nuclear power
plant in Hiroshima were initially rejected by the city. Even so, the “Atoms for Peace”
exhibit stayed in Hiroshima until the mid-1960s, much longer than expected. Enough city
residents changed their opinions that the adoption of nuclear power became a popularidea. Zwigenberg suggests that only in Hiroshima could people have stopped the atomicenergy juggernaut, because only Hiroshima had both the moral authority of the hibakusha(atomic bombing victims) and the political influence to sway national public opinion
against nuclear power. When Hiroshima enthusiastically supported nuclear power, theJapanese anti-nuclear movement focused on banning atomic weapons much more than
atomic power.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan After the Fukushima Disaster

8“The Coming of a Second Sun”: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima andJapan’s Embrace of Nuclear Power1
Ran Zwigenberg
In November 2011 when asked about the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO’s)
deteriorating finances, a Japanese official commented, “This is a war between humans andtechnology. While that war is being fought, we should not talk about bankruptcy.”2 The unnamed
official, perhaps inadvertently, alluded to something more than the financial issues here; the factthat technological fixes are no longer an option and that Japan, sixty-six years after the bomb andfifty-five years after it welcomed atomic energy, finally is beginning to come to terms with thetrue cost of over-reliance on nuclear power.
Following the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, a host of commentators, in Japan andinternationally, decried the corruption, smugness and shortsightedness that led Japan to choose
nuclear power in the fifties. These critics more often than not draw a picture of Japan’s entry into
the atomic age as a combination of American imposition and elite (conservative) complicity.3 On
the other side of this picture stand the hibakusha (A-bomb victims) and other activists who
resisted this move. Drawing on the historically powerful symbolism of Hiroshima, Ōe
Kenzaburō talked about Japan as becoming a fourth time victim of the atom, alluding toHiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Bikini victims aboard Lucky Dragon # 5.4 Speaking of Japan’s
postwar history in these familiar black and white terms of the people falling victim to themachinations of powerful Japanese politicians in collusion with American imperialism, though
not without credence, obscures the balance of forces of the fifties moment in which Japan went
nuclear.
Nothing demonstrates this better than the reaction of the city of Hiroshima to the introduction of
the Atomic age.5 On the 27th of May 1956 the Atoms for Peace exhibition opened in the peace
memorial museum in Hiroshima. The exhibit was a key component of the American plan topresent the atom as a positive force for progress and overcome the Japanese “nuclear allergy.”
The exhibit proved to be an enormous success, drawing well over 100,000 visitors andenthusiastic press reception. Significantly, the museum, which hosted the exhibit, one year
earlier, had hosted the equally successful World Congress Against A- and H-Bombs, and it wasalso the museum that exhibited the horrors of the bombing.6
The Atoms for Peace exhibit was not accepted without some debate and resistance from activists.
But opposition was overcome. When a few months later Hidankyō, the principal hibakushaorganization, was formed, it enthusiastically embraced nuclear energy.7
The Atoms for Peace exhibit serves as a lens through which Japan’s nuclear energy policies canbe examined. The exhibit was instrumental in solidifying the dominant Japanese view thatatomic energy was a legitimate, indeed essential, source of energy in a Japan that relied heavily
on imported oil and natural gas. This was especially clear in light of the fact that a similar
initiative to use Hiroshima as a symbolic site for domesticating and repackaging of the atom, inthe shape of a proposal to build an American-financed nuclear power station in Hiroshima, hadfailed only a year earlier. In the wake of the exhibit, opponents of the introduction of atomic
power faced an uphill battle against an overwhelming political, economic and media campaign insupport of atom power. If in 1955 opponents, at least in Hiroshima, could draw on the experienceof Atomic victimhood, it was much harder to do so in 1956 when the exhibit came to Hiroshima.

Zwigenberg: The Coming of a Second Sun

9

As Yuki Tanaka recently demonstrated, many hibakusha supported nuclear energy, calling it"energy for life" (in contrast to the deadly energy of the bomb).8 In fact, not only did theexperience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki failed to prevent Japanese from embracing nuclear
power, on the contrary, it was seen by some contemporaries as a justification for Japan to accept
this technology.
Fight Poison with Poison: Atoms For Peace Comes to Japan
Following the 1954 Lucky Dragon # Five incident and the radiation scares that came in its wake,the anti-nuclear movement in Japan received atremendous boost.
Millions of Japanese signed petitions, marchedand showed solidarity with Hiroshima,
Nagasaki and the Lucky Dragon victims. The
sudden rise and the massive size of the antinuclear movement came as a surprise to manyin Japan and outside of it. Some on theJapanese right, and within American
diplomatic circles worried about the incident’s
impact on US-Japan relations. The UnitedStates was already engaged, following
President Eisenhower’s December 1953
“Atoms for Peace” United Nations address, ina worldwide campaign to present the atom as aforce for good.
Pres. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace Address” to the General Assembly of the United Nations
The incident seemed to wreck these efforts in Japan and beyond. Louis Schmidt, then head of theUnited States Information Agency (USIA) in Tokyo recalled, “All the effort we painstakingly
put into it seemed to get lost…[as] The Lucky Dragon Five incident turned the Japanese against
the program.”9 It was, Schmidt concluded, a “very unhappy time.”10 In Washington the incident
prompted NSC adviser E.G. Erskine to write a memo to the NSC’s Operations Coordinating
Board (OCB) on march 23rd warning of Japan Communist Party (JCP) propaganda benefitingfrom the incident.11 Erskine proposed to build a reactor in Japan (and another in Berlin).“A
vigorous offensive on the non-war uses of atomic energy,” he concluded, “would appear to be atimely and effective way of countering the expected Russian effort and minimizing the harmalready done in Japan.”12
A number of official initiatives followed culminating in a proposal on April 28th 1954 that the
USIA organize exhibitions on the peaceful uses of atomic energy and promote contacts withJapanese scientists and engineers as well as with media figures and politicians who held
favorable views of the United States.13

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan After the Fukushima Disaster10

The U.S turned to a coalition of Japanesepoliticians and media people, which included
the LDP’s Nakasone Yasuhiro and Shōriki
Matsutarō, owner of the Yomiuri Shinbun
newspaper, who were trying to promote
nuclear power in Japan, and who were also
worried. These figures already had a history
with nuclear energy. As Evan Osnos has
observed, nobody in Japanese politics wasmore inspired by nuclear power thanNakasone. Nakasone, who had witnessed theHiroshima blast, wrote: "I still remember theimage of the white cloud...That moment motivated me to think and act toward advancing thepeaceful use of nuclear power." Nakasone believed that if Japan did not participate in "the largest
discovery of the twentieth century," it would "forever be a fourth-rate nation."14 Even before
Eisenhower’s speech, in mid-1953, Nakasone visited Berkeley’s nuclear labs and cultivatedpolitical and economic connections in the U.S. In March 1954, Nakasone proposed in the Diet
Japan’s first budget for nuclear research and cooperation.15 The Lucky Dragon # Five incident,
however, risked the success of the measure which had passed the Diet but not yet been
implemented.
Nakasone’s move faced serious resistance from the left and from some Japanese scientists whofeared Japanese dependency on the United States. This did not mean that the scientificcommunity opposed nuclear energy. Many scientists did, however, oppose Nakasone’s
preference for importing technology, thereby denying budgets (and prestige) for domestic
research and assuring technological dependency.16 The vice chairman of the Japan Science
Council (JSC) Kaya Seiji, who was in contact with Nakasone, proposed as early as July 1952
that Japan form its own atomic energy commission, modeled on that of the U.S.17 (During theoccupation the Americans had explicitly prohibited nuclear research.) This and other proposals
were opposed by some scientists. Mimura Takeshi a physicist and a hibakusha argued, drawing
on his experience, that “Japan should not embark on nuclear research until the tension between
the U.S. and the USSR is eased... If that meant there is a delay to Japanese civilization, so beit.”18 Supporters of nuclear energy, however, could also use the experience of victimization. A
leading scientist, Taketani Mitsuo, wrote “the Japanese being the casualties of atomic warfare areentitled to have the strongest say in the development of atomic power…[and] possess the greatest
moral right to carry out research. Other nations are obliged to help Japan's effort.”19 Eventually it
was Taketani’s rather than Mimura’s argument that won the day as the JSC endorsed the pronuclear agenda. A delay in civilization was out of the question for most scientists and, it turned
out, for most Japanese as well.
Indeed, the JSC had little choice in the matter as government and industry quickly moved toforge ties with U.S. industry and government circles that made the introduction of nuclear power
almost inevitable. The first nuclear cooperation agreement was signed in November 1955 andJapan moved ahead to build its first reactor. Opponents were also facing a huge public campaign
to promote nuclear energy. Shōriki Matsutarō, who would soon become responsible for nuclear
power development in the Hatoyama administration, led this campaign. Shōriki’s principal
interest in promoting nuclear power was to resist communism. Shōriki had a long background of

Zwigenberg: The Coming of a Second Sun

11anti-communist activity and, as Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick have demonstrated, anticommunism was at the core of his cooperation with the Americans and the worldwide campaign.
Shōriki had previously cooperated with American industry and government in importing
Television technology to Japan for similar reasons. As Simon Partner has argued, Shōriki
brought American television technology to Japan, like nuclear power, despite the fact that it
made little technological or economic sense and overrode domestic technology.20
Shōriki’s main lieutenant in promoting both technologies was Shibata Hidetoshi. Shibata, whostarted his career by successfully breaking a strike at the Yomiuri Shinbun, first became involved
with nuclear power when visiting the U.S. as part of the television campaign. The head ofGeneral Dynamics, Vernon M. Welsh, introduced Shibata to William Halstead, who in turnintroduced him to John J. Hopkins of General Electrics. Hopkins called in December 1954 for an“atomic Marshall plan to counter soviet advances into Asian countries.”21 These connections,and the U.S government’s own campaign through the USIA, led to a meeting between Shibata
and Daniel S. Watson, an alleged NSC operative in Tokyo. According to Shibata’s memoirs, hetold Watson that “nuclear power is a double edged sword. We have a saying in Japan doku womotte doku wo sei suru (to control poison one must use poison); we can use the good side ofnuclear power to smash anti-nuclear sentiment.”22
Watson and Shibata, with Shōriki’s blessing, invited a high level delegation of leading scientists,headed by Hopkins, to Japan. Shōriki agreed to launch a campaign to promote the visit inconjunction with USIA efforts to launch the Atoms for Peace exhibit.23 This gave the USIA apowerful ready-made local PR network.24 Meanwhile, the power industry had formed five maingroups for developing nuclear power; all were connected to former zaibatsu conglomerates. The
groups had contacts with General Electric and Westinghouse dating to the prewar period. These
connections led smoothly to the adoption of the American light water reactor (LWR) type despite
serious safety concerns. That reactor was the one that failed in Fukushima.25 When in mid-1955
the USIA and Shōriki launched their Atomic energy exhibit, the combination of powers thatbacked Atomic power seemed to possess almost irresistible momentum.
A Dramatic Christian Gesture: Hiroshima (almost) gets a Nuclear Plant
The Atoms for Peace campaign opened in Japan in April 1955. Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio
and MITI minster Ishibashi Tanzan formally endorsed it. Ishibashi, in what became a mantra,
spoke of Japan’s right to nuclear technology “as the country which was baptized by the ashes of
Bikini.”26 The campaign was notable for some of the biggest exhibitions and PR campaigns inJapan to that time. It received the backing not only of Shōriki’s Yomiuri and Nihon Terebi (TVstation) but also of many major regional and national newspapers. The result was over 2.5
million visitors nationwide. The media blitz presented nuclear energy as a source of “unlimited
energy and the most modern of technologies,” which “will open the way for a new industrial
revolution” and supply “unlimited possibilities for mankind.”27 This tapped long-held fears
among Japanese about being poor in resources. Many commentators used language reminiscentof the thirties campaign to present Manchuria as a treasure trove of unlimited resources and alifeline. The campaign also played on the general fifties fascination with science and futuristic
technology. Almost daily newspaper articles in the Yomiuri and other papers spoke of atomic
planes and trains, space travel and of the atom as “another sun.”28 This did not mean that the
campaign was accepted without debate. The momentum was almost irresistible, but the debates

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan After the Fukushima Disaster12

in Hiroshima also reveal Japanese anxieties. Even supportive writers wondered, “Whether there
is a hint of evil fire mixed with this force which will enable Japanese to make a bright future.”29
These anxieties were illustrated by the fierce debates over an earlier proposal, unrelated to the
USIA-Shōriki campaign, to construct a nuclear reactor in Hiroshima. This proposal was made by
Congressman Sidney Yates in the form of a motion introduced in the congress in January 1955.30
Yates explicitly connected the bomb and nuclear energy, calling for: “using atomic energy forlife rather than death.”31 He called for “giving preference for Hiroshima, which was the first
victim of the atomic bomb in access to the resources of the peaceful atom.”32 Yates also
proposed to construct a special hospital for the thousands of citizens of Hiroshima who were
exposed to the bomb and had medical issues as a result.33 Yates was not the first to make thisconnection. In October 1954 the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Thomas E. Murray, inalmost identical terms, called on the U.S to give a reactor to Japan . . .
"The only land which has been engulfed in the white flame of the atom. Now, while the memoryof Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains so vivid, construction of such a power plant in . . . Japan
would be a dramatic and Christian gesture . . . a lasting monument to our technology and ourgood will. We would demonstrate to a grim, skeptical and divided world that our interest in
nuclear energy is not confined to weapons."34
According to Asahi journalist Kanari Ryūichi, a similar proposal was made by Lewis Strauss,chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and by Representative Sterling Cole of New
York, in mid-1955.35
Although the Eisenhower administration did not support these offers, they produced heateddebates in Hiroshima. On January 29th two days after Yates’ proposal, Hiroshima’s mayor
Hamai Shinzō, said, “the fact that Hiroshima will become the ‘first nuclear power city’ will
comfort the souls of the dead. The citizens themselves, I think, would like to see death replacedby life.”36 In a symposium organized by the local newspaper, Hamai’s stance was supported byleading scientists from Hiroshima University as well as by other leading Hiroshima figures. It
gained the support also of some in the city assembly, who hoped to get a share of Japan’s nuclear
budget, and the support of Hiroshima’s new mayor Watanabe Tadao.37
The acceptance of the offer by major Hiroshima figures was not an aberration. Rather, it was acontinuation of the city’s deep relationship with the U.S. and its self-portrayal as a modern city.
The commemoration of the bomb, from very early on, emphasized Hiroshima’s urban
transformation and the discourse of science. From the end of the war, American and Japaneseelites actively directed Hiroshima's gaze toward the future. This culminated with the 1949
Hiroshima Peace City law that equated building a city of peace with building a rational
metropolis. Much of Hiroshima’s message was about change and transformation. In its mostextreme form, Hiroshima politicians spoke of the city of Hiroshima “being born anew on August
6th 1945.”38 The message of renewal was embedded in the very shape of the city by thearchitects and city planners who re-built Hiroshima as a new modern city. Kenzō Tange, who
was responsible for Hiroshima’s city plan, as well as the building of the Hiroshima memorial
museum, saw his work as one of spiritual transformation. Spiritual renewal would come through“the making of Hiroshima into a factory for peace” (heiwa wo tsukuridasu no tame no kōgyō dearitai).39 Hiroshima’s wide avenues (some as wide as one hundred meters) and rational city plan,with the peace museum’s modernist design of exposed concrete, was an expression of this ideal

Zwigenberg: The Coming of a Second Sun

13

drawn from Le Corbusier and high modernism. Accepting nuclear energy, which was presented
as a “key to the future” was a natural extension of this trajectory.
Many hibakusha embraced this message of peace as progress and modernity. This was true forleading hibakusha and peace activists, such as Osada Arata who welcomed the idea of nuclear
power, though not without some reservation. Osada stated, “I hope for a peaceful people’s
nuclear power research which is not connected to the U.S.”40 In addition, as Yuki Tanaka noted,
Mayors Hamai and Watanabe and many other politicians, who were hibakusha themselves, fully
embraced nuclear power.
Not all activists agreed. The Hiroshima branch of Gensuikyō (The Japan Council Against A- and
H-Bombs) almost immediately came out against the proposal.41 Moritaki Ichirō, in the
aforementioned symposium, voiced his concern about radiation. Both sides in the debate claimed
to speak in the name of Hiroshima’s citizenry and, furthermore, both used the experience of thebombing to justify their position. Moritaki stated that, “the opinion of the people of Hiroshima
who were baptized (senrei shita) by the world’s first nuclear bomb is that nuclear power should
not be used without proper consideration.” Hiroshima Gensuikyō sent a memorandum to thepress listing five main objections to the nuclear plant. What most concerned the activists was thepossibility that the reactor would be used for military purposes and that it might become a targetof a nuclear strike in a future war. Radiation concerns came second. Interestingly, theorganization listed “danger to the prospects of Japan’s electric power industry” as one of thegrievances.42 The local media was also divided on the issue. The local paper featured a series ofarticles by scientists and doctors who warned against the dangers of radiation and nuclear
waste.43
As it became clear, however, that Yates’ proposal was not endorsed by the Eisenhoweradministration, the whole initiative became a non-issue. The anti-nuclear camp had won. Yet
within a year, Hiroshima was experiencing a nuclear energy boom following the USIA exhibit of
May 1956.
The Exhibit in Hiroshima
What led to this change in Hiroshima was a combination of factors. At the national level,
Yomiuri and the USIA launched their formidable campaign. Locally in Hiroshima, almost all
major players, Hiroshima’s main paper the Chūgoku Shinbun (where critical articles
disappeared), Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture and Hiroshima University, endorsed andsponsored the exhibit. This endorsement may be credited in part to the tireless work of American
diplomat Abol Fazl Fotouhi. Fotouhi was an Iranian immigrant to the United States and a former
Marine. Like many of the principal actors in the Hiroshima drama he embodied many
contradictions and ambivalences, which make casting the story of nuclear energy in Hiroshima
as a black and white morality play impossible. Although he actively promoted the exhibit,
Fotouhi was clearly uncomfortable with some aspects of the State Department’s approach.
Fotouhi served from December 1952 as the head of the American Culture Center in Hiroshima.
Together with his wife and daughter, who attended a Japanese public school, he immersed
himself in Japanese culture and became immensely popular in Hiroshima.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan After the Fukushima Disaster14

Fotouhi’s papers reveal that the USIA firstcontemplated the Hiroshima exhibit inDecember 1954.44 The idea was rejected,
however, as "there were compelling reasons
against both showing it in 1955 and its
inauguration in Hiroshima. We felt that in any
case the exhibition might be closely identified
with the bomb, thus defeating the real purposeof President Eisenhower's atoms for peace
program."45 The real purpose was of course todisassociate the bomb from nuclear energy.
The Yates' and other proposals were rejected
for similar reasons. Even before 1954, Fotouhi,
Abol Fazl Fotouhi, Agnes Fotouhi, and Farida Fotouhi working with another American institution the(Age 6) in front of an American Cultural Center
Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC),
exhibit (circa.1953): photo courtesy Farida Fotouhi.
brought materials pertaining to medical uses of
the atom into the peace museum.46 This, andthe larger exhibit, met no resistance initially. Nagaoka Shogō, the director of the peace museum– where the city planned to hold the exhibit – told the press, “until now the exhibit was only
about the suffering [brought by the bomb] but now I am really delighted that with thecooperation of many we can have a proper world level exhibition on the benefits of nuclear
power.”47 Fotouhi’s main difficulty with sponsors was financial. They feared losing money on
the exhibit (the USIA and Yomiuri paid only part of the expenses).48
Suddenly, however, “all hell broke loose in Hiroshima.”49 Local residents and the Hiroshima
Gensuikyō expressed alarm as the city, against Nagaoka's wishes, removed over two thousand
articles from the atomic bomb museum to make room for the exhibit. The city explained that themuseum was the only place big enough to accommodate the exhibit and that the removal of theitems was only temporary. Gensuikyō explained, “we are not against the exhibit as such [butagainst the use of the museum for that purpose]. Behind these a-bomb artifacts there are the200,000 victims…these are more important than the exhibit and should not be moved.”50 Others
were more indignant. Fotouhi reported the main grievances quoting newspaper reports. “Theenergy which destroyed the city,” claimed one survivor, “ is now used as a tool to remove ourmost sacred relics from their permanent home with the possibility of never putting them backagain." Another resident declared, "We cannot sit idly by and let the Americans contaminate ourcity." The most prevalent complaint, however, voiced by Moritaki and others, was, “if the cityand prefecture have funds for this they should pay for hibakusha welfare.”51 At no time did theUnited States provide funds for hibakusha relief. At the time these were being provided
exclusively by the stricken cities themselves. The Japanese national government did notrecognize hibakusha needs until 1957.
Responding to critics, the exhibit sponsors organized a public symposium in March where theissue was debated. The editor of the Chūgoku Shinbun spoke first, saying, “hundreds ofthousands of people have seen the exhibition which depicts the miraculous use of the destructive
atom in many peaceful ways," and urged Hiroshima residents not to lag behind. Fotouhi thensimilarly told the meeting that, “as a friend of the Hiroshima people and as a member of thecommunity I felt that the Hiroshima people should not be deprived of the opportunity to see theZwigenberg: The Coming of a Second Sun

15

many benefits that the atomic energy is now providing the mankind (sic.) My government
therefore agreed to include Hiroshima in the scheduled showings." These conciliatory statements
were followed by a representative from the Hiroshima mothers organization which voiced
concerns over radiation. These were met by a Professor Fujiwara from Hiroshima University,
who, unaware of the historical irony of his words, said "it is absurd to think that an advanced
nation like America would knowingly bring unprotected fissionable material to any country."
When another resident spoke of the items in the museum as relics, Fujiwara protested, "What is
the museum? Is it a shrine? Is it a place like our Miyajima? If that is so, why then don’t you havethe marking of a shrine? Why should our ancestors object to anything if it means the future
welfare of mankind? ... We need to understand the basic principles of peaceful living. We mustsee what the future promises..."According to Fotouhi, following this exchange, survivor
organizations removed their objections.52 This was only partially true at the time, but survivors’organizations soon formally endorsed nuclear energy.
The USIA did all it could to promote nuclear power along the lines of the discourse of peace as
modernity. The words “peace” and “modern” are repeated again and again in the professional
literature, interviews with experts, and pronouncement by politicians. In the official brochure forthe exhibition, a remarkable document, Joseph Evans the head of the USIA Tokyo branch told
visitors, “[I] would like to show Japanese and make them understand the true role of the atom in
tomorrow’s world… How [the atom] can contribute for economic development increased leisure,the welfare and lengthening of human life… [and] contribute to the achievement of peace.” Thebrochure went on to explain the uses of the atom in agriculture, medicine, industry andtransportation with splendid illustrations of futuristic looking machines, never once mentioning
the word genbaku (atomic bomb).53
The local media praised the exhibit on its
opening day, speaking of “a new humancivilization,” and, echoing the Yomiuri, on
man gaining control over “a second sun.”54
Local dignitaries interviewed after a VIP
preview of the Atoms for Peace exhibit wereequally ecstatic. The head of the prefecturalchamber of commerce told the papers, “we areentering a splendid era (subarashii jidai)…it isgood that I achieved old age [to see it]. [Thisera] is full of wonder and [we are laying] theinfrastructure to make it happen.”55 Others,
especially scientists, again stressed the
The layout of the exhibit as depicted in exhibit official
importance of understanding the atom.
brochure. Visitors walked through the futuristic
Nakaizumi Masanori, from the ABCC,
exhibit examining the application of the atom in
agriculture, medicine, space travel and other fields.
commented, “the region of Hiroshima has an
Source: genshiryoku heiwa ryo no shiori (Tokyo: USIS,
inseparable relationship with nuclear power
1955).
and thus should have a correct understanding[of it].” Former (and future) Mayor Hamai
took a similar approach. “I heard much about this. It is good to see it firsthand…it is the first stepthat people should talk of deepening our understanding of nuclear power.”56 The equation ofAmerican science and ideas of progress with neutral or positive values was, of course, a peculiar

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan After the Fukushima Disaster16

cold war notion. Susan Lindee has shown how these notions played out in another Hiroshima
context, that of medical research performed by the ABCC.57 To judge from the local media andother reports, the majority of visitors to the exhibit accepted this ideology, albeit not withoutsome major reservations. On the second day of the exhibit another group of high profile visitors
was interviewed. An education adviser for Fukuyama prefecture was typical, “we all had quite abias towards atomic power but now that we see it concretely we have bright hopes for it and [itleft a] strong impression. I recommend that everyone see it, even if they are critical.”Many were indeed critical. Tanabe Koichirō, from the Japan Pen Club, a liberal writers group,
responded, “ I am fundamentally in agreement with atomic power… it will bring humancivilization to a new stage. It is highly advantageous. But,” Tanabe added, “ there is also one
problem: radiation. After being used for electricity, there is a lot of residual radiation. I heardthat in the US they bury radioactive material deep in the earth. There is also the idea of dumping
it at the bottom of the sea…[where] it is a danger to water and ocean life…[the exhibit] does notdispel my unease over the problem of the ashes of death.” Fujii Heiichi, the head of theprefectural hibakusha organization, was cautious: “if used for peace, nuclear power can bring us
closer to a future of happiness and peace for human kind… if used properly, atomic power could
promote human welfare. But,” Fuiji added, “we who saw atomic power first manifested as evil,
and knowing many people who are still ill because [of it], think that the priority should be on
prevention and treatment of A-bomb disease…[and] complete eradication of nuclear weapons.”
Moritaki, interviewed again, was even more adamant: “the people of Hiroshima are especiallysensitive to effects of radiation…[thus] before we have atomic power we should better
understand radiation. [Furthermore] how will they treat the waste? Why is there no explanationof it…They do not show what they will do in case of a malfunction in the reactor, or what they
will do with the waste (kasu)…[and] the ashes of death. I would very much like them to addressthese issues.” These critical views show that not all in Hiroshima were convinced. However,these views were the minority. And as the exhibit progressed they were heard less and less.
These reservations and criticism notwithstanding, most survivors accepted nuclear power, atleast in principle.
The Atoms for Peace exhibit was quite an event for Hiroshima. In thefifties when most Japanese still lived in poverty (Fotouhi recalled
driving through mounds of rubble in 1954, almost ten years after thebomb) the exhibit brought color and a view of another world to thecity. The papers reported women’s particular attraction to the event,“which looked like a fashion show.” They were especially attracted to
the guides who were dressed in the latest American fashions.58 The
visitors saw what they were told was the latest technology, and were
showered with information and brochures, all with futuristic imagery
and bright colors. The big banners for the exhibition, and the flags ofmany countries (who were part of the atoms for peace program) above
it, lent the museum “a festive atmosphere.”59
The newspapers magnified the celebration with daily features(including cartoons) on the exhibit, visitors’ reactions, and various
Peace Forever: Hiroshima items on it. The items on display included, among others, a full-scale
City's poster for the 1949
model of an experimental nuclear reactor, a model illustrating a
August 6th peace day.
nuclear fission reaction that used electric lights and panel displays that

Zwigenberg: The Coming of a Second Sun

17

introduced nuclear physics. Significant attention was given to the role that atomic power would
soon play in revolutionizing daily life and leisure for the Japanese. Another theme was theatom’s medical benefits and its uses in the space race. A special hit was the “magic hands”
display, a type of mechanical arm. Visitors operated the device, which was originally designed tohandle dangerous materials, to pick up a brush and write “heiwa” (peace) and “genshi ryoku”(nuclear energy) with the arms.60 Kawamoto Ichirō, a noted peace activist, wrote in his diary thatthe magic hand display was “indeed impressive” and that the exhibition as a whole really“impressed me.”61 A group of atomic bomb maidens, another symbol of Hiroshima and the peace
movement, who visited the museum, was similarly moved. The women, who had been brought to
the United States for plastic surgery at American expense, wrote that, “At first, as we werevictims of the bomb, we were anxious about [the exhibit]…but after going through the exhibit
we understand that Atomic Power can be used not only for war but also can be useful for theadvancement of mankind.”62
Perhaps the most dramatic evidence oftransformation came when the millionth visitor(in all Japan) was to visit the exhibit inHiroshima. The lucky visitor, who was aschoolboy – organized groups were the bulk of
the visitors – was to receive a television, aprecious gift at the time. This was anotherreference to the modernity of the exhibit and,
unintentionally, also a very fitting gift given the
involvement of the principal actors with
television. The TV set, however, did not comefrom the Yomiuri or Nihon Terebi, but from a
local merchant, a hibakusha, who contacted
Fotouhi. He told Fotouhi, “My parents and"Magic Hands" Demonstration in Berlin.
children were all killed by the bomb. I have seen
September 26 1954.
the exhibition and am thrilled with what atomic
energy can do for the future welfare of mankind.
I wish therefore to offer a large television set to be awarded the millionth visitor.”63 This wasmore than the Americans and their local supporters could have dreamed.
The exhibit was so successful that Hiroshima City chose to continue presenting atomic energy
materials in the museum even after it finished. This presented an opportunity for someAmericans and others who were critical of the museum content. Visiting Americans constantly
harassed Fotouhi about it. Tourists and officials complained about the place “being a horror
museum…[which] aimed at shaming America.” “One group of visitors,” he wrote, “even went so
far as to tell me that it was my duty to see to it that the entire collection was removed andreplaced by more appropriate material related to the peaceful uses of the atom.”64 Fotouhi had
little patience for these arguments. “Can we let Germans or British,” he wrote, “tell us to remove
our monuments because they put them in unfavorable light?! So how can we ask it of theJapanese?”65 Still, when the nuclear power exhibit ended, Fotouhi, together with Mayor
Watanabe, forced the reluctant museum director, Nagaoka, to accept it as permanent. Nagaoka
protested, "this is a place to show the history of Hiroshima's suffering…. [not] to sing the praiseof peaceful nuclear power.”66 But Watanabe made clear to him that this is what the city wanted

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan After the Fukushima Disaster18

and he was forced to accept the order. Nuclear power would continue in the museum making the“Atoms for Peace” agenda an official part of Hiroshima’s own quest for peace.
Conclusion
In 2009, during the early stages of this research, what had become of the formidable exhibit
remained a mystery. Almost no one at the museum had ever heard of it and the museum’s
official history did not mention it either.67 After all the fanfare of 1956 (and even more of it in asecond run of the exhibit as part of the 1958 Hiroshima Recovery Expo), a single line from a
1967 article simply reported, “the city decided to take the atoms for peace [exhibit] materials outof the museum as the first step in making it a place to learn about peace and Hiroshima’s
suffering, and in line with the museum character.”68 What made the exhibit suddenly “out ofcharacter” was not explained. Further research later revealed that the model nuclear airplane andship ended up in a Hiroshima playground.69 Subsequently, the whole affair was consigned to
oblivion. This did not mean that Hiroshima suddenly turned anti-nuclear power. If anything it
became ambivalent, but no more. The anti-nuclear power movement, as Yuki Tanaka pointed
out, only began after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and even then many hibakusha refrained
from taking part in it.70 By that time Japan had constructed dozens of nuclear reactors and theindustry became firmly entrenched as a central element of Japanese energy policy.
Much of the failure of the anti-nuclear movement to rally against nuclear power can be attributed
to Hiroshima’s support. Perhaps the major coup for promoters of nuclear energy came wheneven the newly formed Hidankyō, the main hibakusha organization came out strongly for nuclear
energy. Even Moritaki Ichirō came around and, in Nagasaki in August 1956 proclaimed,“Atomic power…must absolutely be converted to a servant for the happiness and prosperity ofhumankind. This is the only desire we hold as long as we live.” (Moritaki later regretted thisstatement and came out against nuclear energy.)71 This was partially politics. Hidankyō was
campaigning for compensation for hibakusha and could not afford to alienate the conservative
backers of nuclear power. But as the difference between reactions to the reactor proposal and theexhibit show, there is good evidence to support a change of heart following the campaign bymany former opponents of atomic power. This, as we saw, came after heated debates and not alittle friction. These debates show how complex this moment was. But the logic of nuclear
energy as progressive and beneficial eventually won. Japan went nuclear.
The USIA, Shōriki, Nakasone and the other backers of nuclear energy of course had enormous
resources at their disposal. More than just money, however, what promoters of atomic power had
was the confidence that they were marching with the time. The Atoms for Peace exhibit was partof a much larger effort by elites in both Japan and the United States to present the horrors ofWorld War II, the atomic bombings, the fire bombings of 64 Japanese cities, and Japan’s
Imperial Army’s atrocities being the chief ones, as an aberration. The path Japan took, theargument went, its embrace of modernity (even more so after the war) and Western ideas ofprogress, were fundamentally good. This was true for both left and right. As Sheldon Garonwrote, “So powerful was the Japanese belief in modernization and progress that neither thecontradictions of the wartime campaigns nor the nation's disastrous defeat in 1945 rent [it]…For
all the contention in Japanese political life most progressive groups joined forces with theconservatives in the modernization of Japanese daily life.”72 Indeed, with its focus on themodern, and especially the promise of the coming improvement in daily life (Television sets
being a fitting example), and as a solution to Japan’s lack of resources, the campaign hit all theZwigenberg: The Coming of a Second Sun

19

right spots with Japanese. Other motives for the exhibit like fighting communist propaganda andpromoting the fledging nuclear power industry’s economic interests, not to speak of radiation
issues, were, of course, concealed behind the shiny façade of the energy of the future with its
promise to send man to space and cure diseases. In presenting Atoms for Peace as the wave of
the future, the organizers of the exhibit utilized the very logic that underlined Hiroshima’s own
message. As Fotouhi commented, in an uncharacteristically blunt remark, ”was not Hiroshimaboasting for being the ‘peace city’, so why not Atoms for peace?”73 When the atom came to
Japan, Japanese were, supposedly, presented with a rational choice between the “bad” atom andthe “good” one. The reasonable, modern liberal – the kind of person Hiroshima appealed to in its
numerous campaigns for peace – could only choose the latter. As Japan learned in Fukushima
this choice was false.
Recommended citation: Ran Zwigenberg, ‘“The Coming of a Second Sun”: The 1956 Atoms for
Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan’s Embrace of Nuclear Power,' The Asia-Pacific Journal
Vol 10, Issue 6 No 1, February 6, 2012.
A native of Israel, Ran Zwigenberg is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the City University of New
York. His research focuses on the commemoration and reaction to the Holocaust in Israel andEurope and the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima in Japan.
Notes
1

I thank Miriam Intrator and Samuel Malissa for reading and commenting on this paper. I want
to also thank Mark Selden for his editorial and substantive suggestions. I wish to thank Koide
Madoka and Shimosaka Chikako for their valuable help with translation of sources.
2“Japan’s nuclear conundrum: The $64 billion question,” The Economist, November 5th 2011.
Accessed November 22, 2011.
3

Criticism of nuclear energy turned into a cottage industry after Fukushima. One can enter any
Japanese bookstore and find a whole corner devoted to it. See, for instance, Takagi Jinzaburō,Hangenpatsu demae shimasu: genpatsu jiko eikyō soshite mirai wo kangaeru – Takagi Jinzaburōkōgiroku (Tokyo, Nanatsumorishokan Shinsō Han, 2011).
An earlier example, much quoted, is Arima Tetsuo, Genpatsu, Shōriki, CIA: Kimitsubunsho deyomu Shōwa rimenshi (Tokyo: Shinchōsha 2008).
4

Kenzaburō Ōe, “History Repeats,” in The New Yorker, March 28, 2011. The address of
Hiroshima’s mayor, Mitsui Kazumi, in the August 6th ceremony after Fukushima followed
similar lines, accessed December 30th 20115

I will deal here almost exclusively with Hiroshima. The Nagasaki case is slightly different.

6

The museum, established in 1955, served as the central exhibition space and was situated on
Nakajima Island, which was turned in the early fifties into the Peace Park, Hiroshima’s maincommemorative space. The park was also the symbolic center for the post 1945 anti-nuclear andpeace movements that came out of the reaction to the Lucky Dragon # Five incident, discussed
below.
7

Hidankyō declaration.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan After the Fukushima Disaster

20

8

Tanaka Toshiyuki, “Genshiryoku heiwa ryō to Hiroshima: senden kōsaku no tāgeto ni sareta
hibakushatachi,” in Sekai, No. 25 (August 2011), p. 257.
9Interview for NHK documentary Genpatsu dōnyū shinario (1994) text and German translation
here, accessed December 10th 201110

Louise Schmidt interview in The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign
Affairs Oral History Project Information Series (1988) accessed November 20th 2011.
11

President Eisenhower created the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) to follow up on all
NSC decisions. The OCB met regularly on Wednesday afternoons at the Department of State,
and was composed of the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Deputy Secretary of
Defense, the Directors of the CIA, the United States Information Agency, and the ICA.
12

Yamazaki Masakatsu, “Bikini jikogo no genshirō dōnyūron no taito,”in Kagakushi Kenkyū,Vol. 43 No. 280 (2004).p. 84. The directive is reproduced in “Japan and Atomic Tests” accessed
October 25th 2011.
13

Ibid.

14

Quoted by Evan Osnos, “The Fallout” in The New Yorker. 87.32 (Oct. 17, 2011): p.49.

15

Yoshioka Hitoshi, “Nuclear Power Research and the Scientist’s Role,” in Yoshioka Hitoshi(ed.), A Social History of Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan: Vol. 2 Road to Selfreliance 1952 - 1959 (Trans Pacific Press, 2005), p. 110.
16

Ibid., p. 104.

17

Morris Low, Shigeru Nakayama, and Hitoshi Yoshioka, Science, Technology and Society inContemporary Japan (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.72.
18

Yoshioka, “Nuclear Power Research,” p.109.

19

Low et al., p. 71.

20

See chapter 3 in Simon Partner, Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of theJapanese Consumer (University of California Press, 1999).
21

Yamazaki, “Bikini jikogo,” p. 85.

22

Shibata Hidetoshi, Sengo masukomi kaiyūki (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1985), pp. 346-347. See
also Yamazaki, “Bikini jikogo,”p. 83. Yamazaki doubts the meeting was as dramatic as Shibata
portrays it, but ascertains, using NSC documentation, that Watson did work in Japan at the timeand had a role in the USIS campaign. Watson himself talked of the meeting and Shibata in the‘94 documentary.
23

Shibata, p. 377.

24

Schmidt Interview.

25

Nakayama Shigeru, “Forming a Nuclear régime and Introducing Commercial Reactors,” inYoshioka Hitoshi (ed.), A Social History of Science and Technology, pp. 86-87. Along the way,
GE and Westinghouse disregarded safety concerns to sell the LWR as the safer option. See the
BBC documentary Atomic States (2011) accessed December 15th 2011.

Zwigenberg: The Coming of a Second Sun
26

21

Yomiuri Shinbun, April 29 1955.

27

The industrial revolution quote is from Chūgoku Shinbun, November 26 1954. Similar, if more
hyperbolic sentiment (and the second and third quotes) can be found in Yomiuri Shinbun, April
291955.
28

Chūgoku Shinbun, May 31 1956.

29

Editor’s introduction to the special edition, “Kaimaku shita nihon no atomiku eiji,” inEkonomisuto (June 1955), p. 8.
30

Chūgoku Shinbun, January 27 1955.

31

Ibid. Also Hiroshima shi (hen), Hiroshima shinshi: rekishi hen (Hiroshima: Hiroshima shi,1984).
32

Quoted in Tanaka, “Genshiryoku heiwa ryō,” p.251.

33

Chūgoku Shinbun, February 5 1955. Also cited in Tanaka, Genshiryoku heiwa ryō, p. 251.

34

Time Magazine, October 4 1954.

35

Link accessed January 3rd 2012

36

Hiroshima Shi, p. 208. Also Chūgoku Shinbun, January 29 and January 30,1955. As Tanaka
noted, Hamai had also already accepted a similar offer by Bern Porter, a nuclear scientist who
visited Hiroshima in January 1954. By the time these deliberations took place, Hamai was
replaced by Watanabe Tadao who was also a survivor and a fervent supporter of nuclear energy.
37

Chūgoku Shinbun, January 29 1955.

38

Hamai Shinzō et. al. to President of Carroll College, June 30 1950, Letter attached toHiroshima Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Committee., Hiroshima (Hiroshima City Japan:
The Committee c/o Hiroshima Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 1948). Carroll University
library, Waukesha, Wisconsin
39

Kenzō Tange, “Hiroshima heiwa kinen tōshi ni kankei shite,” in Kenchiku zasshi, (October,1949), p. 42. Le Corbusier famously used the phrase a “machine for living.”
40

Quoted in Tanaka, “Genshiryoku heiwa ryō,” p. 252.

41

The all Japan Gensuikyō was formally founded in September 1955. The Hiroshimaorganization, which went by the same name, was founded earlier. Similar organizations wereformed all around Japan following the Lucky Dragon incident.
42

The major power companies came together in March and drafted a request for more details,
which was sent to Yates. See Chūgoku Shinbun, March 3 1955.
43

See for instance the covering of the special symposium about the issue on in the January 29th
and 30th of the Chūgoku Shinbun.
44
I thank Farida Fotouhi for her generous cooperation and, especially, for giving me access toher fathers’ unpublished papers (Hereafter, Fotouhi papers).
45

Fotouhi papers, p.194.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan After the Fukushima Disaster
46

Ibid., p.186. The ABCC donated a film and a projector as well as other materials.

47

Chūgoku Shinbun December 11 1955.

48

Fotouhi papers, 196.

49

Ibid., p. 197.

50

Chūgoku Shinbun February 8 1956.

22

51

Fotouhi papers, p. 198. See also Chūgoku Shinbun, February 14 1956 and Hiroshima Shi, p.
209
52

Fotouhi papers, p. 200. See the Chūgoku Shinbun, March 22 1956 for the full text of themeeting
53

The quote is from the exhibit’s official brochure Genshiryoku heiwa ryō’ no shiori (Tokyo:
USIS, 1955). The brochure can be found in Hiroshima Peace Museum library, at the Genbaku
shiryō hozon kai collection.
54

Chūgoku Shinbun, May 26th 1956.

55

Ibid.

56

Ibid.

57

Susan Lindee, Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima, 1st ed.
(University Of Chicago Press, 1994).
58

Chūgoku Shinbun June 10 1956. Moritaki and Fuji responses are also quoted by Tanaka.

59

Chūgoku Shinbun sha, Honō no hi kara ni jū nen (1966 nen), (Hiroshima: Miraisha, 1966), pp.
263-264.
60

Chūgoku Shinbun, June 19th 2011.

61

Kawamoto Nikki, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park Archive (HPMA), Kawamato Collection,
Folder 9, No. 8.2.03.
62

Chūgoku Shinbun, May 29 1956. Also quoted by Tanaka.

63

Fotouhi papers, p. 201.

64

Ibid., p. 187.

65

Ibid., p. 188.

66

Chūgoku Shinbun sha, Honō no hi kara ni jū nen, p. 265

67

The museum’s librarian Kikuraku Shinobu however was very knowledgeable and proved very
helpful in this research. The museum director, Steve Leeper, as well, was very supportive of myresearch. I thank them as well as other members of the museum’s staff for their help.
68

Chūgoku Shinbun, May 7, 1967.

69

Author’s interview with Ogura Keiko, 28 January 2010.

Zwigenberg: The Coming of a Second Sun
70

23

Tanaka, “Genshiryoku heiwa ryō,” p. 260.

71

Ibid., p. 256. Also Hidankyō, “Message to the World,” 10 August 1956, accessed 29 October
2011.
72

Sheldon Garon, “Rethinking Modernization and Modernity in Japanese History: A Focus on
State-Society Relations,” in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 53, No. 2 (May, 1994), p 357.
73

Fotouhi papers, p. 201.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster24“Hubris Punished: Japan as Nuclear State”
Gavan McCormack
April 18, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3517
McCormack, an Australia-based expert in East Asian studies, neatly sums up his
position in the title to his article: Japan’s belief that nuclear power was a sustainable, safe
source of energy was nothing but “hubris,” arrogance and pride. He extends his criticism toinclude other countries that rely on nuclear power.
McCormack explains some of the problems inherent in relying on nuclear power in
its current form. Despite the frequency of strong earthquakes in places like Japan andCalifornia, nuclear power plants are not being built to withstand such catastrophes.
Further, there is still no suitable, long-term solution for disposing of nuclear waste. In
addition, the plutonium required to run nuclear power plants can be used for nuclear
weapons, making the world less safe in a different way. Even so, power companies in Japanare lobbying to expand exploration of risky methods of creating plutonium (in “breeder”
reactors) despite an accident in Japan that resulted in multiple deaths in 1999.
McCormack also compares the Fukushima disaster to the 1945 nuclear bombings.
For example, in each case, the emperor made an historic address: the first radio address in1945, and the first TV address in 2011, demonstrating how important both events were for
the Japanese state. However, one key difference that McCormack emphasizes is that the
Fukushima disaster was caused by nature but exacerbated by human error; the bombings
were disasters caused only by humans.
Most of this article was written prior to the 2011 earthquake, although it was
published a month after the Fukushima disaster. After it occurred, McCormack added his
assessment of the significance of the tragedy. He explains that not only will the catastrophe
define Japan’s energy policy for years to come, but also that Japan’s decision on whether tocontinue to use nuclear power has the potential to shape energy policies around the globe.
If Japan, damaged more than any other nation by nuclear power, once again determinesthat nuclear energy is safe enough to use, other nations will likely adopt the sameconclusion.
McCormack’s message is clear: the costs of nuclear power—to humans, theenvironment, and the economy—are too great. He hopes that the Japanese public andnuclear establishment will come to recognize this and switch to a renewable energy policy.

McCormack: Hubris Punished25

Hubris Punished: Japan as Nuclear State
Gavan McCormack
Introduction
The following paper, which draws on and updates a 2007 Japan Focus article, was written for
Le Monde Diplomatique, where it was posted online in French early in April 2011.1
This article offers a general overview of the nuclear era that began in Japan less than a decade
after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and may well have been brought to its close by
the events at Fukushima six and a half decades later. The Hirohito imperial broadcast of 15
August 1945 announcing the Japanese surrender and calling on the Japanese people to unite to“endure the unendurable” is now matched by the Akihito imperial television address of 16
March, calling on people to unite in the face of catastrophe and help each other through thecrisis. Two days after the Akihito address, the government announced that the “Great East Japan
Earthquake” disaster was to be elevated from level 4 to level 5, on a par with Three Mile Island,
and three weeks later, on 12 April, it raised it again, to level 7, the maximum on the international
scale for nuclear incidents, alongside Chernobyl.2
Does the first imperial address on television match the first on radio in signifying radical
change? Those at the centre of the Japanese state, on both occasions facing deep crises, seem tohave deployed the emperor to similar ends: to soothe public fear and desperation, deflect anger
from the pursuit of those responsible into a national sentiment of unity, and confirm theemperor’s own place as healer, restorer, and axis for change.
The Akihito address used form and content that subconsciously
linked the two occasions in listeners’ minds. Through it, theJapanese state implicitly called on the people to appreciate that,beyond the disaster unfolding in northeastern Japan the country
itself faces a shift in direction comparable to that of 1945. Then,
Hirohito’s role was to shift Japan from militarism and war to theacceptance of defeat and drastic change; now, Akihito’s address
may be construed as a concession that the nuclear path chosen by
post-war Japan, like the militarist path of his father’s generation,
has ended in catastrophe.
Successive generations of Japan’s bureaucratic, political,
corporate, and media elite have insisted that Japan pursue thenuclear power path at all costs. In retrospect, they drove thecountry forward, as the elite of the Kwantung Army drove it in
the pre-war era, towards disaster, ignoring, coopting, or crushing
all opposition.3 Only now, facing the costs—human,
environmental and economic—the long-postponed debate opens.

1945

The problem is not just the cluster of reactors in and around
Fukushima, but the nuclear system, and the mentality that2011
underpins it; Fukushima is far from being exceptional.
Seismologists have long said that the fault lines on which the
Hamaoka cluster of reactors at Omaezaki in Shizuoka prefecture rest are unstable and at least asPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster26

prone to disaster. The Hamaoka design contemplated a maximum earthquake of 8.5, whichmeans it could no more be expected to cope with one of 5.6 times greater force (480 M tons ofTNT) than was Fukushima. Seismologist Ishibashi Katsuhiko notes that the impact of such an
event would be huge: “the US military will also be affected – a disaster at Hamaoka will meanbases in Yokosuka, Yokota, Zama and Atsugi will all be of no use.”4 A Fukushima-type collapse
would force the evacuation of 30 million people, signalling the collapse of Japan as we now
know it.
Even though no existing reactor has been designed to withstand a level 9 earthquake or its likely
accompanying tsunami and therefore all should be closed, it would be unrealistic to demand that.
However, to stabilize not just Fukushima, but Japan itself, the disastrous and irresponsible
decisions taken by governments over the past half-century to pursue nuclear energy as asacrosanct national project, have to be reversed. The immediate priority must attach to close the
Fukushima and Hamaoka (and other extreme high-risk sites including Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in
Niigata prefecture, the world’s largest nuclear generation complex);5 to secure, stabilize, andremediate the Fukushima sites, resettling and compensation the refugee population andrebuilding shattered infrastructure; to cancel all planned and under construction reactor works(including Hamaoka Number 6 and Kaminoseki in Yamaguchi prefecture); to suspend all
existing and experimental projects for uranium enrichment, plutonium accumulation, use, andfast-breeding; to stop the planned export of nuclear plants to countries such as Vietnam(personally promoted by Prime Minister Kan as late as October 2010); and to adjust public andprivate investment priorities to a completely different vision of energy production andconsumption.
What is called for, in short, is the reversal of a half century of core national policies and theswitch to a renewable energy system beyond carbon and uranium.6 Such a strategic decision,
turning the present disaster into the opportunity to confront the key challenge of contemporary
civilization, amounts to a revolutionary agenda, one only possible under the pressure of amobilized and determined national citizenry. At this crucial juncture, how Japan goes, the world
is likely follow. The challenge is fundamentally political: can Japan’s civil society accomplish
the sovereignty guaranteed it under the constitution and wrest control over the levers of statefrom the irresponsible bureaucratic and political forces that have driven it into the present crisis?
On such a trajectory, instead of a subordinate and secondary role in the current (now stalled)global “nuclear renaissance,” and the continuing feeble presence on the world political anddiplomatic stage as a US “client state,” Japan could become a world leader. It is the sort ofchallenge to which Japan’s best and brightest might rise, and around which its people mightunite.

March 2011 is set to mark a caesura in Japanese history comparable to August 1945: the end of aparticular model of state, economy and society, both marked by nuclear catastrophes that shook
the world (even if the present one seems likely to be slightly muted and the meltdown kept topartial, the regional consequences may be broader, the number of people disastrously affected
greater). Where the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki signalled the end-point of
the path chosen by the young officers of the Kwantung Army in the 1930s, the chaos andapocalyptic apprehension of post-quake and tsunami Fukushima in 2011 is the end-point of thepath chosen by senior state bureaucrats and their corporate and political collaborators in theMcCormack: Hubris Punished27

1950s and steadily, incrementally, reinforced ever since then. Their legacy is today’s nuclear
state Japan. 1945 was a purely human-caused disaster. 2011 differs in that it was occasioned bynatural disaster, but human factors hugely exacerbated it.
Japan’s “Hiroshima syndrome” of fear and loathing for all things nuclear meant that cooperation
with US nuclear war-fighting strategy had to be kept secret, in mitsuyaku or “secret treaties,”
especially in the 1960s and 1970s that have only become public in the past two years. The
nuclear energy commitment, also pressed by the US, had likewise to be concealed, neversubmitted to electoral scrutiny, and continually subject of manipulation (extensive advertising
campaigns), cover-up (especially of successive incidents), and deception (as to risk and safetylevels). The extent of that too is now laid bare.
The way forward out of the current disaster remains unclear. The debate over Japan’s energy andtechnology future will be long and hard, but what is now clear is that Japanese democracy has torethink the frame within which this elite was able to overrun all opposition and push the country
to its present brink. The crisis is not just one of radiation, failed energy supply, possible
meltdown, the death of tens of thousands, health and environmental hazard, but of governability,of democracy. Civic democracy has to find a way to seize control over the great irresponsible
centres of fused state-capital monopoly and open a new path towards sustainability andresponsibility. A new mode of energy generation and of socio-economic organization has to besought. Ultimately it has to be a new vision for a sustainable society.
It is of course a paradox that nuclear victim
Japan should have become what it is now: one of
the world’s most nuclear committed, if notnuclear obsessed countries. Protected andprivileged within the American embrace, it hasover this half-century became a nuclear-cycle
country and a plutonium super-power, the sole“non-nuclear” state committed to possessing
both enrichment and reprocessing facilities, andto the fast-breeder reactor project. Its leaderschose to see the most dangerous substanceknown to humanity, plutonium, as the magical
Emperor and Empress speak with town mayor of
Kazo, Saitama on April 8 while visiting a makeshift solution to the country’s energy security. Whileinternational attention focused on the North
shelter. On April 15, TEPCO announced that it
would provide “provisional compensation” of
Korean nuclear threat, Japan escaped serious
approximately $12,000 to tens of thousands ofinternational scrutiny as it pursued its nuclear
households ordered evacuated, perhaps
destiny. One bizarre consequence is thepermanently, from the 13-mile exclusion zone.
emergence of Japan as a greater nuclear threat to
the region than North Korea.
Just over a decade from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the time of Eisenhower’s “atoms for peace,”
Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission drew up its first plans. The 1967 Long-Term Nuclear
Program already incorporated the fuel cycle and fast breeder program in them. By 2006, theMinistry of Economics, Trade, and Industry (METI)’s “New National Energy Policy” set theobjective of turning Japan into a “nuclear state” (genshiryoku rikkoku). Nuclear power
generation grew steadily as a proportion of the national grid, from 3 percent of total power inPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

28

1973 at the time of the first oil crisis to 26 percent by 2008 and around 29 percent today. The
country’s basic energy policy calls for the ratio of nuclear, hydro and other renewables (nuclear
the overwhelming one) to be nearly 50 per cent by 2030. Under the Basic Energy Plan of 2010, 9
new reactors were to be built by 2020 (none having been built since the 1970s in the wake ofThree Mile Island and Chernobyl), and 14 by 2030, while operating levels of existing reactors
were to be raised from 60 percent as of 2008 to 85 percent by 2020 and then 90 percent by
2030.7The dream of eternal, almost limitless energy has inspired the imagination of generations ofJapanese national bureaucrats. In the words of a panel at the Aquatom nuclear theme-parkscience museum in Tsuruga, close to the Monju plutonium fast-breeder reactor,“Japan is a poor country in natural resources … therefore Monju, a plutonium burning reactor, isnecessary because plutonium can be used for thousands of years.”
Trillions of yen were channelled into nuclear research and development programs and additional
vast sums appropriated to construct and run major nuclear complexes. If the Federation ofElectric Power Companies estimate is even roughly correct, that the Rokkasho complex innorthern Honshu will cost 19 trillion yen over the projected forty-year term of its use, that would
make it Japan’s, if not the world’s, most expensive civil facility in history.
Japan is alone among non-nuclear weapon states in its pursuit of the full nuclear cycle, building
plants to reprocess its reactor wastes, burning plutonium as part of its fuel mix (as at the
Fukushima Dai-ichi’s No 3 Plant since late 2010), storing large volumes of “low-level” wastes,and desperately struggling to chart a way forward to fast-breeder technology, something so
prodigiously difficult and expensive that the rest of the world has set it aside as a pipe-dream. At
all stages: fuel preparation, reactor construction and operation, waste extraction, reprocessing,McCormack: Hubris Punished29

storage, its nuclear system was problematic long before the tsunami crashed into its Fukushimaplant on March 3, 2011.
There are 54 reactors currently in operation, or were till March. At Fukushima the reactor cores
may have survived intact, but the management practice of leaving highly toxic and long-lived
wastes in ponds beside the actual reactor, has proven a terrible mistake. According to atomic
specialist Robert Alvarez, such pools contain radioactivity between five and ten times greaterthan that of one reactor core, with one pond holding “more cesium-137 than was deposited by all
nuclear weapons tests in the Northern Hemisphere combined” and “a major release of cesium137 from a pool fire could render an area uninhabitable greater than that created by the
Chernobyl accident.”8 Whether because of sloshing under the impact of the quake or leakage
from structural collapse, the rods at several of the Fukushima plants were partially exposed for
unknown periods, fires did burn, with unknown consequences, and the resumption of coolingusing sea-water by fire-hose or helicopter bombing and ultimately by the reconnection of pumps
has proven immensely difficult.9
Once the immediate crisis passes, these plants will have to be decontaminated and dismantled, an
expensive, difficult, and time-consuming task that will take decades, while the electricity they
once provided must be somehow substituted. Whether they can or will simply be cased inconcrete like Chernobyl remains to be seen, but they will surely become a monument to thedisastrous mistakes of the post-war Japanese nuclear plan.
Of the major complexes other than Fukushima, the most notorious are those at Kashiwazaki in
Niigata and Hamaoka in Shizuoka. Kashiwazaki, with 7 reactors generating 8,000 MW, is theworld’s largest nuclear generation plant. The 6.8 magnitude quake it experienced on 16 July
2007 was more than twice as strong as the design had allowed for and the site proved to be on apreviously undetected fault line. Catastrophic breakdown did not occur, but multiple
malfunctioning did, including burst pipes, fire, and radioactive leaks into sea and air. The
Hamaoka complex, 190 kms southwest of Tokyo, has five reactors, which, like those at
Kashiwazaki, sit on fault lines where the Eurasian, Pacific, Philippine and North American plates
grind against each other and where experts predict a strong chance of a powerful quake sometime in the near future. Company officials say the plant is designed to withstand a magnitude 8.5
earthquake, since that was believed to have been the most powerful ever known in the area. After
Fukushima’s 9.0, however, the preconditions on which Hamaoka was based have collapsed. A
Fukushima-level event here could force the evacuation of up to 30 million people.
Perhaps most controversial of the planned new reactor plants is that for two reactors to be built at
Kaminoseki, population: 3,700, an exquisitely beautiful, national park site at the southern end of
the Inland Sea about 80 kms from Hiroshima, one to commence operation in 2018 and the otherin 2022. After nearly 30 years of attempts to start these works, blocked by fierce local resistance,
especially on the part of the fishing community of Iwaishima, the island that faces the reactor site
across about four kilometres of sea, preliminary forest clearing and sea refilling works began latein 2010. With fierce confrontation continuing at sea between fishing boats, canoes and kayaks on
the part of the protesters and the power company’s ships, however, it is hard to imagine that after
March 2011 the government will find the will to move in and crush the protesters. Indeed, theGovernor of the prefecture has demanded work be halted (and in the wake of 11 March they
have indeed been halted, at least temporarily).

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster30

Nuclear reactors generate large quantities of irradiated waste, which has to be either stored or
reprocessed. Since 1992, high-level wastes have been reprocessed at plants at Sellafield in
England and la Hague in Normandy in France, each shipment equivalent to about seventeen
atomic bombs-worth of plutonium. The former Director-General of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammad Elbaradei saw reprocessing as so dangerous that it should
only be done under the strictest of international supervision and appealed to Japan for a five-year
freeze on all enrichment and reprocessing works. Japan dismissed his appeal, arguing that such amoratorium was applicable only to “new” projects, while Japan’s had been under way for
decades.
Rokkasho, north of Fukushima in Aomori prefecture, is the world’s most intensive concentrationof civilian nuclear energy facilities, including fuel processing, waste reprocessing, enrichment
and waste storage. Its reprocessing unit is designed to convert eight hundred tons of spent fuelper annum, yielding each year about eight more tons (1,000 warheads-worth) of pure, weaponsusable plutonium. After many delays, reprocessing was conducted on a trial basis in 2006 but thefacility has yet to commence full commercial operation. A second reprocessing plant at
Tokaimura has been shut since 1999 when an accident at its experimental fast breeder showered
hundreds with radiation and killed two workers. Consequently reactor wastes accumulate, muchof them stored, like those at Fukushima, around the reactors from which they have been
extracted.
Even if Rokkasho’s reprocessing plant were tocommence operation some time soon, it would
make little more than a small dint in Japan’s
accumulated and accumulating wastes, estimatedat approximately 12,600 tonnes as of 2006. So
Japan’s wastes, including separated plutonium(Japan possesses roughly one fifth of the world’s
civil plutonium stocks), accumulate steadily, andwill continue to do so even if or when the
reprocessing proceeds according to plan.
Under current (to March 2011) plans, fluids
Rokkasho Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Plant, 2008. containing low levels of radiation were to be
piped several kilometres out into the PacificPhoto: Kyodo
Ocean for discharge, the standards for effluent
control having been relaxed so that Rokkasho could discharge the equivalent of the nuclear
wastes of 1,300 power stations, sending tritium into the sea at 7.2 times the levels of the recently
closed Sellafield plant in Northern England or 2,800 times the level permitted for conventional
reactors. Wastes from the infamous Sellafield plant are blamed for the devastation over decadesof fish stocks across much of the Irish Sea and leukaemia levels in children 42 times the national
average as far away as Carnarvon in Wales.
Other low-level wastes are held in 200-liter drums, both at nation-wide reactor sites and at the
Rokkasho repository. Rokkasho’s projected eventual capacity is for three million drums in forty
vast repositories, each containing 10,000 drums, destined eventually to be covered in soil, withsomething like a mountain built over them. After that, they must be closely guarded for at least

McCormack: Hubris Punished31

300 years. These repositories spread like giant poisonous mushrooms across the once beautiful
backwater of rural Aomori prefecture.
High level wastes, vitrified and put in canisters,
are returned to Rokkasho where they are to be
stored initially for 30 to 50 years while theirsurface temperature slowly declines from around500 degrees centigrade to 200 degrees
centigrade, at which point it is planned to burythem too, in deeper (300 meter) undergroundcaverns where their radiation will further
dissipate over millennia.
The burning of mixed plutonium-uranium oxide
fuel, as at Fukushima’s No 3 plant, constitutes
another way to divert plutonium from “waste”
Nuclear Wastes
into active use as part of the ”eternal” energy
cycle. Fast-breeder reactors are another part of the solution to plutonium accumulation. They
“breed” (i.e. produce more than they start with) very pure, “super-grade” plutonium. But the risk
and the cost associated with this unproven technology is so great that Japan is among the few
nations that now pursues it, at prodigious expense and with very limited success. The Monju
prototype fast-breeder reactor (at Tsuruga, in Fukui Prefecture on the Japan Sea coast) had to be
shut down in 1995 after a sodium leak and fire followed by evidence of negligence and cover-up.
After ten years, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that it could proceed, and a contract wasawarded to Mitsubishi, but technical difficulties mean that it has yet to do so. Under current
plans, the fast breeder would be commercialized by 2050, 70 years behind its original schedule,with Monju being replaced by an additional plant, at a cost of “about 1 trillion yen” around 2030.
For the country whose scientific and engineering skills are the envy of the world to have been
guilty of the disastrous miscalculations and malpractices that have marked the past half-century including data falsification and fabrication, the duping of safety inspectors, the belittling of risk
and the failure to report criticality incidents and emergency shut-downs – and then to have been
reduced to desperate attempts with fire hoses and buckets to prevent a catastrophic melt-down in
2011, raises large questions not just for Japan but for humanity. Could the rest of the world, forwhich the US government holds out the prospect of nuclear renaissance, do better?
The “nuclear state Japan” plans have plainly been shaken by the events of March 2011. It is toomuch to expect that they will be dropped, but the struggle between Japan’s nuclear bureaucracy,
pursuing the chimera of limitless clean energy, global leadership, a solution to global warming,the maintenance of nuclear weapon defences (America’s “extended deterrent”), on the one hand,
and Japan’s civil society, pursuing its agenda of social, ecological and economic sustainability,
democratic decision making, abolition of nuclear weapons, phasing out of nuclear power
projects, and reliance on renewable energy, zero emission, material recycling, and non-nuclear
technologies enters a new phase after March 2011.
Gavan McCormack is a coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal and an emeritus professor ofAustralian National University. He is the author, most recently, of Client State: Japan in theAmerican Embrace (New York, 2007, Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing 2008) and Target North Korea:

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

32

Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe (New York, 2004, Tokyo and Seoul2006).
This article appears as a chapter in the Japanese volume Nihon Bijuaru janarisuto kyokai (Japan
Visual Journalists Association), ed. JVJA shashinshu - 3:11 merutodaun (The 3.11 Meltdown),
Gaifusha, June 2011. Nitta Jun, who translated the article into Japanese, is the publisher ofGaifusha.
Notes
1“La maison Japon se fissure - Le Japon nucléaire ou l’hubris puni,” Le Monde Diplomatique,
Online, April 2011, link.
2

Meaning it was responsible for a major release of at least tens of thousands of terabecquels ofradioactivity that was likely to cause “acute health effects” over a wide area.
3

Ishibashi Katsuhiko is one Japanese critic who has consistently made this criticism. See, mostrecently, his essay, “Masa ni ‘genpatsu shinsai’ da,” Sekai, May 2011, pp. 126-133.
4

Jun Hongo, “World right to slam nuke program mismanagement: expert,” Japan Times, 14
April 2011.
5

Shut down for nearly two years following damage in the Chuetsu earthquake of July 2007.

6

For a Japanese newspaper editorial in similar vein: “Shinsaigo ‘tei-ene’ shakai Nihon moderu
wa kano da,” Mainichi shimbun, 16 April 2011.
7

The DPJ government announced on 29 March 2011 that the existing “Energy Basic Plan”
would now have to be fundamentally reviewed, and that green sources of energy, including solar,
would be part of the review. (“14 ki no genpatsu zosetsu, minaoshi, taiyoko nado jushi e,”
Yomiuri shimbun, 29 March 2011. The debate, of course, is just beginning.
8

Robert Alvarez, “Meltdowns grow more likely at the Fukushima reactors,” Institute for Policy
Studies, 13 March 2011.
9

For a catalogue of TEPCO’s and the Japanese government’s technical and other errors in
handling the Fukushima disaster and earlier nuclear accidents, see Vaclav Smil, “Japan’s Crisis:
Context and Outlook,” The American, April 16, 2011.

Anzai: An Agenda for Peace Research after 3/11

33

“An Agenda for Peace Research after 3/11”
ANZAI Ikuro
November 14, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Anzai-Ikuro/3647
Following Zwigenberg’s historical take and McCormack’s scholarly “snapshot” of thesituation nearly simultaneous to the Fukushima disaster, the rest of the articles in thisreader illustrate some of the changes in Japanese public opinion on nuclear power since
March 2011.
Anzai brings two important perspectives to the conversation. First, he is a nuclear
power engineer who has extensively studied ways to protect against radiation while
teaching at major universities, including the University of Tokyo, a national university(making him a former government employee). Second, he is a self-described former
member of the “nuclear village,” albeit someone who left that village four decades ago.
Anzai “has been criticizing governmental nuclear power policy since 1967,” and for thisreason, he claims, he was “ruthlessly ejected” from the nuclear village. That is, theUniversity of Tokyo slashed his research budget and he was harassed in other ways in his
work, as he describes below. This article is an abbreviated version of a keynote speech hegave at the opening session of the 2011 International Conference of the Asia-Pacific Peace
Research Association, in which Anzai frames the continued use of nuclear power as an
ethical issue.
Over the years, Anzai frequently visited communities that were considering
accepting a nuclear power plant. He would answer their questions about nuclear power,
and his interactions with the locals indirectly provide another perspective on nuclear
power, that of the people who are most affected by reactors but probably know least about
them. Anzai’s information heightened their concerns about the safety of nuclear reactors.
He says that he was not always effective in relaying the dangers of nuclear power because
misconceptions about nuclear power, which provided false reassurances, often settled
locals’ fears.
Ethically, Anzai says that nuclear power is not worth it in the long run and therefore
should be phased out; it will create a financial and environmental debt for future
generations. Anzai stresses most of all promoting safety and peace, whether in building
new nuclear plants in the future or cleaning up after Fukushima now.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

34

An Agenda for Peace Research after 3/11
Anzai Ikuro
At 14:46 on 11 March 2011, a
tremendous earthquake occurred inJapan’s northeast (Tohoku), depriving
approximately 28,000 people of theirlives. More than 300,000 people took
refuge from the quake, the following
tsunami, and radiation originating fromdamaged nuclear power stations in thearea. The magnitude of the quake wasestimated to be 9.0, the biggest inJapan’s modern history “The Great East
Japan Earthquake” was more than 11,000
times greater than the New Zealand
Earthquake in Christchurch on 22
February 2011, and 45 times greater than
Professor Anzai sampling contaminated soil near Fukushima the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake in the
Nuclear Power Plant on 16 April 2011
Tokyo area which killed approximately
140,000 people.
When I learned about this serious nuclear accident that evening, I regretted not having been able
to prevent such a catastrophe, although I am a specialist in radiation protection who has been
criticizing governmental nuclear power policy since 1967. As a scientist involved in nuclear
science and technology, I was ashamed of my incapacity to persuade the government and peopleof Japan of the risks of nuclear power
generation, such as the Fukushima accident.

Hydrogen Gas Explosion

Anzai: An Agenda for Peace Research after 3/11

35

I graduated from the University of Tokyo in
1964 as one of the first students in the
Department of Nuclear Engineering in Japan.
My graduation paper was an investigation into
preventive measures against severe nuclear
accidents although there were no nuclear
power plants in Japan at that time. As a resultof the revised U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of1960, Japan became deeply involved in the
Vietnam War through military bases
throughout the nation and especially in
Okinawa. In addition to various new types of
weapons such as the pineapple bomb, the ballbomb, the nail bomb, and defoliants, the U.S.
Fukushima Devastation caused by Tsunami
military even had a plan to use hydrogenbombs, named B43, in Vietnam. Training to drop these bombs took place in Okinawa. One of the
mock-up B43 bombs used for training is now exhibited at The Kyoto Museum for World Peace,
Ritsumeikan University.
In 1965, the Japan Scientists Association was established to promote science based on theprinciples of independence, democracy and harmony. The association brought together
researchers and educators not only in the physical and natural science but also in the social
sciences and humanities. I joined the association in 1966, and became a board member
responsible for monitoring nuclear power policy. I learnt comprehensively about nuclear issues,
not only about the scientific and technological aspects but also the political, economic, social andcultural aspects of nuclear power policy. I was also educated by people in local communities
who invited me to their meetings on nuclear safety, and posed numerous questions that were far
outside my scientific expertise but were vital to the life of the community. These questions were
extremely difficult for me to answer. In 1972 I was invited to deliver a keynote speech at the first
symposium on nuclear power generation organized by the Science Council of Japan (JSC),
which is sometimes referred to as the parliament of Japanese scientists. JSC is in effect theofficial representative organization of Japanese scientists. Two hundred and ten members of JSC,
30 scientists in 7 different fields, were elected by a direct vote of some 300,000 scientists fromall over Japan. I was 32 years old at that time, and it was exceptional for a young scientist to
deliver a keynote address on such a critical issue.
I proposed six fundamental check points concerning the health of Japanese nuclear power policy.
These were (1) the independence of national energy policy; (2) development that placed safety
above economic growth; (3) a national nuclear power policy that would not devastate local
communities; (4) the prevention of military use of nuclear energy; (5) safety assurances toprotect nuclear power plant workers and residents, and proven safety measures to prevent severe
accidents; and (6) democracy of nuclear power administration. These points became leading
principles for the anti-nuclear power movement in Japan in the 1970s.
In 1973, I was one of ten specialists invited to address the National Diet on nuclear science andtechnology . I took this opportunity to sharply criticize government policy on nuclear power. I
was then an assistant lecturer in the Department of Radiological Health, in the Faculty of
Medicine at the University of Tokyo, which is a national university. I was a national government

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

36

employee who nevertheless criticized national nuclear policy. This resulted in academic
harassments, which I will mention below.
In September of 1973, I became deeply involved in the anti-nuclear power movement inFukushima together with people living in the vicinity of the nuclear power plants. The
Government held a public hearing on Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant No. 2. It was the first
official public hearing on nuclear power generation ever organized in Japan. But it was a typicalexample of “yarase”, meaning fakery or insincerity. The majority of speakers and the audienceat the public hearing were proponents of bringing nuclear power plants to Fukushima.
Nevertheless, I worked with scientists, lawyers and local residents to send delegates to thehearing to raise questions about the risks of nuclear power and to clarify the dangers of thenational nuclear policy. Through the efforts of anti-nuclear residents, I was nominated as adelegate to speak on their behalf. The most astonishing thing was a speech made by a pronuclear woman who was sent from the local community in the vicinity of the Fukushima Nuclear
Power Plants which are now in crisis. She said, “We need not fear bad effects from nuclear
radiation because the 1973 champion in the All Japan Senior High School Baseball Tournament
was from Hiroshima, the A-bombed city, where, it was once said, no grass or trees would growfor 75 years.” She seemed to suggest that radiation is not so harmful as feared by referring to theremarkable vitality of the young people who had grown up in an area devastated by a nuclear
weapon. Unfortunately, such unscientific storytelling had some effect on the public acceptanceof nuclear power.
Let me provide a brief history of nuclear power development in Japan. Immediately after the
Pacific War, electric power in Japan was primarily generated by hydro-electric power plants, andthe sole electric power company was “Japan Electric Power Generation and Supply Company”.
While Japan was virtually ruled by the U.S. Occupation Army, it acted indirectly through theJapanese Government with Emperor Hirohito as a nominal symbol of the unity of the Japanesepeople. In 1951, the U.S. divided the state-run Japan Electric Power Generation and Supply
Company into nine regional power companies including Tokyo Electric Company and Kansai
Electric Company. Many of the new companies, such as Kansai Electric Company which served
such big cities as Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto lacked sufficient hydro-electric power resources toprovide for the rapid development of the time. This made the company dependent upon thermal
power plants. These plants initially relied on coal produced in Japan, but the fuel soon shifted topetroleum, which rendered Japan dependent on U.S. energy strategy. Nuclear power
development in Japan likewise was based on accepting the offer of nuclear technology from the
U.S. and introducing nuclear power plants developed in the U.S.
Yet Japan is the only nation that has experienced nuclear holocaust as a result of the U.S. atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. More than 300,000 people died as a result of
nuclear weapons. But U.S. censors suppressed information about the terrible toll and after effectsof the atomic bombings. On March 1, 1954, a Japanese tuna fishing boat, named Lucky Dragon #5 was exposed to lethal levels of radioactive fallout produced by a U.S. hydrogen bomb test
carried out on the Bikini Atolls. The detonation yield of that bomb was 15 megatons, five times
as great as the total yield of bombs used in World War II including the two atomic bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1961, the U.S.S.R. conducted a hydrogen bomb test
nicknamed “Tsari Bomba” of 50 megatons. The 1950s and 60s were the peak periods of the
U.S.-U.S.S.R. nuclear arms race based on the strategic policy of nuclear deterrence and theAnzai: An Agenda for Peace Research after 3/11

37

acquisition of a balance of power, which finally resulted in a policy known as "Mutually Assured
Destruction" or MAD.
The Japanese anti-nuclear movement was ignited in 1954 in response to the March 1 U.S.
hydrogen bomb test in Bikini. Two days later, at the initiative of Nakasone Yasuhiro, later Prime
Minister, the Diet passed a budget of 235 million yen to build a nuclear reactor. The figure 235
came from uranium-235. The preceding year, Nakasone had taken part in a seminar held at
Harvard to promote the “Atoms for Peace” project within the framework of U.S.-Japan
cooperation. At that time, Shoriki Matsutaro, owner of the Yomiuri Newspaper Company,
organized a series of traveling expositions to popularize the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. In
1959 I saw one such exposition in Tokyo. It included an actual nuclear reactor.
But it is worth recalling that the first practical nuclear power plant of 5,000 kws was built andwent into operation in 1954 not in the U.S. but in Obnisk near Moscow. The U.S. Atomic Energy
Act prohibited private enterprises from taking part in nuclear energy exploitation until its
revision two months after the Soviet success in nuclear power generation. The U.S. then hastily
developed nuclear power generation by making use of a nuclear reactor system developed forsubmarines, and opened the Shippingport Nuclear Power Plant in 1957. In that year, a reportnamed WASH-740 and titled “Theoretical Possibilities and Consequences of Major Accidents in
Large Nuclear Power Plants” indicated the possible effects of a “maximum credible accident” as
3,400 deaths, 43,000 injuries and property damage of 7 billion dollars, more than double the sizeof Japan’s national budget in those days. About half a year later, The Price-Anderson Nuclear
Industries Indemnity Act decreed that private companies would be indemnified for any claims
above 12.6 billion dollars (as of 2011). The Act was an essential incentive for private nuclear
power. Four years later, a similar “Act for Indemnification of Nuclear Damage Compensation”
was enacted in Japan. It is obvious that the nuclear power industry cannot survive suchcatastrophic situations without such support.
In Japan, the connection between government and the electric power companies was further
strengthened by involving local government. “The Act on Tax for Promotion of Power
Resources Development” generated vast subsidies, up to several billion yen for 3 years, for local
governments that accepted a plan to build an electric power plant. Every contractor must pay
about 5 dollars (375 yen) per 1,000 kw-h of electric power consumed, creating approximately 50
billion dollars in tax income for local governments. The local community can be blessed with a
special subsidy for three years, but the infrastructure constructed subsequently requires costly
maintenance. In this way, a cycle begins in which more nuclear power plants are apt to be
invited.
Likewise, local residents were mobilized to promote nuclear power. For example, in Futaba
District, Fukushima Prefecture, where nuclear disaster is now occurring, an “Organization to
Building a Bright Futaba” was formed in the early 1970s. Its poster said “Let’s Promote
Construction of Nuclear Power Plant by Our ‘Power’ and Open the Way to an Affluent Futaba”.
People in the local communities thus joined a national mobilization for nuclear power.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

38

Needless to say, many nuclear engineering specialists werepressed to support the government’s views on the safety of
nuclear power. Journalism, rather than playing a critical role,disseminated illusions and myths that nuclear power
generation is safe and economical.
It is sometimes said that nuclear power generation in Japan
has been promoted by a “pentagon” consisting of the central
government, the nuclear power industry, local governments,
specialists and journalists. I personally feel that residents’organizations inviting nuclear power plants to local
communities should be added to this “pentagon”, thereby
forming a “hexagon” that is akin to the national mobilization
structure constructed during the war. This hexagon forms a“nuclear village” which is closed, exclusive and relentless. I
myself started student life as a member of this “nuclear
village” in the early 1960s, but I was ruthlessly ejected fromthe village in the 1970s when I was identified as a dangerous
critic of its policies.
After openly criticizing government nuclear policy in theearly 1970s, I experienced extraordinary harassment at the
University of Tokyo. I was excluded from the education
system, and my research budget was eliminated. Duringlecture tours to various parts of Japan I was often tailed by apower company staff in charge of watching me. No one waspermitted to talk to me from morning till evening. I
experienced various types of obstruction in applying for aposition at other colleges or universities.
I narrowly survived this very difficult time, first by mypersonal belief in life with dignity, second in solidarity with
understanding people in the fields of science and public
movements, and third, perhaps most importantly, through thesupport of my partner. Interestingly, the relationship with myboss slightly improved after the Three Mile Island accident inMarch 1979. He seemed to have understood that my warnings
about the risks of nuclear power generation were not entirely
false. But my position as an assistant lecturer remained frozen
for 17 years until 1986, when I moved from the University ofTokyo to Ritsumeikan University.

Posters of a pro-nuclear organizationin Fukushima promote nuclear
power. The first is a poster made by
the Science and Technology Agency
in 1970 criticizes anti-nuclear people
for having an “energy allergy.”

Radiation levels in different locations inFukushima. Figures are radiation
exposure rates expressed in microSieverts per hour. The ordinary level inTokyo is 0.06~0.07 micro-Sievert perhour. Shaded portion signifies the area
Now I would like to comment on the situation in the radiation where internal radiation dose between
disaster area of Fukushima. I visited the area three times (mid- 6 a.m. (March 12) and 0 a.m. (March
24) may have reached 100 milli-Sievert
April, early May, and early August) after the accident ofaccording to an estimate by the System
March 11th to visit friends with whom I have been working
for the Prediction of Environment
for a nuclear-risk-free community for about 40 years, toEmergency Dose Information(SPEEDI).
deliver several lectures for educators, citizens, workers, youngAnzai: An Agenda for Peace Research after 3/11

39

mothers and specialists, to offer advice on radiation protection, and to measure radiation levels
and sample soils contaminated with radioactive substances.

The radiation levels have been and still
are very high in nearby areas and within
so-called hot spots, even in Fukushima
City populated by about 280,000
residents some 60 km from the nuclear
power plant. I conducted a radiation
survey between Iwaki City and Namie
Town, about 80 km apart, whose results
are shown below. The radiation exposure
rate was about 0.5 μSv/h in Iwaki, but it
gradually rose up to 20, 30, or even to 50
μSv/h northwest of the nuclear power
plant.
Donating a survey meter to an NGO

Radiation levels in Fukushima City differ
from place to place, but, on average, thecurrent exposure rate is about 1 micro-Sievert per hour at a height of 1 meter above ground,which is roughly equivalent to 150-200 chest X-ray examinations per year.
The major cause of external radiation exposure is radioactive cesium-137 deposited on the
ground. The total amount of cesium-137 released from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants has
been estimated to be about 168 times greater than that released by the Hiroshima A-bomb,
according to the evaluation by the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry (METI). Most ofthese radioactive substances now deposited on the ground were released during the first week
after the hydrogen gas explosions in the plant, with quite small amounts of radioactivity freshly
coming down in recent days. It is noteworthy that radioactive cesium is highly absorbed inseveral centimeters of surface soil. In cooperation with Ms. Tanigawa Yoshiko, in early August I
verified that cesium-137 does not easily dissolve in water, even when contaminated soil is
washed with large quantities of water. This property is peculiar to the clay-like soil in
Fukushima. This soil quality is the main reason why the levels of radioactive contamination ofrice cropped this autumn in Fukushima were quite low. It also suggests that rainfall will noteasily wash out radioactive cesium, and why sunflower may not effectively decontaminate thesoil in Fukushima.
Therefore, in order to reduce radiation levels above the ground, it is quite effective to remove
only a few centimeters of the surface soil layer. During my second visit to Fukushima in May, I
conducted an experiment in a kindergarten in Fukushima City to demonstrate the effectiveness of
surface soil clearance. The radiation level was remarkably lowered by removing just 2~3
centimeters of surface soil. The administrators of the kindergarten removed the contaminatedsurface soil thereafter, making it possible to have an outdoor event for children in early October.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster40

We must carry out every possible measure toprotect people, especially young children, fromharmful ionizing radiation nuclear power
accidents. In Kyoto, electric power is generated
by nuclear power plants only 60 kilometers fromthis conference venue. There are 14 nuclear
power plants in Fukui Prefecture just adjacent to
Kyoto, and vast amounts of high-level
radioactive waste has already been accumulated.
Future generations will have to isolate suchdangerous nuclear waste over thousands of years.
They will be required to expend huge resource todispose of nuclear waste, which will produce novalue for them. Even as we enjoy the fruits ofnuclear power today, we are going to leave atremendous “negative fortune” to our children,
grandchildren, and future generations over tensof thousands of year. We must ask ourselves
whether this is ethically justifiable.
I will conclude by raising several agenda items
for peace researchers after 3/11. Based on mypersonal experience as a nuclear scientist
specializing in radiation protection over 45 years
and also as a peace researcher who has been
confronting these unprecedented difficulties, I
would like to suggest the following 5 points:(1) Regarding the definition of peace, I

Professor Anzai removing surface soil in akindergarten. The graph shows a sharp reduction in fundamentally agree with Dr. Johan Galtung, andunderstand peace not only as an “absence ofradiation exposure rate by soil clearance.
(horizontal axis: radius in meter)war” but also as an “absence of violence” which

can be categorized into direct violence, structural
violence and cultural violence. Although the enormous scale of the earthquake itself and theaccompanying tsunami were of natural origin, we still observed a number of incidents ofstructural and cultural violence which aggravated the damage and pain of the sufferers in thedevastated areas. It is the role of peace researchers to explain how the effects of an originalnatural disaster are further aggravated by interconnections of structural and/or cultural violence.
(2) An urgent agenda for several decades to come is to construct a comprehensive aid system forthe people in disaster areas by integrating useful potentiality in politics, administration,
economics, science, technology, and culture, including efforts toward decontamination of theliving environment, adequate control of radioactive contamination of foods, dissemination ofliteracy about radiation and radioactivity for eradicating social discrimination and prejudiceagainst sufferers, and establishment of a health check system to find and treat stochastic effectsof radiation such as cancers and leukemia in the earliest stages. In order to integrate individual
efforts into an effective total system, a peace-oriented coordination system must be established.

Anzai: An Agenda for Peace Research after 3/11

41(3) An agenda for peace research suggested from my personal experience in academic life is todevelop a method to sense dangerous social signs in the earliest stage, including signs in thefields of structural and/or cultural violence such as academic harassment, irrational policy
execution without sincere attitude toward science, and destruction of democracy,. It may be
helpful to develop some indicators such as the Global Peace Index, which was originated by theInstitute for Economics and Peace (UK), or the Universal Human Rights Index of the UN Officeof the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Such an indicator may help to warn people of thislatent danger.
(4) Another peace research agenda is to elucidate the story of the Fukushima tragedy not only
from the short-term point of view but also from a long-term perspective in world history. Efforts
should be made to clarify the direct and indirect reasons why such a catastrophic nuclear disasteroccurred in Japan by comprehensively analyzing and synthesizing historical facts in the light of,for example, subordination of Japanese politics to U.S. strategy in the postwar period and oldfashioned Japanese politics involving a taxation system for promoting nuclear power while
manipulating public opinion. Lessons from such research may contribute to a more peaceful andsafer future.
(5) Finally I propose an agenda that relates to the peace of future generations. This concerns
radioactive waste disposal. How can we deal with consensus building about the acceptability oftechnologies, which may leave a massive “negative legacy”, such as the very long-lived nuclear
waste which involves tremendous cost but produces no value for future generations? Peace
researchers should be expected to answer the question: Is it ethically acceptable for us to enjoy
nuclear energy in our lifetime while leaving behind hard-to-estimate risks to future generations
with no possibility of obtaining their consent?
Anzai Ikuro authored a number of books on
nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s,
including Nuclear Power Generation in
Japan (1974), Nuclear Power and theEnvironment (1975), Radioactivity in the
Body (1979), Handbook of a Nuclear
Power Plant Accident (1980). His recent
books on nuclear energy issues include
Fukushima Power Plant Accident,
published by Kamogawa Shuppan in 2011.
This article is an abbreviated version of a
Keynote Speech at the Opening Session of
the 2011 International Conference of the Asia-Pacific Peace Research Association.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

42“Bringing the Plight of Fukushima Children to the UN, Washington and the World”
Aileen Mioko Smith with Mark Selden
October 10, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Aileen_Mioko-Smith/3615
Aileen Mioko Smith is the executive director of Green Action, a Japanese citizens’organization (NGO) working to end nuclear power in Japan. Following the Fukushimadisaster, governments and international organizations became more receptive to themessage of Green Action and other anti-nuclear groups (like Stop Tomari and Beyond
Nuclear). This article explains the mission of these groups, which is typical of anti-nuclear
activists in Japan. It profiles several individuals who traveled to the U.S.A. to spread theirmessage, arguing that nuclear power must be phased out around the world.
Anti-nuclear groups are outraged, in particular, by the risk of radiation from nuclear
power plants, by the abundant misinformation disseminated about these risks, and by
Japanese government irresponsibility about needless exposure to radiation at Fukushima.
For instance, anti-nuclear groups compare the evacuations of Chernobyl and Fukushima.
In 1986 an explosion and fire in a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine released large
amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. Although the Soviet government evacuatedresidents near Chernobyl when radiation levels reached 1-5 millisieverts (mSv) per year, as
this was the level determined to be dangerous to humans, Japan has only ordered
evacuations in areas where levels exceed 20 mSv/year. The anti-nuclear groups maintainthat much of the public remains misinformed about the continuing danger they face, andthey are striving to remedy this. Smith explains several of the health dangers of radiation
exposure, including cancer, heart disease and birth defects. Smith and her colleagues argue
that not only is a wider evacuation area necessary, but also, to prevent future disasters, allnuclear reactors must be shut down.

Smith and Selden: Bringing the Plight of Fukushima Children to the UN, Washington and the World

43

Bringing the Plight of Fukushima Children to the UN, Washington and the World
Aileen Mioko Smith with Mark Selden
Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action Kyoto speaks with Mark Selden in New York about recent
developments in Fukushima and the US tour by anti-nuclear activists from Fukushima and otherparts of Japan.
“75% of Fukushima’s 300,000 children are going to schools that are so contaminated they would
be radiation control areas in nuclear plants where individuals under 18 are not legally allowed.
The Japanese government won’t evacuate people unless radiation levels are four times what
triggered evacuation in Chernobyl,” Aileen Mioko Smith pointed out.
The Fukushima earthquake tsunami nuclear power meltdown of March 11 opened the way for a
far-reaching debate in Japan, the US and globally that could lead to rethinking the risks ofradiation, the viability of nuclear power, and even to its elimination in some countries.
When UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced that the UN would convene a high-levelmeeting on nuclear energy and security, Aileen Mioko Smith was meeting in Hokkaido with
Izumi Kaori of Stop Tomari, the citizens group campaigning to prevent reopening of thedangerous nuclear power plant. They decided on the spot:“We’ve got to go to Washington and New York to tell the world about the urgent threat ofnuclear contamination unleashed by the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown, the special
danger to children, the lies told by the nuclear power industry and the Japanese government, andthe urgent need to close the world’s most dangerous nuclear power plants.”
Together with organic farmers Sato Sachiko of Fukushima and her two children, Anzai Sachiko,an organic farmer near Tomari, and Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond
Nuclear who visited Fukushima, they have carried the urgent message that nuclear power plants
must be closed in light of the disasters from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. And
that the Fukushima disaster presents an extraordinary opportunity to halt nuclear power not onlyin Germany and Italy where governments have taken prompt action, but in Japan, the UnitedStates and elsewhere.
Arriving in Washington on the six month anniversary of the March 11 Fukushima Daiichi
meltdown, they have addressed the National Press Club, the US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, and the United Nations Human Rights Commission, as well as participating in an
action at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant just 38 miles north of New York City. Theircentral messages to the American and to the Japanese people:• Save the children of Fukushima and Northeast Japan• End nuclear power everywhere drawing on the lessons of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl
and Fukushima• Asylum for Fukushima refugees: help both in Japan and abroad.
• UN stop promoting nuclear power.
Given American and global concern about the Fukushima disaster and the future of nuclear
power, they were able to gain attention in Washington. Media ranging from CNN as well as
NHK and Kyodo News of Japan carried the messages they delivered first to the National PressPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

44

Club and subsequently to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission where they also received briefings
on nuclear safety. The latter was particularly important since the NRC had called on all US
citizens living within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant toleave. The Japanese government concerned about the costs of evacuating Fukushima city limited
its evacuation to 20 kilometers with only additional evacuation of areas with expected annual
dose of radiation of 20 millisievert or higher, including some hot spots outside that limit. In
Chernobyl, citizens living in areas contaminated between 1 and 5 mSv/year received government
aid if they wished to resettle.
Precisely the cavalier attitude of the Japanese government, above all its decision to risk thehealth of infants and children by limiting evacuation to 20 kilometers, has led campaigners tocall for learning from the people of Fukushima, not the Japanese government. And its corollary,pointedly expressed by organic farmer Sato Sachiko: “the lesson is that once it happens, it’s too
big for anyone to deal with. The only solution is to prevent it from happening by closing nuclear
power plants.” In August, the Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation, Green
Action and four other Japanese NGOs submitted a report to the UN Office of the HighCommissioner for Human Rights describing the Japanese government’s violation of the humanrights of Fukushima children and urging
the UN come to Japan to investigate thesituation.
In New York City they carried theirmessage to the United Nations anddemonstrated in Dag Hammerskjold
Plaza. As Japan’s Prime Minister Noda
Yoshihiko emerged from his speech on
nuclear safety and security, where hestated his expectation that Japan would
complete cold shutdown of all thereactors that continue to spew radiation
into the air and sea, Sato Sachiko, who
was addressing a rally outside shouted:“Save the children! You must not lie toSato Sachiko (left) with Smith
the world about things getting better.
How can you talk about safe nuclear
power when the Japanese government can’t even protect the children of Fukushima!”
The group’s next stop was the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant just 36 miles from New York
City. “When we met with US officials,” Ms Sato commented, “they said they would learn fromthe lessons of Fukushima. They talked about taking necessary measures out to 50 miles in theevent of disaster. But now that I’ve been here, I realize that there is no possible evacuation planfor the 20 million people within 50 miles of the Indian Point plant.

Smith and Selden: Bringing the Plight of Fukushima Children to the UN, Washington and the World45

As the Japanese delegates pointed out,
the most urgent issue concerns the
300,000 children of Fukushima, above
all those living in radiation hot spots bothin Fukushima and beyond. The heart ofthe matter is the Japanese government’s
evacuation policy. Following themeltdown, Japan established a twentykilometer evacuation zone from theIndian Point Nuclear Power Plant
plant, evacuating approximately 36,000
people out of Fukushima’s total
population of just over 2 million. Including those who evacuated within the prefecture but
outside the twenty kilometer zone, the number is still only a little larger than ten percent of the
400,000 plus evacuated from Chernobyl after the 1986 disaster which turned 2,000 villages into
ghost towns. [See Fujioka Atsushi, Understanding the Ongoing Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima:
A “Two-Headed Dragon” Descends into the Earth’s Biosphere.]
To minimize the number of evacuees, the Japanese government arbitrarily raised the permissiblelevel of annual radiation exposure from one millisievert to twenty mSv, a figure that is being
applied not only to adults but to infants and pregnant women, those most vulnerable to radiation.
By contrast, following Chernobyl, the Russian and Belorussian states evacuated everyone inlocalities with five mSv. A quarter of a century later, the evacuated areas remain uninhabitable, aprospect that could confront Fukushima if recent official projections prove accurate.
How high a radiation level is twenty mSv/year? The Japanese government has legallycompensated Japanese nuclear power plant workers who contracted cancer from as low as
5.2mSv exposure and higher. Now a substantially higher level of supposed safety (20 mSv) is tobe applied to citizens, including infants and children in Japan. Indeed, the Japanese Ministry of
Education (MEXT), choosing a strategy of reassurance over one of protection, produced a guidefor teachers and parents in Fukushima which claimed that “weak” radiation doses such as 250
mSv over a number of years will have no health effects, and increased cancer risk was notrecognized with cumulative doses of under 100 mSv. [Say-Peace Project, “Protecting Children
Against Radiation: Japanese Citizens Take Radiation Protection into Their Own Hands.”]
Much of the discussion of the risk of radiation has centered on cancer. That is indeed an
important concern. But the effects of cancer are played out over decades and it is frequently
difficult to conclusively pinpoint the cause. What have been the short-term health effects of the
Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns?
“With the Japanese government in general, and the Fukushima medical establishment inparticular providing no comprehensive statistical health data, indeed, insisting that there are no
health concerns, it is presently necessary to rely on evidence provided by Fukushima residents,”
Smith explains. “These include numerous examples provided by parents who have challenged
MEXT and Fukushima authorities demanding evacuation for the children. For example, there
have been numerous reports of serious nose bleeding and of diarrhea that cannot be stopped . . .
and not just in children. There have also been numerous examples of symptoms of atopic skindiseases and asthma getting worse after the accident.”Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster46

We know, moreover, that the immediate effects of the Chernobyl disaster included elevatedlevels of numerous diseases including heart disease as well as birth normalities and stillbirths.
[See introduction to Chris Busby, “Fukushima Children at Risk of Heart Disease.”]While the people of Fukushima and Japan’s Northeast face serious problems of health,evacuation, and long-term economic disaster, the potential for positive change in the wake of themultiple disasters and especially the Fukushima meltdown now exists. Today just 11 of Japan’s
nuclear power plants are operating and those that are closed require stress tests before they canreopen. [Note: Following the interview, one more plant was closed pending testing. This
presently leaves just 10 in operation.] Since March 11 just one of the closed plants, thedangerous plant at Tomari in Hokkaido has reopened, and it is the subject of an active campaign
to Stop Tomari.
Most important, the entire public dialogue has shifted with growing criticism of nuclear powerand support for rapid development of renewable energy in the wake of passage of a renewableenergy law which establishes a Feed-in Tariff system requiring power companies to purchaselocally produced energy. Moreover, Japanese capital, led by businessman Son Masayoshi, hasawakened to the potential of renewable energy as the next major frontier for Japanese industry.
Finally, the fact that Japan succeeded in conserving energy to avert a serious power shortage
with the majority of its nuclear plants closed makes clear the possibility for moving beyond
nuclear power to renewable energy in future.
Aileen Mioko Smith, Executive Director, Green Action based in Kyoto, has been working toeliminate Japan’s nuclear power reactors since 1983. See this link for updates on the Fukushima
Nuclear Power Plant earthquake and tsunami crisis. This interview was conducted in New York
City on September 24, 2011. Smith is co-author with W. Eugene Smith of Minamata: Words andPhotographs.
Mark Selden is a coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal.

Segawa: After The Media Has Gone

47

“After The Media Has Gone: Fukushima, Suicide and the Legacy of 3.11”
Makiko SEGAWA
May 7, 2012
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Makiko-Segawa/3752
This article focuses on two groups of people most affected by the Fukushimadisaster, the local residents of nearby cities and the nuclear power plant workers. Theinterviews discussed here show citizens who are still skeptical of nuclear power plants andwary of returning to their homes; others have decided to return but are concerned about
their safety.
One nuclear worker, describing the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO’s)
position on contaminated water, invokes the longstanding concept of “honne” (honest
feelings) and “tatemae” (polite face), suggesting that he feels conflicted about the story
being told to others. This is reminiscent of Aileen Mioko Smith’s observation that theJapanese Ministry of Education employed “a strategy of reassurance over one ofprotection” in the pamphlet it created to guide teachers’ discussions of the disaster in theirclasses. But while some locals are concerned about the widespread denial about thedangers of low-dosage radiation exposure, others are reassured that the plants are safe
simply because people are working there without visible harm. Further, public officials
continue to suggest that conditions are safe in areas where this is likely not the case. In
some schoolrooms, the danger of radiation exposure has become a taboo subject although
it was freely discussed before.
Segawa begins the article by tracing changes in media coverage of the region. The
Fukushima disaster was unsurprisingly followed by a flood of media coverage, which
waned in the latter half of 2011, but renewed as the one-year anniversary of thecatastrophe approached. After March 2012, there was a dramatic drop-off in media
coverage; a significant increase now is unlikely, although they will continue to acknowledge
the anniversary every March. The decrease in news about the Fukushima area has lowered
scrutiny of local governments; as a result of this diminished oversight, Segawa argues, themandatory evacuation zone was radically reduced in size. One city that reopened as aresult of this change was Minami-soma, the focus of the article.
The daily lives of citizens are affected in various ways. Local people argue that theincidence of crimes such as rape has risen since March and they believe the temporary
workers brought in to work in the stricken nuclear plans are to blame. Segawa also
discusses suicide; while the official figures show no dramatic increase since the disaster,
Segawa brings up the possibility that information has been suppressed to prevent panic.
Segawa implicitly raises the theme of the responsibility of the media to keep an eye
on public safety and to discover and report the truth, as the mere skepticism of the public,
rampant as it may be, is not enough to shape public policy.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

48

After The Media Has Gone: Fukushima, Suicide and the Legacy of 3.11
Makiko SEGAWA
For the media, time is of the essence in a news story. The March 11, 2011 disaster attracted
thousands of reporters and photographers from around the world. There was a brief deluge ofJapanese and international media coverage on the first anniversary, this spring. Now thejournalists have packed up and gone and by accident or design Japan’s government seems to be
mobilizing its agenda, aware that it is under less scrutiny.
The press pack has disappeared like a ghost since this April. The influx of foreign media hassuddenly stopped, as I can attest since I worked as a translator and aid to many foreign
journalists in the year up to the 3.11 anniversary in 2012. Using the keywords ‘Fukushima’ and‘nuclear plant’ in Japanese to scour the Nikkei TELECOM 21 search engine shows 9,981
domestic news items in April 2012, just over half the 17,272 stories the previous month.
As if to take advantage of the precise timing of the media evacuation, the municipal governmentof Minami-soma city, Fukushima Prefecture began implementing a blueprint planned some timeearlier. In the dead of night on Monday April 16th, the city lifted the no-entry regulations andchanged evacuation zone designations that had stood since March 12, 2011. The decision
allowed people to return to the district of Odaka and some parts of the Haramachi district.
Watanabe Ichie, a volunteer from Tokyo whowitnessed the scene near the roadblock into the zone
observed that: “several police vehicles with flashing
red lights arrived after 23:00 on April 15th. By 0:15,
all the vehicles had gone”. “After that, all thatremained was the light from the traffic signals.” Thefollowing morning, cars moved freely inside the onceprohibited area.
Mayor Sakurai’s Drive to Reopen Minami-Soma

Map showing 20 kilometer evacuation zone
and neighboring towns

The home of Minami-soma’s mayor, Sakurai
Katsunobu, is located in the newly reopened part ofHaramachi. He has often complained about what hecalls the irrational policy of the government,
calculating the exclusion zone by distance rather than
the spread of radiation. A former dairy farmer and apassionate booster of the region, he is attached to his
land and desperate to quicken the reconstruction of his
devastated city, despite the risks.

The 56-year-old mayor has been single all his life and has no children. In interviews, he tends todownplay the risk of radiation. In the first week of May 2011, he even joked: “Fukushima is not
the same as Hiroshima or Nagasaki. No one even knows for sure how many people died as aresult of the Chernobyl disaster. Regardless of radiation, the cancer rate in our world is quite
high. Yet people appear to be afraid of radiation, which is like a ghost that never appears.”

Segawa: After The Media Has Gone49

The city reopened the no-entry zone in May, insisting that radiation levels in Odaka and someparts of Haramachi had fallen enough to be safe. However, some residents are unhappy with thisdecision. Shibaguchi Takashi (42), a former acupuncturist and the father of a 6-year-old daughter
Nana, refuses to return to his home inside the former exclusion zone, preferring his temporary
accommodation. “The city says that the radiation level is completely safe, but when myneighbors checked the radiation level under the eaves of my house, it was over two
microsieverts.” (henceforth, μSv) He added: “I am sure that radioactive materials released
immediately after the explosion are unchanged on the leaking roof. I believe it is too dangerous
to go back there.”
Even if it were safe, Odaka has other problems: “There is no reconstruction of public facilities
and infrastructure, and I wonder how we can make a living there.” There is also growing anxiety
over the compensation process among evacuees inside the newly liberated zone. Does this meanthat compensation is going to be halted, as manyfear?
On April 21st, with cherry blossoms in fullbloom in Minami-soma, I was shown aroundOdaka and parts of Haramachi by 73-year-old
Otome Takao, the head of a group of local
volunteers and owner of a business hotel called“Rokkaku” near a former security check point.
The roadblocks were gone and I saw many cars
going back and forth inside the area. Lots ofpolice cars were patrolling – neighbors said thatas soon as the security check points were lifted,
thieves began sneaking into houses.

Cherry blossoms in Minami-soma

The area is like a wasteland. There is almost nolife, most facilities are closed, the shopping street is dead and everything has basically frozen intime since March 11, 2011.
In many places, water is leaking as the tsunami
and earthquake shifted the ground. Debris fromthe disaster is scattered everywhere, and houses,
shrines and infrastructure are badly damaged. By
contrast, the cherry trees were in full bloom as if
nothing was wrong, regardless of the chaoscaused by contamination and radiation.
Some residents, including small children wholooked to be under 10 years old were cleaning up
the streets in front of their houses from the mudand vegetation washed up by the Tsunami. Near
Odaka under mountains of debris one year after the the coastline, others were clearing out the mud
earthquake
from houses that had been partially swallowed
up by the water.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

50

April is a symbolic month in Japan because thousands of students enter new schools. Somepublic schools in the city that were closed amidst fears of high radiation are now able to reopen,
based on the results of the local governmental
reports on decontamination.
But Miura Bansyo, a Buddhist priest and antinuclear activist, has disputed government claims
that schools are safe. He and other members of
his NGO confirmed radiation of 2 – 9 uSv perhour at a number of spots on the school routearound the Ishigami Daiichi Elementary School
in February 2012. Disregarding his warnings, theelementary school was reopened on February
27th, accommodating hundreds of pupils.
Growing concern about the health risks for
Odaka-Shrine--deformed by the earthquake
children aside, residents of the city appear to beleading ordinary lives. At Yonomori Park, themost popular site for “Hanami” viewing in the city, about a dozen children played in the sandunder the beautiful cherry blossom on April 21th – admittedly a much smaller number thanusual.
Suzuki Tokiko (64), who lives near the park,detected 0.97 uSv per hour there with her own
dosimeter on April 20th. When she informed thecity, she says they responded that “The radiationlevel is low and you can enjoy cherry blossom
viewing without problems.”
After the crisis began on April 19th, 2011, theMinistry of Education, Culture, Sports, Scienceand Technology announced that the amount ofradiation a child can be exposed to in one year is
20 millisieverts. This figure is 20 times higher
Children at play at Yonomori Park, April 21, 2012 than the former exposure ceiling of 1 millisievertat the peak of cherry blossom viewing
per year.
Despite growing concern about the health of children, an experts-panel commissioned by the
Cabinet last December 15th rubber-stamped the 20-millisievert cap for exposure per year. The
report said, “the risk to health, compared to other cancer-promoting factors, is low. Smoking
contains a risk equivalent to 1000-2000 millisieverts, obesity 200-500 millisieverts, and lack ofvegetables and passive smoking is equal to 100-200 millisieverts.”1
Dr. Koide Hiroaki, assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Nuclear Reactor ExperimentResearch Center, criticized those standards in a discussion with the author in January: “Japan is
supposed to be a law-abiding country. So, legally, we should not expose ordinary people to morethan 1 millisievert a year”, he said. He explained, “I am considered ‘a radiation worker’ since I
work at a radiation research laboratory at Kyoto University. The upper limit of radiation
exposure per year for me is 20 millisieverts as I am paid in accordance to my exposure toSegawa: After The Media Has Gone

51

radiation. Only those with such specialized jobs are allowed exposure to that level of radiationand if they exceed the cap, they have to leave their jobs.”“The government is pushing this standard on ordinary people, including children. That is a very
high exposure level that goes beyond the imagination,” he said angrily.
A fifth grader (age 11) at Haramachi Daisan Elementary School, alluded to the fact that, among
those who remained in the city, radiation has become the elephant in the room. “Now, no one
talks about radiation. Teachers used to talk about it but it has stopped since 3 months ago. I no
longer hear anything about it.”He reported that 21 students have returned to his class, down from 30 before March 11. He lives
in the city with his father, his mother having fled to Hiroshima with his 1-year-old sister. The
boy innocently disclosed that his parents’ marriage is probably on the rocks because his mum has
found a new boyfriend in Hiroshima. Indeed, marriages have been strained by the divisions since
3.11.
Apart from lifting the no-go zone in Odaka and parts of Haramachi, the city government plans tostart “disaster area reconstruction support tours”, as early as June. The city wants to bring backtourists and is even planning to allow people to experience nuclear hazards by providing themwith dosimeters, a city official said.
Spring, Sakura and Suicide
In the beautiful season of spring, under a bed of Sakura petals, there is a hidden facet of life herethat the Japan media and the state do little to publicize — the surging suicide rate amongevacuees.
Local counselors in northeast Japan agree that suicide cases among the evacuees in temporary
houses is rising due to their isolated and hopeless situation after being evacuated from theircommunities.
The National Police Agency (NPA) announced in January, however, that the three disasteraffected prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima boasted a record-low suicide rate in thedecade until 2011. Citing the NPA, the Mainichi newspaper on January 11th reported suicide
figures for the year 2011: Iwate (400), Miyagi (483) and Fukushima (525). The national averagefor the year per prefecture was 652. In 2010, the figure for suicides in Iwate was 467, in Miyagi
620 and in Fukushima 540.2
However, many people in the devastated areas are suspicious of the official statistics. Has thegovernment fabricated the figure to avoid panic? Why is the suicide rate in Tohoku so low
despite the fact that articles even in the mainstream media have highlighted the problem ofsuicides in temporary housing?
Domae Syogo, who heads a local NGO called “Kyodo-No-Tsudoi Net” in Iwaki city, 40 kms
from the radiation exclusion zone, does not believe the government’s figure. He reports that atleast 50 people have taken their own lives in temporary houses in Iwaki city. The elderly are themost vulnerable. “In most cases, the evacuees live in isolation and lack communication withothers. They choose to die by starvation, refusing to eat.” Domae himself has been a witness toinspections conducted after the suicide of an evacuee.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

52

Domae says that the official suicide figures have been fabricated to save face. “Nobody in thebureaucracy wants to take responsibility for the deaths of these people. In order to conceal theirfault, police and city officials press hard for cover-ups, such as by classifying the suicides asaccidents or death from sickness.”
Suicide cases are expected to grow. Dr. Noda Fumitaka, a psychiatrist at Yotsuya Yui Clinic in
Tokyo, explains why. “In the first year after the disaster, people do not have enough room toconsider their own psychological health as they are striving so hard to restore their material lives
to where they were before the disaster. What they lost returns to them with the strongest impact
at around the first-year anniversary.”“Mental care, especially during this crucial period is vital and we need to take care of thesepeople,” he stresses. At the same time, the number of volunteers coming to Fukushima andnortheast Japan has plummeted and many volunteer groups face bankruptcy and the shutdown of
their activities for want of donations and staff.
A Crime Wave in the Wake of Disaster
Behind the doors, in Iwaki city, there is another story that rarely appears openly in the media.
Violent crimes conducted by nuclear workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Iwaki city is the staging area for workers from the plant. Every three months, hundreds of new
faces have been coming to the city in rotation; the average period that a worker can work on site
is about three months due to the cap on radiation exposure.
Local people near Iwaki’s downtown area complain that the atmosphere and security in theirdistrict has changed dramatically for the worse because of these workers. On January 12th, when
I tried to tour the entertainment areas of the city’s downtown at around 9 p.m., three female highschool students stopped me. “Never go there alone,” they warned. There have been so many
rapes in the Tamachi district because stressed-out nuclear workers have been attacking girls!”
One of the girls, 16-year-old Kikuchi Maki, told me the story about an incident involving her 19year-old friend last April. She said her friend was raped by a man who looked like a nuclear
worker in a back alley when she was alone after saying goodbye to her friends downtown
between 1:00-2:00 a.m. Although she reported the rape, a policeman in his fifties refused toaccept her complaint and sent her home. The three girls said that such rapes were unheard of
before 3.11. They have become very cautious even during daytime, avoiding visiting thedowntown district alone.
That story is likely the tip of the iceberg. In Iwaki’s entertainment district, there are many similar
stories and rumors of rape by nuclear workers whose victims include young hostesses and eventhe elderly manager of a bar. Alongside the rape cases, Mr. Saito a local resident in his early
thirties who works at the Fukushima Daiichi plant tells of a friend who was beaten up by four orfive unfamiliar people who spoke the Kyushu dialect. He said the assault, which took place one
late night last August after a friend’s wedding, was carried out with a wooden sword andrequired hospitalization. Saito is sure that the assaulters were nuclear workers.
According to the testimony of residents in the downtown area, nuclear workers have become
quieter since last August partly because their companies have slapped a curfew at their hotels
after 21:00 and also because temporary houses were built last August to accommodate them.

Segawa: After The Media Has Gone

53

When I searched for articles on “Rape” and “Iwaki” from the period of March 11th, 2011 totoday, I found not a single result. Yet local people claim that these crimes have occurred.
Fujinami Keiko, a mother of a high school girl, explained why journalists have not publicizedthese cases: “The Japanese media do not want to escalate the confrontation against TEPCO, amajor sponsor, by picking up on the crimes of their subcontracted workers.”
In Hirono, which hosts the J-Village temporary crisis center, some residents believe that nuclear
workers were responsible for a string of thefts inside the red zone. The owner of an inn that
accommodates dozens of these workers confided: “I am sure that the thefts have been done by
the nuclear workers. In my inn, I see many suspicious people with tattoos and so on.” Rumors
are also rife about yakuza who enter the red zone to steal new cars and even expensive pets.
” A nuclear worker who was in charge of supervising the construction site under Kajima
Construction company commented: “The thieves are ‘nuclear workers’. Putting the entry-permit
issued by TEPCO on the front window of a car means that any nuclear worker can easily pass the
security checkpoint. It is very hard to catch them.” In fact, there has not been a single news story
about the arrest of nuclear workers for theft within the prohibited zone.
On the one hand, such charges may express the inclination of local people to blame crime onoutsiders. On the other hand, we know from places like Okinawa that a concentration of men
constrained to tough discipline and stressful working conditions might provoke such crimes. And
Fukushima Daiichi has indeed become another war front.
Young Nuclear Workers at Risk
Another aspect of the Daiichi story has not been adequately discussed: the growing number ofyoung nuclear subcontract workers. Approximately half of the workers at the plant since lastAugust are aged 19-35. A radiation expert who has checked hundreds of workers for a major
construction company told me that young workers are favored because they can endure
physically demanding tasks like lifting heavy objects and climbing heights.
"Older laborers are not useful at all,” a radiation expert said. A 33-year-old nuclear worker incharge of treating the contaminated water at the Daiichi plant indicated that the number of young
workers from across Japan has rapidly increased since last summer. “It is double the pay of anormal construction job,” he said. “They make themselves believe that everything will be allright since others the same age are already there".
High unemployment in rural areas appears to be playing a role in boosting the numbers of young
nuclear workers. Last December, at newly constructed temporary houses in J-Village, Hirono
town, I met dozens of young nuclear workers aged 19-23, originally from Niigata prefecture.
They said that they came to Fukushima Daiichi because there was no work at home.
Since the 3.11 memorial event in March, newspaper and TV coverage of nuclear issues andnuclear workers have sharply declined. Will they too be forgotten as the government and TEPCO
align their agenda?
Continuous Dumping of Contaminated Water
Possibly angry at this situation, on April 21st a 62-year-old nuclear worker broke the silence on
the continued leakage of contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi. Speaking to me, herequested anonymity for fear of losing his job. He supervises a construction site aimed atPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster54

building a new facility to extract radioactive materials such as cesium and strontium from thecontaminated water used to cool the plant’s crippled reactors. He revealed that the current
facility removes only cesium and that other radioactive materials such as strontium cannot becleaned up.
He expressed astonishment at the scale of the cleanup operation. “You know how muchcontaminated water is stored at the Fukushima Daiichi site? It is 200,000 tons. It is an enormous
amount!” “In reality,” he said, raising his voice, "it is impossible to store that much water on site.
So, it is obvious that some of the contaminated water has been leaked into the ocean.”TEPCO announced on March 26th, 2012 that approximately 120 tons of water had leaked from atreatment pipe, forcing them to halt operating the treatment facility. Thi was the second time in
two weeks that contaminated water leaked from the nuclear power plant.3
After being used to cool the reactors, the water contains massive amounts of radioactive
substances and is put into the water-processing facility so it can be recycled for use as a coolant.
“Everyone there knows that the amount of water is huge but does not speak about it. Anyone
who works there understands that nothing can be done except to leak the water!” he stressed.
"Everyone criticizes North Korea for its missiles. But what about Japanese morality? The
contamination will spread all over the world, reaching to Kamchatka, Hawaii and the U.S. soon,”he added.
Toward the end of our conversation, he said, “You know, in Japan, there is ‘honne’ (honest
feeling) and ‘tatemae’ (polite-face). “Our tatemae is that we are doing our utmost to stop theleakage of contamination, and our honnne is that we are dumping massive amounts ofcontaminated water into the ocean.”
After hearing his testimony, on April 25th I watched Japan’s Nippon TV special program,"Continued Days of Inspection: The Safety of Tap Water.” The program focused on the efforts
made by the Water Bureau of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to deal with concerns overradioactive materials in the water. Officials spoke while the screen showed TV crews at thebureau’s site examining the cleanup of radioactive materials. A mother of small children who
refuses to drink tap water and instead buys bottled water appeared as a consumer representative.
The water official held a lump of soil taken from the water facility and said: “Even though wefound 38 becquerels of cesium per kilogram, this is below government standards. So, we cansafely drink the water.” The announcer stated that the Tokyo Water Bureau updates its water
examination every day on their website.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in December announced a new standard for safe
drinking water of 10 becquerels of cesium per kilogram. The ministry had previously set a
provisional standard of 200 becquerels per kilogram (cesium), 300 bec (iodine), 20 bec(uranium) and 1 bec (plutonium) for drinking water, according to the official press release on
March 17th.4
At the end of the program, a young male announcer concluded saying, “I have an impression that
there is still a gap between the endeavors of the water bureau and the mentality of consumers.
Today, also, no radioactive materials were detected in the water.”
Reflecting on the nuclear whistleblower who warned about the Daiichi cleanup, we must ask
whether this assurance of the safety of Tokyo’s tap wateris ‘tatemae’ or ‘honnne’?

Segawa: After The Media Has Gone

55

Makiko SEGAWA is a freelance journalist based in Japan, as well as a translator and guide tooverseas media. Her clients include France 24, The Wall Street Journal and other European
television production companies such as RAI TV, the U.K Performgroup, AB International andSeven Saint Production.
Notes
1

See here (http://www.asahi.com/national/update/1215/TKY201112150613.html)

2

NPA Statistics: see here (http://www.npa.go.jp/toukei/index.htm) and here
(http://www.npa.go.jp/safetylife/seianki/H23jisatsunojokyo.pdf).
3
4

See here (http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/science/news/20120326-OYT1T01018.htm).

See here (http://sankei.jp.msn.com/life/news/111220/trd11122023060015-n1.htm) and here
(http://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/houdou/2r9852000001558e-img/2r9852000001559v.pdf).

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster56“Fukushima Women Against Nuclear Power: Finding a Voice from Tohoku”
David H. Slater
November 9, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/events/view/117
This article focuses on the politicization of women following the Fukushimadisaster. Slater argues that women are the most “effective anti-nuke spokespersons”
because their role as mothers gives them moral authority on issues relating to the safety
and health of children. Women from the Tohoku region (which contains Fukushima
prefecture) have influenced political conversations all around Japan by organizing protests
and issuing statements criticizing the Japanese government. Their actions have inspired
more protests in other regions of Japan. One woman, SATO Sachiko, who was mentioned in
Smith’s article above, travelled to the U.S.A. to extend her message beyond Japan’s borders.
The article states the “Fukushima woman” is a powerful symbol because she canunite people from diverse backgrounds by exploiting her role as a mother and caregiver.
For instance, safe food and uncontaminated land are vital for rearing children; with neither
available in Fukushima, women speak with great moral authority about the future. Thus, it
is harder to oppose the “Fukushima woman” than other protestors, such as those who
might focus on the corporate and economic disadvantages of nuclear power. Women are
also better able to appeal to emotions than men, using “fear,… frustration… and exhaustion”
to heighten the impact of their arguments.
The article highlights several protests organized primarily by women who weredirectly affected by the disaster. The online version of the article also includes a video(with English subtitles) from a protest.2 The article concludes that although the authorityof female protestors originated in their role as caregivers, women from all backgrounds are
expressing concerns on a broad range of issues; they are among the most potent voices inJapan.

2

As of October 19, 2012, the video was available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnnloSF1ZqQ.

Slater: Fukushima Women Against Nuclear Power

57

Fukushima Women Against Nuclear Power: Finding a Voice from Tohoku
Introduction by David H. Slater
From the very first, it has been quite difficult to politicize earthquake and tsunami hit Tohoku,
despite the poor planning, the slow and uneven response, the failure to provide aid in a timely
way in the days and weeks afterward, and the often poorly organized evacuation centers—anissue which resulted in a number of unexplained deaths. Now, the temporary housing facilities
virtually insure that communities, or what is left of them, will stay dysfunctional for a while,even as their residents are often the ones called upon to manage their own relief. While thesilences of fatalism and the shock of such a terrible disaster have been noted, anyone who has
been to the Northeast on a regular basis is aware that the frustration and anger erupt in different
ways almost every day. The point, however, is that rarely does it emerge in the unified voices ofprotest, rarely in coherent demands for systematic help, almost never in anger expressed in a waythat the rest of the nation can hear.
In contrast, the threat of nuclear radiation and critiques of the nuclear industry have beenskillfully politicized in ways that have led to the largest set of demonstrations in Japan (with the
exception of Okinawa) since the US-Japan security treaty protests of the 1960s and 1970s. These
protests have been based in Tokyo, utilizing urban networks of activists who have provided thedigital framework for organization that has brought together an older generation of anti-nuclear
activists, young families, hip urbanites, office workers and union protesters. This is, perhaps
ironic, considering that many of the protesters and marchers rarely have contact with Tohoku.
The nuclear threat, organizers say, extends beyond Tohoku, even beyond Japan. And indeed, thisis the message that has been heard around the world, as the anti-nuke protest and politics werestaged with specific reference to Fukushima (sadly, rarely with respect to the wider ‘Tohoku’region).
Bridging voices
Women, and in particular, mothers, have been quite active in radiation measurement, calls forcontaminated soil removal, and efforts to secure safe food since the early months of the crisis.
Today, perhaps more than any other group, they have emerged as particularly effective anti-nuke
spokespersons. Of course, there is nothing new in women being at the front of social shifts, asseen in work as diverse as Sheldon Garon's Molding Japanese Minds and Robin LeBlanc's
Bicycle Citizens illustrate.
The movement of “Women from Fukushima Against Nukes” (Genptasu iranai Fukushima kara
no onnatachi”) is positioned to express a range of issues that respond to and exploit thisparticular position. The logic of political potency, now as then, relies on the privileged positionof women as the core of Japanese society and polity. The eternal maternal role of producer andreproducer of Japanese society and culture has taken an even sharper edge in this age ofdemographic decline. Today, women as mothers are charged with a more specific and often
overtly political task: to do their job of having and nurturing babies to maintain the dwindling
population (usually, while also doing part-time jobs). Secondarily, we hear of women in theirrole as wives, supporters of their husbands, who are off working, not marching. These shifts havepositioned woman with an even stronger foundation from which to speak, at least on somenuclear issues. DS

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster58

In many of these protests, it is as mothers that women speak out against corporate interests andgovernment policy. They speak as they protect their children, their families; in this capacity, they
are forced but also entitled to protest nuclear threats. They have been charged with something
more fundamental than capital accumulation, more important than the postwar protection of
corporate heath. Feeding children healthy food is more important than feeding the energy
demands of a hungry urban popular. In this respect, they are unlike other protesters (compare thestalled anti-poverty movement of the last five years and the “Occupy Tokyo” groups of the lastfew weeks) who must position themselves outside of society and culture in order to critiquepolitics, running the risk of charges of selfishness when they are expected to suffer in silence.
Mothers protesting nuclear contamination (and thus the nuclear power industry) critique politics
from within, at the core of public perceptions of Japanese society and culture, and indeed, fromthe perspective of the ‘natural’ obligation of reproduction and nurturing another generation. They
cannot suffer in silence; they cannot accept some collateral damage as inevitable; to do so would
be irresponsible to their children’s and to Japan’s future.
This broad appeal of Fukushima woman as a symbol has provided common ground across often
divided constituencies. As mothers and wives, they are not a threat to men. From Tohoku, they
are not pitting a rural backwater provider of energy against a voracious urban consumer. The
vaguely NIMBY-odor from the early anti-nuke protests, coming from urban protestors who weremore intent on marching and chanting than on conducting relief work in Tokuku, is also at least
obscured for the time being; the women’s demands begin with the most immediate concerns—
safe food, air and play areas for their children—such that opposition to nuclear industry is
repositioned as means to that end (rather than the much more abstract fear of an urban population
sitting at some remove from Fukushima).
Emotional Response
Women, unlike men, are able to address another range of issues through the recognition anddemonstration of the high emotions that confront us all, but is rarely expressed in polite company
and serious discourse. Remember when DPJ Economics Minister Kaieda Banri began to cry, on
TV? Rather understandable from the pressure and confusion of the moment, as the scope of thetragedy was revealed, and the frustrations of not being able to respond appropriately to it
mounted. And yet, there was an outpouring of negative reaction to this performance. Men should
not cry, particularly not those in leadership positions. But women who are caught in interviews
and on camera addressing governmental or corporate groups are often crying or on the verge ofcrying. They are doing what their male counter-parts cannot, and when they do it, it means
different things. We see the fear (of the nuclear threat), frustration (at the lack of government andcorporate cooperation) and exhaustion (from living with uncertainty) as the immediate responseto their being mothers, to mothering under intolerable conditions. Note that it is beside the point
to try to privilege the “expressive” function of tears against their “instrumental” function, making
one more or less authentic and significant. The point is that these are both, at once, authentic, and
it is this unity that makes them so powerful. It also transforms the expressions of anger—thepolitically correct emotional response to injustice—into something that is grounded in awoman’s body, in a family, in a community, and maybe, for these reasons, all the moreaccessible for a nation. It transforms individual anger into collective sentiment that viewers fromall over Japan and beyond can feel, can identify with, and can share as the basis of a platform forcollective action.

Slater: Fukushima Women Against Nuclear Power

59

Women’s Protests in Action
The ongoing Fukushima disaster has brought attention to earlier studies showing that women andchildren face a much greater risk of radiation-induced cancer than men.
According to a US National Academy of Sciences study of 2006, the threat to women ofradiation-induced cancer is 50% higher than that for men. The results were identical both atlegally permitted levels of exposure and at ten times higher levels. Infants and unborn children ofeither gender are at higher risk than either men or women.
As the NIRS report notes, the differential risk is not limited to cancer. “Radiation harm includes
not only cancer and leukemia, but reduced immunity and also reduced fertility, increases in otherdiseases including heart disease, birth defects including heart defects, other mutations (bothheritable and not). When damage is catastrophic to a developing embryo spontaneous abortion or
miscarriage of a pregnancy may result.”
While anti-nuclear protests held since April have brought together a cross-section of Japanesecitizens to oppose nuclear power and helped to sway public opinion – a June public opinion pollindicated that over 80% of Japanese favored at least a gradual phase-out – some of the mostconsistent and specific demands have come from women’s groups which work to draw attention
to issues such as the exposure of children to radiation as well as food safety.
Women’s groups have been particularly scathing and effective in condemning the government’s
casualization of exposure – the increase of the permissible exposure rate from 1 to 20 mSv, its
inadequate attention to “hotspots” outside of the official evacuation areas, its calculation only of
external radiation while ignoring internal radiation, and its spotty food supply oversight.
Sato Sachiko, a 53 year old Fukushima farmer and mother of four is one example of a local
woman who has worked tirelessly to get the message out. She reports, “I was able to evacuate
my four children out of Fukushima. However, for economic reasons or because of job
circumstances and things like that there are lots of people who say ‘I want to evacuate but just
can’t.’ There are many places in Fukushima City such as the Oonami and Watari areas wherehigh levels of radiation are being detected. If they don’t give immediate support to those whowish to evacuate, children, who are the most vulnerable to radiation, will suffer more and more
exposure.” There are indeed areas of Fukushima City beyond the official 20 kilometer
evacuation zones where radiation levels exceed those of Minami Soma and other localities
directly adjacent to the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant. Women like Sato have campaigned
tirelessly to ensure that more are aware of these blindspots in the official stance and to pressure
the state to accept responsibility for the safety of children..
Female protest leaders have helped to maintain the momentum of the September 19 protest inTokyo that attracted 60,000. Hundreds of women, many of them from Fukushima, organized asit-in protest at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry from October 30-November 5(poster here)
They call on the government to evacuate children from areas with consistently elevated radiationlevels. The group includes women who have long participated in protest against the Fukushima
TEPCO plants and many others who have come forward recently. Now, in the wake of 3.11, they
have a chance to have their views aired nationwide. Greenpeace has reported on their efforts in a
blog entry and has posted a video of the demonstration:Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

60

The September 19 Tokyo protest also expanded to include a march on TEPCO.
Supporting protests were organized in other areas such as Osaka, Sapporo, Hiroshima, and othermajor cities, indicating the national scope of the movement.
As this video of the discussions leading up to the sit-in movement of October 30-November 5
demonstrates, female protestors are not speaking only as mothers or grandmothers. They are
engaging in meta-level discussion about Japan’s energy future, the role of energy alternatives inpost-disaster reconstruction, and similarly broad themes at a time when Japan’s energy policies
are under critical review.
Fukushima has been the focus of the crisis, but as many reports have documented, radiation
dispersion is difficult to predict and certainly does not stop at prefectural or even nationalboundaries. The need for wide-scale and multifarious testing and measurement seems obvious,
but there has been resistance. In Ibaraki Prefecture, one of the regions outside of Fukushima thathas seen the highest spikes in radiation level, for example, despite a statement by Health andWelfare Minister Komiyama Yoko that a system of health checks for children should be put inplace, the prefecture has called this “unnecessary” because radiation “is at a very low levelcompared to Fukushima.”
While this may be true, it fits with a tendency since March on the part of both central and local
governments to label low rates of exposure “safe” that has outraged many members of the public,
and particularly mothers in the effected regions. Ibraraki mothers are now stepping up their calls
for comprehensive health checks for their children. Whether participating in protests in Tokyo or
demanding testing and accountability at the local level, Japanese women have been a powerfulpresence in post 3.11 civil society.
David H. Slater is an associate professor of cultural anthropology in the Faculty of Liberal Arts
and the Graduate Program of Japanese Studies at Sophia University, Tokyo. He is currently
completing a book on youth labor in neoliberal Japan.
November 9, 2011

Hirose: Japan’s Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster Syndrome

61“Japan’s Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster Syndrome: An Unprecedented Formof Catastrophe”
HIROSE Takashi
September 26, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Hirose-Takashi/3606
Hirose is the author of several books, including Nuclear Reactor Time Bomb (2010),
which predicted a Fukushima-style disaster. Hirose, like several others included in thisreader, represents the voice of the knowledgeable layman; he is not an expert/scholar on
nuclear power, but the meticulous research he has done and his own common sense haveearned him wide respect. This article is an excerpt from Hirose’s new book, Fukushima
Meltdown.
In the 1990s, Hirose predicted the genpatsu shinsai event, or a “Nuclear-PowerPlant-Earthquake Disaster.” Hirose is frustrated that even now most Japanese seem to be
failing to grasp the significance of the Fukushima disaster: if it happened once, it could
happen again. He is particularly upset by the response of the media, the experts theyinterview, and the government, blaming them for deliberately underestimating theseriousness of the Fukushima crisis, particularly in regard to the human damage it iscausing.
As Hirose explains, there is evidence that the media is deliberately publishingunderestimates of the amount of radiation at Fukushima. He strengthens his argument bydrawing comparisons between Fukushima and Chernobyl; for instance, one report (fromthe Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a division of the Japanese Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry) stated that the radiation released at Fukushima was one-tenth of thatat Chernobyl. If this statement is true (and Hirose believes that this estimate is too low),
Fukushima would still be a huge crisis, based on the effects of the Chernobyl accident. He
argues that current policies to protect citizens are woefully inadequate and warns that if
nuclear power is not phased out, more genpatsu shinsai accidents are inevitable.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

62

Japan’s Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster Syndrome: An Unprecedented Form ofCatastrophe
Hirose Takashi
Translated by C. Douglas Lummis
The seismologist Ishibashi Katsuhiko (presently Emeritus Professor at Kobe University)
predicted that a nuclear power plant accident like the present one was possible, and issued
warnings from the late ‘90s. People had been warning of the danger of earthquake-caused
nuclear accidents since the 1970s, but Ishibashi, from the specialized standpoint of seismology,
proposed a new concept, which he called genpatsu shinsai [Translator’s note: this expression
literally means Nuclear-Power-Plant-Earthquake Disaster. As there is no English expression forthis (the phenomenon itself is new) in this work we will render it as genpatsu shinsai syndrome.].
By this he meant a situation in which, as the damage from the earthquake widens, the situation ismade doubly worse by nuclear radiation damage. It was in the hope of preventing this that he
was issuing warnings. Ishibashi wrote many books on this, including Daichidouran no Jidai (TheAge of Shifting Earth) (Iwanami Shinsho) and he is a very well-known scholar, so it is
impossible that his warnings were unknown to the officials of the Tokyo Electric Power
Company (TEPCO).
I myself published in August of last year (2010)
Genshiro Jigen Bakudan – Daijishin ni Obieru
Nihonretto (Nuclear Reactor Time Bomb – The
Japanese Archipelago under the Danger of Great
Earthquakes) (Diamond) in which I tried to give thewarnings of Ishibashi and others a wider audience, andto call for preventive measures to be taken against a
genpatsu shinsai syndrome. Though as for earthquakes
and tsunamis I am no more than a layman, I forecast
the possibility of such a catastrophe, and wrote about
nuclear contamination. It is a terrifying subject.
Nevertheless, on the possibility of a genpatsu shinsai
syndrome I wrote as follows.
“If you ask, “Will Japan still be here in ten years?” I
have the evil foreboding that the answer might be,“There is a very strong chance that it will not” . . . . In
the future there awaits an unknowable, vast dark age. I
don’t want to contemplate its form, but it is the fear ofa genpatsu shinsai syndrome brought about by
movements of the earth that no human knowledge cancontrol.”
Today this evil foreboding has become a reality, and is getting worse day by day. If I, neither ascholar nor a specialist, was able to foresee this, and the nuclear power specialists from TEPCO
and from the government’s nuclear-related agencies were not, then for what do they exist?

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63

A Mass Media that Reports Neither Facts nor Predictions
When I finished writing Nuclear Power Plant Time Bomb, I was hoping deep inside that myassertion that a genpatsu shinsai syndrome was possible would prove to be a mistake. I was
praying that nuclear power would be abolished, and the things that I had written would not cometo pass. At the same time I resolved within myself that if things did occur as I had described, I
would say nothing further.
However, even though now that the genpatsu shinsai syndrome has actually occurred, the peopleof Japan seem not to have grasped the nature of the crisis. Unbelievably, though anyone wholooks can see that the situation is getting worse day by day, television and the other media keep
repeating “there is no crisis”, “There’s nothing to worry about” over and over, and show no
inclination to report the critical nature of what is happening at Fukushima Daiichi. The
obfuscations such as those I mentioned above, “The tsunami was beyond our expectation”,“Such small amounts of radiation have no effect on health”, and other statements by government
people that obscure the dangers of exposure to radiation step outside the realm of thepermissible.
In the past, on television only scholars who are proponents of nuclear power have given
commentary as “experts”. We listened to them telling their fantastic lies and offering theirimpossibly optimistic predictions, and as a result the people, having been given none of the facts,
have gone on living as normal right up to the edge of the collapse. Now everything the “experts”
told us has proved wrong, and the worst has happened. What is remarkable is that these people
who failed to predict the genpatsu shinsai syndrome are shameless enough to put on their“expert” masks, reappear on television, and give their commentaries on the accident. The people
responsible for the horror of this nuclear accident are the people who promoted nuclear power.
The people in the TV stations who brought in this criminal gang and put them on the air day after
day are equally responsible. Has there ever been even once that a television station warned the
public that a nuclear power plant might be destroyed by an earthquake? Or a station that warnedof the danger of a tsunami? After it has happened, even a child can do it.
Their ignorance and incompetence is proved day by day. I will treat this in more detail in
Chapter 1, but on 12 March, 2011, when the No. 2 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi underwent ahydrogen explosion and it was clear that the worst had happened and a large amount ofradioactive material had escaped outside, the commentators were at pains to persuade us that thecrisis was very slight. The mainstream media not only did not warn the people about the dangerof a genpatsu shinsai syndrome before it happened, but even after it had, went on broadcasting as
if it hadn’t. This is going on right now. This is as terrifying as what is happening at the actualsite.
Then a month after the accident, on 11 April, the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC, theGovernment agency that oversees the nuclear power industry) announced that the Fukushima
Daiichi Power Plant “in the first hours after the accident, was emitting as much as 10,000
terabecquerels of radiation per hour (one terabcquerel = one trillion becquerels – bq)”, and the
Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA, an agency of Ministry of Economy, Trade andIndustry – METI) acknowledged that the accident was at the same level as Chernobyl. According
to data taken between 11 March, the day of the disaster, and April 5 the total amount ofradioactive iodine 131 and cesium 137 released into the atmosphere, as of 23 March, was morethan 100,000 terabecquerels, several tens of thousands of terabecquerels above the standard for aPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster64

Level 7 accident. From the first days after the earthquake I had been saying that huge amounts ofradiation were sure to be escaping, but people only pointed their fingers at me as a rumor
monger. A month later, the government acknowledged that the “rumor” was true. From day one
the situation had reached the highest level for nuclear accidents, Level 7, and from day one thegovernment knew this, but it concealed that information from the people, thus causing far more
people to be irradiated than otherwise would have been the case. Or if they were unable to know
this from the beginning, this only proves that they have neither competence at measurement nor
sound judgment, which is more serious still.
Next, the television stations that announced the news about Level 7 all followed that withrepetitions of the NISA statement that still, “the amount of radiation released at Fukushima was
only one tenth of that released at Chernobyl”.
If Fukushima released one tenth of the radiation released at Chernobyl, what would happen?
How many people know how many radiation victims there have been in the three countries that
resulted after the demise of the Soviet Union – Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus? In 2004, 18
years after the accident, the Welfare Ministry of the Ukraine released documents indicating that
the Chernobyl accident produced 3,200,000 radiation victims, and that 2,300,000, including
450,000 children, were under government care. The following year the Russian Ministry of
Healthcare and Social Development announced that there were in Russia more than 1,450,000
people whose health had been damaged by the Chernobyl accident and 226,000 children bornafter the accident, and thus under 18, whose health had been damaged by the accident. Amongthe victims, 46,000 had been certified as physically disabled. In March, 2006, 20 years after theaccident, the people whose health had been damaged in Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus
numbered 7,000,000. On 26 April, 2009 a memorial was held for the Chernobyl victims in the
Ukraine, where more than 2,300,000 people have been officially recognized as radiation victims,
and 4,400 who were children or youths at the time of the accident, were irradiated by radioactive
iodine, and have been operated on for thyroid cancer. From this we can understand what is goingto happen in Japan, whose population density is far greater than that of Russia, the Ukraine andBelarus.
It is people like these, who are unaware of these historical facts, and who remain unabashedly
ignorant of the dangers of radiation, who control Japan’s mass media. To say that “the radiation
released is only one tenth that of Chernobyl”, which means that hundreds of thousands of people
have been exposed to serious levels of radiation, is to take the shameful position that you are notinterested in learning what is going to happen, but only in protecting yourself. This is not easy toforgive.
In the event, I find I am not able to remain silent. When Asahi Shinsho contacted me, I decided
that I did have to write one more book. I realized that, to try to save our children and young
people, I must make known to as many people as possible, and as soon as possible, the things
that the television “experts” refuse to deal with, even though the crisis is upon us: the essential,common-sense facts about nuclear power plants, and the likely form that the next genpatsu
shinsai syndrome will take.
If we do not understand the seriousness of the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant accident, we willcertainly be hit by the #2 and #3 genpatsu shinsai syndrome before long. I am positive of this.
We absolutely must prevent that from happening. If a genpatsu shinsai syndrome surpassingHirose: Japan’s Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster Syndrome

65

Fukushima does occur – then I will surely fall silent. I will write no more books about nuclear
power. Writing such books will no longer have any meaning.
Excerpted from Chapter One of Hirose Takashi’s newly translated e-book, Fukushima
Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami Nuclear Disaster (Kindle Books). Translated
by a team headed by C. Douglas Lummis. The e-book is available from Amazon at $9.99.
In Japan, one of the loudest, most persistent and best informed of the voices with common sensequestions about nuclear power has been that of Hirose Takashi. Mr. Hirose first came into
public view with a Swiftean satire he published in 1981, Tokyo e, Genpatsu wo! (Nuclear Power
Plants to Tokyo!) (Shueisha). In that work, he made the argument that, if it is really true thatthese plants are perfectly safe (“accidents never happen”) then why not build them in downtown
Tokyo rather than in far-off places? By putting them so far away you lose half the electricity inthe wires, and waste all that hot water by pumping it into the ocean instead of delivering it topeople’s homes where it could be used for baths and cooking. The book outraged a lot of people– especially in Tokyo – and revealed the hypocrisy of the safety argument.
In the years since then he has published volume after volume on the nuclear power issue –particularly focusing on the absurdity of building a facility that requires absolutely no accidents
whatsoever, on an archipelago famous as the earthquake capital of the world. Again and again
he made frightening predictions which (as he writes in Fukushima Meltdown, he was always
praying would prove wrong. Tragically, they did not.
A review of the book by Roger Pulvers is available here
(http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20111023rp.html).
C. Douglas Lummis is the author of Radical Democracy and other books in Japanese andEnglish. A Japan Focus associate, he formerly taught at Tsuda College.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster66“A Problem for all Humanity: Nagasaki Writer Hayashi Kyoko Probes the Dangers of
Nuclear Energy”
Justin Aukema
December 26, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Justin-Aukema/3670
Aukema explains that renowned author and atomic-bomb survivor HAYASHI Kyoko
is expanding her long-time criticism of nuclear weapons to include nuclear power.
Survivors of the atomic bombs, such as Hayashi, are known as hibakusha. They often had tostruggle to obtain assistance, or even recognition, from the government for their radiationinduced suffering. The voices of the hibakusha are an important addition to the discussionof nuclear power; their experience in 1945 give their statements a large impact in thetwenty-first century.
Hayashi sees the dangers of radiation as something that affects all humanity,
regardless of its source. To her and many others, atomic weapons are too destructive everto use, and because nuclear power plants have the potential to create the same kind ofdestruction, such energy should be avoided as well. Building nuclear power plants inJapan’s periphery is far from an adequate solution, and is certainly not a moral solution, shebelieves.
Aukema provides a literary analysis of Hayashi’s texts, illustrating the ways in which
the atomic bombings and nuclear power are connected in her mind. Her stories depict
various reasons why nuclear power should not be Japan’s primary source of energy. For
example, a 2002 work, Harvest, is eerily prescient of the Fukushima crisis. The main
character in the story is misinformed by higher authorities about the dangers of radiation
following a nuclear accident, and has insufficient information to make good judgments
about what action to take. The story warns that when nuclear power plants fail, thegovernment does not keep Japan’s citizens safe. Hayashi represents a growing segment of
the population that is demanding that dependence on nuclear power be reduced, if noteliminated entirely.

Aukema: A Problem for all Humanity

67

A Problem for all Humanity: Nagasaki Writer Hayashi Kyoko Probes the Dangers of
Nuclear Energy
Justin Aukema
Recent works have found renowned author Hayashi Kyoko and A-bomb survivor expanding her
criticism of nuclear weapons to include nuclear power. This article looks at her criticisms of thenuclear disasters at Tokaimura in 1999 and Fukushima (ongoing), and her emphasis on thedangers of radiation as one which affects all humanity.
Hayashi Kyoko (1930 - ) was fourteen and working at the Mitsubishi arms factory in Nagasaki –less than a kilometer and a half from the epicenter – when the atomic bomb struck. The
experience would forever change her life and, eventually provide the central theme during herlater career as a writer. Although wishing to sever her ties with what she has called “the worst offates,” Hayashi has also stressed the impact of the bombing on her, writing “there was no way tolive, other than by confronting August 9th.”1 Since the publication of Matsuri no Ba (The Site of
Rituals) in 1975, Hayashi has striven to encourage later generations to think of problems of thelegacy of the bomb as their own.2 One important way in which she has done this, is to highlightthe lingering effects of radiation. For Hayashi, the problem of radiation damage does not end
with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rather, it has consequences that affect all
humanity.
Writers of atomic bomb literature including Hayashi have long focused on the dangers of nuclear
weapons, including the ongoing suffering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hibakusha. Few havedirectly criticized nuclear power. American propaganda efforts such as the Atoms for Peace
program during the Eisenhower administration were highly successful in winning support for
nuclear power in Japan, and even many hibakusha actively supported its “peaceful” uses.
Because of this, many hibakusha including, until recently, Nippon Hidankyō (the Japan A-Bomb
Victims Association) have been reluctant to speak out concerning disasters at nuclear power
plants and the emergence of new waves of radiation victims.3
While Hayashi was no exception to this, her attention to the lingering dangers of radiation as aproblem that can affect people and the environment for generations to come, is applicable toproblems of nuclear power as well. Furthermore, in more recent works Hayashi has turned her
attention to nuclear power. In linking nuclear power with nuclear weapons she has created a
powerful critique of all forms of atomic energy. Her words in 2011, after the disaster at
Fukushima, that “radiation damage is not just the individual experiences of hibakusha, it’s a
problem for all humanity,” reflect the two new insights in her work – an emphasis on the dangers
of all forms of atomic energy and the realization that we are all now potential hibakusha.4
From Trinity To Trinity (1999 -2000)
While the disaster at the Fukushima TEPCO nuclear power plant in March 2011 put the dangers
of nuclear power in the world spotlight, Japanese nuclear plants had experienced earlier disasters
including the 1999 accident at a JCO nuclear fuel conversion plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki, an
incident which had a large impact on Hayashi. While she was writing From Trinity to Trinity5, amishandled nuclear fuel conversion procedure at a JCO processing plant for nuclear fuel exposed
three workers to deadly amounts of radiation and made more than 100 other workers hibakusha.
Approximately 310,000 residents over a 10 kilometer radius were told to remain in their homesPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

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after radioactive particles, as well as neutron and gamma rays, leaked out of the plant. Ultimately
at least 667 people were dangerously exposed to radiation.6 In Trinity Hayashi writes that she
saw the news of this incident on television during her visit to the Trinity Site in New Mexico.
This prompts her to write a letter to her friend Rui,
Just about an hour ago when I returned to my hotel room, I overheard news of the Tokaimura
incident on television. I’m very anxious to know how big the accident was. Tomorrow I departfor Trinity. I can’t seem to relax with all the time I have, so I’m writing this letter to you.7
Tsukui Nobuko, a writer and interpreter who traveled with Hayashi to New Mexico, notes theimpact of the event on Hayashi’s work, writing “of course the terrible amazement that we, in the
midst of a trip to the very origin of the bomb, felt over the accident at the nuclear plant – a
byproduct of nuclear weapons – is dealt
with in Trinity.”8
From Trinity to Trinity, written in 1999
and published in the compilation Nagai
Jikan o Kaketa Ningen no Keiken(Human Experiences Over a Long Time)(2000), is based on Hayashi’s trip to the
Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb
was tested on July 16th, 1945. The
narrator of the story mentions that she
had wanted to visit the site for some timeand, elaborating on her motivations,writes “Trinity is the departure point for
my August 9th. It is also the terminus forme as a hibakusha – from Trinity to
Trinity.”9 In other words, the path of theatomic bomb that affected the rest of
Figure 1: One of the three workers exposed to high-level
Hayashi’s life, started at Trinity. The trip
radiation is carried by stretcher from the JCO plant.
also serves to give a sense of closure to(9.30. 1999)
her constant wish to “cut her ties toAugust 9th.”10 Thus, by coming fullcircle, Hayashi comes face to face with the tragic history which has resided in her for more thanhalf a century.
In the story, the narrator describes a number of places in New Mexico, including The National
Atomic Museum, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and finally the Trinity Site at the White
Sands missile test site. The narrator reflects on American attitudes toward the atomic bombingsand nuclear power, and atomic power’s relationship with nature. The narrative is broken at many
points as she recalls stories from the past, or reflects on things she has read. Much of the story is
written as a letter to Rui, who is described as a younger, female friend.
Hayashi expands her focus in Trinity to include nuclear power in her criticism of nuclear
weapons, and to move beyond the experiences of atomic bomb victims to include victims ofother nuclear disasters. While in the past she often used more literal descriptions, such as glass
shards embedded in a survivor’s body, to describe the lingering effects of radiation, Hayashi

Aukema: A Problem for all Humanity

69

approaches her critique of atomic energy in Trinity more subtly and through a greater use of
linguistic techniques, metaphor and parable.
One example of this occurs in the language with which Hayashi frames nuclear weapons andnuclear power. In Japanese, the word typically used for atomic bomb is genshibakudan (原子爆弾) and for nuclear power genshiryoku (原子力). Eschewing these terms however, in Human
Experiences Over a Long Time, Hayashi often opts for the third term, kaku (核) which implies an“atom” or “nucleus” and is best translated into English as nuclear or atomic energy. In Trinity
when Hayashi stands at Ground Zero of the Trinity Site in New Mexico, she reflects on atomic
energy’s lasting effects and extends the concept of hibakusha to the natural world, including
plants and animals, writing “until I had stood at the Trinity Site, I had thought that the first
victims of nuclear energy (kaku) had been humans. This was not the case though, the firsthibakusha had been right here.” It is not just the nuclear bomb that has the potential to create
hibakusha, but all nuclear energy.11
Additionally, there is the use of the word hibaku. This can be written two ways, 被爆 or 被曝.
The first refers to being bombed, especially by an atomic bomb, and contains the nuance ofreceiving radiation damage. Similarly, hibakusha (被爆者) refers to victims of bombings,
especially the atomic bombings, and is occasionally defined as one who holds certification fromthe government as having been exposed to radiation in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The second
writing, 被曝 is defined as being exposed to radiation and includes all victims of radiation
damage whether of bombing or radiation associated with nuclear power.12 In Human
Experiences Over a Long Time, Hayashi uses this second writing when she talks about internalradiation exposure (naibu hibaku) from inhaling radioactive particles. The issue of internalradiation exposure has been of the greatest concern for Hayashi. Many of her works were written
as victims of the atomic bombs suffering from radiation sickness were attempting to gain
recognition from the government. Ultimately, Hayashi writes, the Japanese government refused
to recognize the link between radiation sickness from internal exposure and the atomic bombs.13
Hayashi’s final example of language in Trinity to emphasize the threat of radiation from nuclear
energy is through the character Rui. The name Rui is written in katakana (ルイ), the Japanesescript used mostly for foreign words or when the author wishes to direct emphasis toward aparticular term. Katakana can also be used when the writer wishes to delineate certain boundaries
or insert ambiguity around a meaning which might otherwise be implied were the word to be
written with Chinese characters. In the case of Rui, it would be apparent to a Japanese reader thatthe sound “rui” could also be expressed by the character 類, the same character used in the word
jinrui (人類), or “humanity.”14 In his introduction to Vol. 6 of The Complete Works of Hayashi
Kyoko, Prof. Kuroko Kazuo of Tsukuba University highlights Hayashi’s use of the character“Rui” as symbolic of the larger themes dealt with in Trinity and Human Experiences Over aLong Time.
The novel depicts the character Rui as a younger friend, however, it is natural to think that theauthor also implies that Rui represents humanity. When the story is read in this way, the link
between Hayashi Kyoko’s visit to the Trinity Site and the critical incident that occurred at the
JCO nuclear processing plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki on Sept. 30th, 1999 becomes clear. One
strongly thinks that atomic energy versus human beings and the earth is a larger theme than that

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dealt with in her previous works, which were based on personal experiences as an A-bomb
victim.15
Read in this way, Hayashi’s message becomes clearer. In the beginning of the story, the narrator
recalls a time when she inquired about Rui’s age. Avoiding the question, however, Rui
responded “I want to be just like you when I grow up.”16 This line could be understood as
humanity’s fascination with atomic energy – a fascination which threatens the danger of
becoming a hibakusha like the narrator or even our own destruction. Later, Rui questions thenarrator’s intent in visiting the Trinity site, asking if she is “an atomic bomb maniac,” astatement reminiscent of criticism that Hayashi has faced throughout her writing career forfocusing so single-mindedly on the atomic bombings.17 Ending both Trinity and her letter to Rui,the narrator says, “the world needs not your tests,” in reference to the atomic bombs. Then in thevery last line, the narrator asks, “what are your thoughts, Rui?”18 The effect of this line is toforce readers to break whatever sense of objectivity might have been felt toward the story and tocontemplate Hayashi’s message as their own problem.
In Human Experiences Over a Long Time Hayashi illustrates the danger of radiation with anincreased sense of urgency, reflective of the magnitude of a problem such as nuclear energy
versus human beings, a danger illustrated in a number of different scenes in Trinity. This everpresent danger is wonderfully illustrated through the metaphor of the intruder. Just after a visit to
the Science Museum in Los Alamos, the narrator relates an “incident” that occurred shortly
before she left Japan. Awakened by a sound during the night, she glimpses the outline of a man
outside the door to her garden. The man walks away, but the narrator is terrified and checks to
see that all of the doors are locked. In the morning, she is unsure of whether she really saw him,
but when she finds something the man had left behind, she is sure. She mentions that, after thisevent, she installed a security system and was more careful to lock the doors. However, she isunable to regain her previous sense of safety and mentions that the incident made her realize her“own loss of the sense of crisis.”
I had been embracing a groundless sense of security, thinking that our daily peace was protected.
On hot summer nights, I would leave the glass door in the hallway open a crack to let the windblow in and sometimes would forget to lock the door. Danger is always within close proximity.
…I don’t want an innocent child that I’ve raised to be touched by violence. When I repeatedly
cautioned thus, Kei said, ‘If we take appropriate measures and there’s still a break in, then that’sthat.’ Yes, yes. But somehow it sounded wrong. Was it alright to be so complacent?19
The metaphor of the attempted break in again reflects Hayashi’s feeling that, by being exposed tothe bomb, a crime had been perpetrated against, not just her, but her children as well, and all who
could be susceptible to the effects of radiation. “There are particles of radiation from the atomic
bombing in my body,” she stated. “That’s not just a problem that ends after the bombings ofHiroshima and Nagasaki, that’s a problem of genes.”20 In addition, Hayashi speaks of society’s
complacency in the face of the dangers of radiation. While some of this is addressed to the false
sense of security that many are lulled into in presuming that they are safe from attack by nuclear
weapons, Hayashi’s incorporation of the Tokaimura incident into the story suggests that thissame complacency can be displayed toward nuclear power as well.

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Harvest (2002)
Two years after writing Trinity, Hayashi again returned to the Tōkaimura disaster with Shūkaku
(Harvest) (2002). This short story depicts an elderly farmer and his son who live right next to the
nuclear processing plant. In scenes that eerily anticipate the tragic events later to unfold at
Fukushima, the reader witnesses a nuclear disaster unfolding only meters away through the eyesof the main character. Uninformed about the details of the plant next door to his farm, the main
character – 74 year old Yamada – goes about his day in typical fashion until the faint sound ofsirens within the plant walls begins to sound. Learning about the accident only after watching thenews on television, Yamada is eventually told to evacuate along with the rest of the surroundingarea. However, unwilling to leave his farm right before the harvest, he decides to stay.
Harvest is significant for Hayashi’s writing in that it is one of the first instances in which she
focuses in detail on victims of radiation not from the atomic bomb but from nuclear power
disasters. What is both striking and tragic in the story is the lack of knowledge of the charactersabout nuclear power – so much so that the nature of the accident is almost completely beyond
their comprehension. Coupled with this is the fact that the language used by the characters could
equally be addressing an atomic bomb explosion as another form of nuclear disaster. Here again,
Hayashi breaks through the boundaries between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. “Whatshould we do if it’s a nuclear explosion,” Yamada asks his son in desperation. “A nuclear
explosion,” his son replies incredulously, “you make it sound as if they’re making bombs overthere.”21
Later, however, Yamada’s son displays the same desperation and concern when he attempts toconvince his father to evacuate with him.
Suppose they’re dealing with nuclear fuel over there, then any kind of accident has got to meanthat there’s radiation involved. And if it’s anything like a nuclear explosion, then we’re being
pierced by radiation stronger than an x-ray.22
Yamada and his son’s lack of information about nuclear power is in no small part the product ofthe plant’s failure to educate the surrounding populace of its dangers. Near the beginning of thestory, Yamada reflects on the wall which was erected right next to his field, to block off theplant.
Although he couldn’t see through the wall which blocked one side of the road, it was apparently
a plant which manufactured nuclear fuel. At least that’s the explanation he had been given before
the plant was built. …Since none of his land had been bought up [by the plant] for use though, he
hadn’t been given any other information. All he knew was that, after the wall had been put up,
one part of his potato field had been cut off from sunlight.23
After the disaster, Yamada and his son are in danger. Although they hear sirens inside the plant,
they receive no warning and are forced to get their information from the television news. This,
however, proves to be of little help as. . .each station simply repeated the same information in a calm, orderly fashion. There was noroom for groundless rumors or gossip and no materials with which to compare how things really
were.24

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

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Eventually, Yamada chooses to remain in his home and complete the harvest of his sweet
potatoes. After most of the surrounding area has been voluntarily evacuated, news crews begin to
move in right next to his home and scientists come to monitor the level of radiation in his fields.
Here again though, Yamada is given conflicting information about the levels of radiation.
Radioactive particles are detected in 33 different soil samples from the surrounding area, but heis told that the levels are much lower than normally found in nature. Salt – an indicator ofradioactivity – is taken from his house, but the results of this test are never returned to him. One
week after the accident, Yamada and his son harvest the potatoes, unaware of whether the fields
have been contaminated by radiation. Yamada states that he, “didn’t want to ask” if any of the 33
soil samples were taken from his field. Even if it was contaminated, he “couldn’t just leave
potatoes that were ripe to be harvested” and the 30,000 yen (around $285USD in 1999)
compensation being offered “wouldn’t make up for anything.”25 At the end of the story Yamada
is confronted by a succession of reporters, all of whom convey a sense of disbelief that he had
not evacuated. It is this disbelief that strikes a nerve with Yamada, who had never been informedthat he was in danger.
The nuclear disaster that Hayashi depictsin Harvest through the Tokaimura
incident of 1999 takes on new meaning
following the 2011 nuclear meltdown at
the TEPCO-operated nuclear power plantin Fukushima. The dangers of nuclear
power and people’s complacency inassuming that it is safe, as well as
authorities and the media withholding
information, are directly confronted in
From Trinity to Trinity, Harvest andother works in Human Experience Overa Long Time.
Hayashi’s linking of radiation poisoning Figure 2: Officials monitor radiation levels at a radish field,
1km away from the Tokaimura plant (12.2.1999)
associated both with the bomb and with
nuclear power alerts readers to nuclear
dangers. Unfortunately however, as American University History Prof. Peter Kuznick has noted
in discussing the relationship between the atomic bomb and nuclear power, “the public allowed
itself to be convinced that nuclear power was safe and clean. It had forgotten the lessons ofHiroshima and Nagasaki.”26
Hayashi addresses the crisis at Fukushima
Genbaku o Ikite: Sakuhin to Shogai ga Kataru (Living the Bomb: Speaking from a Life andWorks) was published in July 2011 as a booklet by Iwanami Shoten and is written as aninterview between Hayashi and Ferris University professor Shimamura Teru. Reflecting on her
wartime experiences and career as a writer, Hayashi elaborates on the background behind From
Trinity to Trinity, and ties together the dangers of radiation from bombs and nuclear power,
especially in light of the disaster at Fukushima.

Aukema: A Problem for all Humanity

73

Hayashi again confronts nuclear energy as the combined danger of nuclear weapons and nuclear
power through her use of the word kaku. In speaking of her trip to the Trinity site, she reflects on
the problem of radiation for the modern age.
The Ground Zero monument that stands at the Trinity site is the warning sign that humans haveplunged into the nuclear (kaku) age. Damage from radiation isn’t just a special right of victims of
the atomic bombings, but is a problem for all those with an awareness of the dangers of nuclear
energy (kaku).27
Later, she reflects further on how her visit to the Trinity site was intended to bring closure to her
personal journey fighting against nuclear weapons, and to break away from August 9th. However,seeing the damage that nuclear power caused to the animals and environment at the test site, andobserving the lingering effects of radiation, she was led to think of the effects of radiation onhumanity and nature in larger terms than before. This led her to state in Living the Bomb that “asone hibakusha, I clearly came to understand that humans and nuclear energy cannot coexist.”28
Linking her criticism of nuclear energy (kaku) to the March disaster at Fukushima, Hayashi
states:People today think of nuclear energy only as a fuel source. There are still many hibakusha from
August 6th and 9th alive in Japan. Although it comes in different forms, we’re supposed to havelearned what kind of effect atomic energy (kaku) has on humanity. At least politicians andexperts are supposed to understand this. I’m simply astounded that this country still hasn’t
learned from our experiences. Why don’t such intelligent people understand that, no matter what
the situation, atomic energy (kaku) is never beneficial?29
Hayashi also uses both writings of hibaku and refers to all victims of radiation damage as
hibakusha (被曝者) as well. Interviewer Shimamura states that “nuclear power plants are, by
their very nature, a structure that produces hibakusha (被曝者). Even if there are no more
incidents with explosions, in order to continue maintaining the plants, the workers will continue
to be exposed to radiation (被曝).”30
Once again, it is internal exposure (naibu hibaku) that concerns Hayashi. “For me,” she writes,“the issue of the ‘internal’ has been much more important. The ‘internal’ can cause all sorts ofillness.”31 After Fukushima, internal radiation damage became a great concern amongst the
public, and the terms hibaku and hibakusha to refer to all victims of radiation damage came intomuch greater use. In August 2011 Japanese author Oe Kenzaburo quoted Hida Shuntaro, a
Hiroshima hibakusha and doctor also often quoted by Hayashi, urging the government to conduct
research into treatment for “victims of internal radiation damage” (naibu hibakusha) as well as“establish a system to deal with the possibility of new hibakusha (ヒバクシャ).32 Oe took theuniversality of “hibakusha” even further, by writing the word in Japanese katakana script,
without any Chinese characters. This removes the previous linguistic boundary that distinguishedA-bomb victims and victims of other radiation damage.
After Fukushima, Hayashi spoke with renewed urgency, and at times abandoned metaphor to
speak more directly. In a June, 2011 interview with Japan’s leading business newspaper, theNihon Keizai Shinbun, she addressed the connection of nuclear weapons and nuclear power asfollows:

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster74

Atomic bombs are different from what powers nuclear plants. Yet, at their core, they are thesame nuclear matter. When you carry this line of thought to connect August 9th and Fukushima,
it is apparent that both pose problems of how one thinks about human life.33
The value of human life is fundamental for Hayashi and it runs through all of the works
examined here. As an atomic bomb victim, she has witnessed and shared the history ofhibakusha, from their struggle to gain recognition from the government, to their discrimination insociety and lifelong suffering from radiation. In 2011’s Living the Bomb Hayashi further explainssome of the metaphors used in From Trinity to Trinity and Harvest, tying them to the concept ofthe value of human life, and its relation to the disaster at Fukushima. Through these examples,
we see that some of Hayashi’s most pointed criticisms of nuclear power were made as early as
1999, well before Fukushima.
One of these examples is the metaphor of the Spanish conquistadores in Trinity. The narrator
uses the story to transition between her time just after visiting the National Atomic Museum andjust before traveling by car through the New Mexico countryside. “It’s written in the History ofWorld Exploration” she begins, “that Spaniards began colonizing New Mexico in 1598.” And
she continues,
Santa Fe is interesting in the history of conquest. Any land that people set their eyes on seems tohave an enticing charm before it has ever been trodden… Enticed by the native American legend,
exploration parties passed through Santa Fe as they made their way east and west in search of thecity of treasure and gold. … Most of the explorations ended in failure. The explorers either
suffered from internal divisions or became entangled in local disputes that ended in bloodshed.34
Beneath the surface of this critique of European expansion, these words touch on a more
fundamental issue for Hayashi – the concept of center versus periphery. The nuclear power
plants in Japan, such as those at Tokaimura and at Fukushima are located far from the hub of
empire – Tokyo. When accidents happened, it was not the people of Tokyo who were threatened,but the people who lived near the plants – the farmers, and members of other rural communities.
This is something that Shimamura, in his discussion with Hayashi, elaborates on in Living theBomb where he exposes the harsh reality of the power politics involved in the Japanese nuclear
industry. Speaking first to the origin and connection of the Trinity Site with the European
colonizers, he points out,
The European colonizers chased the Native Americans out one after another and snatched up
increasingly large portions of their land. It was on that land that they conducted the nuclear test.
In other words, it was built upon the plunder and cheap purchase of lives. I think that nuclear
power plants are the same – they are founded upon lives which are looked down upon andcheaply bargained for. Whether in Fukushima or Aomori or Fukui, nuclear power plants arelocated where there is a bounty of nature. In other words, none are located in urban areas orindustrialized areas.35
The issue of discrimination of center against periphery, central to both Trinity and Harvest, is
one on which Hayashi elaborates on in Living the Bomb. Relating a story of a conversation withher friend, a doctor who had worked with hibakusha since the end of the war, Hayashi asks why
the United States would set an 80 kilometer evacuation zone, while the Japanese Government
only set a mandatory 20km evacuation zone around the crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima.

Aukema: A Problem for all Humanity

75“It’s a matter of human life,” the doctor explains, “a difference of the extent to which basic
human rights are recognized.”36
Hayashi states that only from one other person – a doctor who had worked with patients of theChernobyl disaster and urged mandatory evacuation 30km around the plant at Fukushima – did
she hear similar words used in the mainstream media. “It was only from this one doctor,”
Hayashi says, “from whom I heard the words ‘human life.’” This leads her to conclude that “inthis country, the weak are discarded.”37
In return for accepting nuclear reactors, struggling rural economies like those in Fukushimareceived subsidies from the central government, and the promise of jobs and prosperity. Like
nuclear power plants, U.S. military bases in Japan are also located in the periphery, with an
overwhelming amount in Okinawa. Vancouver Peace Philosophy Centre director Satoko Oka
Norimatsu has noted that the national government’s positioning of nuclear power plants and U.S.
military bases far from Tokyo is rooted in policies which discriminate “against the periphery toassure the protection of the state and guarantee the energy needs of the metropolis.”38 Norimatsu
cites the use of the word kimin, or “abandoned people,” to describe the plights of the people in
Fukushima and Okinawa.
When Hayashi speaks of discrimination and the value of human life to lament the actions of thegovernment after the disaster at Fukushima, she speaks from a lifetime of living with thedamaging effects of radiation as a hibakusha, and out of concern for future generations.
Recalling the struggles of Nagasaki and Hiroshima hibakusha to gain recognition from thegovernment, she worries about how the long term human effects of radiation from Fukushima
will be dealt with, stating:Amongst my hibakusha friends, many have repeatedly been in and out of the hospital. However,even if they submitted the forms to gain recognition as suffering from radiation sickness, theirclaims were continually rejected on the grounds that there was no connection between the atomic
bomb and their sickness, or that the cause was unclear.39
Recognition based on the often invisible effects of internal radiation damage, the issue that has
been most important for Hayashi, was repeatedly denied by the government. After the disaster at
Fukushima, however, the issue of internal radiation damage (naibu hibaku) was raised publicallyfor the first time. “As soon as I heard these words, I broke into tears,” Hayashi said. “So they had
known about internal radiation damage all along.”40
Through metaphor and language in From Trinity to Trinity, Harvest, and other stories in Human
Experience Over a Long Time, Hayashi directs her lifelong message about the dangers ofradiation and the struggles of hibakusha to encompass atomic power in general. In this way, sheeffectively directs comment and criticism that speaks to contemporary issues of nuclear power—both the atomic bomb and nuclear energy. Hayashi has long sought to shake readers out ofcomplacency over the dangers of atomic energy and, as John Whittier Treat has written in hiscomprehensive study of atomic bomb writers, endeavored to “make the bombing a present-day
problem for a world that only looks as if it is at peace.”41 Drawing on her lifelong experienceswith the atomic bomb, Hayashi seeks to assure that humanity will no longer have to have to facetragedy at the hand of the atom, whether atomic bombs or atomic power.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster76

Sources“Criticality accident at Tokai nuclear fuel plant (Japan).” World Information Service on Energy.
14 December 2010.
Hayashi Kyoko. Nagai Jikan o Kaketa Ningen no Keiken (Human Experience Over a Long
Time). Tokyo: Kodansha, 2000.
Hayashi Kyoko. Hayashi Kyoko Zenshū (The Complete Works of Hayashi Kyoko), v.6. Tokyo:
Nihon Tosho Sentā, 2005.
Hayashi Kyoko. Hibaku o Ikite: Sakuhin to Shōgai wo Kataru (Living the Bomb: Speaking froma Life and Works). Transcribed by Shimamura Teru. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2011.
Hayashi Kyoko. “From Trinity to Trinity.” Translated by Kyoko Selden. The Asia-Pacific
Journal, 2008.
Satoko Oka Norimatsu. “Fukushima and Okinawa – the ‘Abandoned People’ and Civic
Empowerment.” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 47, No. 3 (21 Nov. 2011)
Shiraki Midori. “Nagasaki Hibakusha ga mita ‘Fukushima’ – Sakka Hayashi Kyoko san(‘Fukushima’ as seen by Nagasaki hibakusha Hayashi Kyoko).” Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 22 June
2011.
Treat, John Whittier. Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Tsukui Nobuko. “Genten e no tabi: Hayashi Kyoko sakuhinkō,” Meisei Daigaku Kenkyū Kiyō –Jinbun Gakubu, v. 39. (March, 2003).
Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick. “Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the ‘Peaceful Uses of Nuclear
Power.’” The Asia – Pacific Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 18, No. 1, (2 May, 2011).
ImagesImage 1: Shimizu Shuji and Noguchi Kunikazu. Rinkai Hibaku no Shougeki: Ima aratamete tō
genshiryoku. (Tokyo: Liberta, 2000),13.
Image 2: Rinkai Jiko no Taiken wo Kiroku Suru Kai. Tokaimura Rinkai Jiko no Machi kara:
1999nen 9gatsu 30nichi Jiko Taiken no Shōgen. (Tokyo: Morimoto, 2001), 51.
Justin Aukema is a graduate student at Sophia University in Tokyo. His current research is
focused on the Japan air raids, as well as anti-war authors and films in Japan. Previous work
has included a study of the Smithsonian – Enola Gay Controversy titled The Smithsonian –Enola Gay Controversy: Including Wisconsin Perspectives on the Atomic Bombings.
For further information on and works by Hayashi Kyoko in English, please see Kyoko Selden’s
excellent translations, the following of which are available at Japan Focus.
Notes
1

Hayashi Kyoko, Hayashi Kyoko Zenshū, (The Complete Works of Hayashi Kyoko) Vol.6.
(Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 2005), 9, 64.

Aukema: A Problem for all Humanity

77

2

Hibakusha (被爆者) refers to a person who was exposed to the atomic bombing and suffersfrom radiation poisoning and other effects. More on the uses of the word will be discussed later.
3

Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick. “Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the ‘Peaceful Uses of Nuclear
Power.’” The Asia – Pacific Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 18, No. 1, (2 May, 2011)
4

Hayashi Kyoko. Hibaku o Ikite: Sakuhin to Shōgai o Kataru. (Living the Bomb: Speaking froma Life and Works) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2011), 26.
5“From Trinity to Trinity” (Torinitī kara Torinitī e) is the second of the two novellas in Human
Experiences Over a Long Time (Nagai jikan wo kaketa ningen no keiken, 2000, Noma Literary
Prize). Translation by Kyoko Selden, The Asia-Pacific Journal, link.
6

Figures were taken from Hayashi, Living the Bomb, 51 and can also be found in “Criticality
accident at Tokai nuclear fuel plant (Japan).” World Information Service on Energy. 14
December 2010, link. The Tokaimura incident occurred on September 30th, 1999. JCO is a
subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining. For more in depth analysis see, for example, Nanasawa
Kiyoshi. Tokaimura Rinkaijiko e no Michi (The Road to the Tokaimura Criticality Accident).
(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2005).
7

Hayashi Kyoko. Human Experiences Over a Long Time. (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2000), 156.

8

Tsukui Nobuko. “Genten e no tabi: Hayashi Kyoko sakuhinkō,” (Journey to the Source: A
Look at one of Hayashi Kyoko’s works). Meisei Daigaku Kenkyū Kiyō – Jinbun Gakubu, v. 39.
(March, 2003), 61.
9Hayashi Kyoko. Human Experiences Over a Long Time. 136.

10

Ibid., 134.

11

Hayashi, Human Experiences Over a Long Time, 171.

12

Definitions based on a survey of five dictionaries: Nihongo Daijiten, Vol. 2. Shogakukan,(1972, 2001); Nihongo Daijiten, Vol. 2. Kodansha (1995); Gakken Kokugo Daijiten.
Gakushūkenkyūsha, (1998); Nihongo Daijiten, Seisen ban. Shogakukan, (2006); Kojien.
Iwanami Shoten, (1998). The two writings of hibaku are often confused, and some dictionaries
list them under the same heading.
13

Hayashi, Human Experiences Over a Long Time, 16-17 as well as Hayashi, Living the Bomb,
43-44.
14

Other critics who have discussed this include Kuroko Kazuo in Hayashi Kyoko, The Complete
Works of Hayashi Kyoko v.6, 494 and Tsukui Nobuko “Genten he no Tabi: Hayashi Kyoko
Sakuhinkou,” 63 – 64.
15

Hayashi, The Complete Works of Hayashi Kyoko, Vol. .6. (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 2005),
494.
16
17

Hayashi, Human Experiences Over a Long Time, 129.

Ibid., 133. For more criticism of Hayashi see Nakagami Kenji and other critics in John
Whittier Treat, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995), 107 – 120 as well as Hayashi, Living the Bomb, 24 – 27.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster18

Hayashi, Human Experiences Over a Long Time, 179.

19

Ibid., 161.

20

Hayashi, Living the Bomb, 28.

21

Hayashi, The Complete Works of Hayashi Kyoko, v.6, 266-267.

22

Ibid., 267.

23

Ibid., 265.

24

Ibid., 268-69.

25

Ibid., 274-75

78

26

Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick. “Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the ‘Peaceful Uses of Nuclear
Power.’”
27

Hayashi, Living the Bomb, 32.

28

Ibid., 41.

29

Ibid., 42.

30

Ibid., 45

31

Ibid., 28

33

Shiraki Midori. “Nagasaki Hibakusha ga mita ‘Fukushima’ – Sakka Hayashi Kyoko san(‘Fukushima’ as seen by Nagasaki hibakusha Hayashi Kyoko).” Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 22 June
2011.
34

Hayashi, Human Experience Over a Long Time, 146 – 148.

35

Hayashi, Living the Bomb, 45.

36

Ibid., 42.

37

Ibid., 43.

38

Satoko Oka Norimatsu. “Fukushima and Okinawa – the ‘Abandoned People’ and Civic
Empowerment.” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 47, No. 3 (21 Nov. 2011)
39

Ibid., 43.

40

Ibid., 43

41

Treat, John Whittier. Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 321.

Son: Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan

79“Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan: The Energy Future”
SON Masayoshi with Andrew DeWit
September 19, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Andrew-DeWit/3603
This article provides an unusual corporate perspective on nuclear power from SON
Masayoshi, the CEO of SoftBank, a Japanese telecommunications company. The Fukushimadisaster led him to oppose nuclear power and take up the cause of renewable energy. Son’s
stance is especially significant because he has broken with the rest of big business in Japan,
leaving the “nuclear village” behind.
Son discusses some of the inadequacies of government and corporations revealedby the Fukushima disaster, such as the inadequacy of cellphone networks, a technological
failure that made it difficult to provide immediate relief. Even more troubling, he says,
TEPCO and the Japanese government deliberately spread misinformation, a moral failurethat certainly endangered many citizens. After criticizing his own firm, TEPCO, and thegovernment, Son explains that he launched a website to help coordinate recovery efforts
following the 3/11 earthquake, and he established the Renewable Energy Foundation,
which pushes the government to adopt policies favorable to renewable energy. He argues
that nuclear power is not a sustainable option on financial grounds either; the Fukushimadisaster, costing both lives and money, proved that nuclear power is too expensive andshould be phased out. Even without the added costs of recovery from disasters, nuclear
power is actually three times more expensive than commonly believed. Son had heard
repeatedly that the unit cost of nuclear power is 5-6 yen for each kilowatt-hour (kWh) ofenergy produced, but he recently examined the official figures and was surprised to see a
pre-accident unit cost of 15-20 yen/kWh. Son therefore urges the Japanese government toadopt a pro-renewable energy policy, particularly focusing on solar power.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

80

Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan: The Energy Future
Son Masayoshi with an introduction by Andrew DeWit
Introduction
This article by Softbank CEO Son Masayoshi outlines the thinking of one of Japan's mostinnovative capitalists and public-spirited citizens. Having helped create a competitive market intelecommunications, Son is now aimed at liberating and greening Japan's YEN 16 trillion
electricity industry. In addition to the efforts he outlines in the article, Son inaugurated his Japan
Renewable Energy Foundation on September 12. This Foundation is to be led by Tomas
Kaberger, the former Director General of the Swedish Energy Agency. It includes a stellar castof international experts on renewable energy, associated support policies (especially the feed intariff), and other aspects of the ongoing energy revolution. Through these initiatives and the plan
for a "solar belt," described in this article, Son has been instrumental in defining a new direction
for Japan in the wake of Fukushima. Without Son putting renewable energy so squarely andcredibly on the public agenda, Japan might have succumbed to the enormous pressure from
Keidanren, METI, TEPCO and other elements of the nuclear village to maintain theunsustainable status quo.
In fact, the fight over Japan's energy
options is not at all ended. The nuclear
village's effort to portray Fukushima as
merely a setback has failed in the face ofthe facts, of course. Among recent
surveys results, we find those thatindicate as much as 100,000,000 m³ of
Fukushima's topsoil has been irradiatedby the meltdowns, an enormous quantity
whose disposal, both its logistics and its
cost, simply staggers the mind. In themeantime, the Ministry of Economy
Trade and Industry (METI) is in a
struggle with the financial institutions
that lent trillions of yen to TEPCO and
Son Masayoshi
now want the state to ensure that they
are completely reimbursed. The nuclear
village and its hired guns in the academic and administrative and political sectors have worked
together to craft a mechanism through which compensation will almost inevitably be torn out ofthe public budget as well as the pockets of utility ratepayers. The ricketiness of the schemesuggests it can only hold together if the 10 regional monopolized utilities and their risky nuclear
assets are maintained largely as is. It is thus easy to understand why the establishment is furious
at Son's effort to apply "creative destruction" to their vested interests in Japan's power markets.
Softbank's role is of course not the only element that is driving Japan so rapidly towards
fulfilling its longstanding commitment to be a green leader. Another is the fact that Tohoku was
so heavily devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The rebuild gives Japan theopportunity to rebuild smart, which has become common sense within the committees devising
the plans for reconstruction. METI recently released the results of one of its own in-house

Son: Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan81

academic studies showing that global renewable energy and associated infrastructure businesses
already reached YEN 30 trillion in 2010. The study also projects that the global industry will
expand to about ¥80 trillion by 2020. The question of whether Japan plays a leading role in theprocess remains open.
A smart approach to rebuilding the devastated area could serve as a template for restructuring
power markets within Japan. This needs to be done, as the International Energy Association
argues, because Japan is balkanized into 10 regional and monopolized utilities that have very
little interaction among each other as a power market. Son in fact proposed a YEN 2 trillion planfor this kind of "supergid" at theinauguration of his Japan Renewable
Energy Foundation.
The IEA also points to the opportunity
for extending this power market
throughout the East Asian region,
something Son discussed with South
Korean President Lee last May as well
as formally proposed during his
September 12 talk. In short, initialpossibilities now exist for a regionwide
energy transformation
A few decades on, when the history ofthis stressful period in Japanese politics
and business is written, Son will rank as
a leader with vision and courage. By contrast, the costs of the nuclear village will still beburdening public health and public finance. - Andrew DeWit
Cell phone networks collapsed
I was shocked by the Great East Japan Earthquake. These days I carry a Geiger counter wherever
I go and I was surprised when I went to the Kansai area last week and the device registereddouble digits like I had seen in Tokyo. Radiation now spreads beyond Tohoku and Kanto to thewest as well.
One thing that I, as an operator of a cell phone business, was reminded from this earthquake andtsunami is that although cell phones are wireless, stations are wired with optical fiber cables, andwhen these are broken or power fails, cell phones do not work at all. When we lose electricity
and the network is crippled, cell phones are completely out of service.
SoftBank phones also lacked sufficient functioning for receiving earthquake early warnings, so I
have decided to equip nearly every phone in the future with this function.
In terms of recovery support, we are currently preparing to establish a foundation to aid andsupport disaster-hit areas, in hopes of bringing together the goodwill of the entire nation.
While I was wondering if there is anything I could do as an individual citizen in fields that do notnecessarily have direct relation with my primary business, I launched a portal site specializing inrecovery assistance in an effort to create a system that collaborates with local autonomies andPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster82

non-profit organizations (NPOs). The site joins forces with volunteers to develop tools tomanage insufficient supplies to eliminate the imbalance of accumulated supplies not reaching
those who truly need them, or a system that allows individual supporters to support individual
evacuees in ways such as a certain volunteer visiting a certain evacuation camp to report on what
supplies are needed. The site also provides information on evacuee reception, evacuation camps,
NPOs and donations. The site’s being accessed two million times a day, or 60 million a month,has made me feel the enormous demand for this service.
The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake occurred in 1995, which was when Yahoo! launched andthe Internet was in its early stages. Cell phones had only spread to about 10% of the populationand the ability to access the Internet from them was very limited. I had not yet entered the cell
phone business and in a sense considered it none of my business. But seeing cell phone networks
fail before my very eyes this time around, I was deeply shocked. Lives may have been saved had
cell phones worked.
And looking at questionnaires filled out at disaster-hit areas, I found that many people wanted
cell phones to work more than they wanted food or anything else. This made me again think of
my responsibility and my powerless was indescribably frustrating.
So I resolved that SoftBank will offer earthquake orphans free cell phone service until they turn18 years old, all disaster-hit areas and evacuation camps will be given free public iPads, and I
personally will donate 10 billion yen together with my executive pay.
How should we counter international misinformation and its effects?
I personally visited an evacuation camp in Fukushima. A high level of caesium 137 six times thatfound in evacuated areas around the Chernobyl plant was detected from soil in Iidate Village,
and radioactive contamination was going to remain for a long time. Fukushima evacuees are
suffering severe anxiety.
I conducted a questionnaire from my Twitter account on the government policy concerning
voluntary evacuation within the 20-30 km radius, and 85% responded that the policy is too vague
and indecisive regarding what people should do. When left to decide for themselves, and if
elderly people living alone or bedridden patients cannot evacuate, those who support them withfood, gas and other provisions would have to remain as well, this would increase the number ofvictims.
Mistaken information about radiation and its effects has spread not only throughout the nation
but overseas as well. The trend of avoiding Japanese products is seen not only with vegetables
and other food but with industrial goods as well. To eradicate such damage from misinformation,
we must announce our figures measured under the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA)
standard together with the global International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standard. No
matter how well thought out the Japanese original standard may be the world will not accept it.
For example, the IAEA standard for soil surveys samples a 1 square meter layer of soil 1-3 cm
below the surface and measures becquerels per square meter. But the Japanese standard samples
soil 5 cm from the surface and measures becquerels per kilogram. Dust and particles carry andspread radioactive elements, which take time to penetrate 5 cm into the soil. Foreign nations, atleast, see that the Japanese method would yield lower figures, and doubts spread that Japanesefigures might possibly be lower than the actual state.

Son: Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan

83

Something else also concerns me. On April 6, the Ministry of Internal Affairs andCommunications issued an official notice requesting “relevant ministries and agencies tocollaborate against comments and information on the Internet that violate laws or public order,
asking website operators to voluntarily delete them and taking appropriate action against suchoperators,” which was also posted on its website. This is an extremely dangerous idea that could
lead to repression of free speech. We know very well having seen revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt
and other Middle Eastern regions how governments that repress free speech on the Internet endup.
I understand that the government has no intention of controlling the Internet, but I sincerely hope
it will be extremely careful on this issue. Some foreign nations are already commenting that they
hope to see nothing resembling speech repression in advanced and democratic Japan. I offer mystrong warning for the sake of Japan’s trust.
Nuclear power plant construction peaked in the mid-’80s
Telecommunications cannot work without electricity, and nuclear power plants are dangerous,
but electricity in Japan will not come without nuclear power plants. At least this is what I had
thought. I did some research on this and learned quite a few things.
In responding to the nuclear plant incident, Prime Minister Kan has already made his stand clear
on three points: We need to reevaluate the conventional safety standards (on existing nuclear
power plants); we need to evaluate (plans for building new plants) from scratch and we will
pursue safety in nuclear power while we work proactively toward clean energy.” I am in favor ofthese ideas. I wish to offer some specific suggestions to push them further.
As we are well aware, Japan’s power production is comprised of 30% nuclear energy, 9% hydroelectric and other natural energy and 61% thermal energy. People panicked that if we lose
nuclear plants we would lack electricity and the Kanto area would have to undergo rolling
blackouts. But arguments that began several days ago are saying that we could probably getalong without nuclear power by increasing thermal power.
How long does a nuclear power plant last anyway? A reactor pressure vessel deteriorates as
neutrons continue bouncing against it, and becomes more fragile against earthquakes and risingtemperatures. When we look at the lifespan of nuclear power plants around the world until
shutdown, we find that the average is 22 years. I was very surprised that few in the world remain
in operation beyond 40 years.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster84

Fig. 1: Reactor startups and shutdowns in the world (1956 to Sept. 10, 2010)

Just because nuclear power plants are dangerous, we realistically cannot stop them today at thisvery instant. But if we intentionally halted nuclear plants when they reached a 40-year lifespan,
the power they produced would naturally decline unless we constructed new ones.
Until a month ago, I had believed that nuclear power was the global trend and that nations
around the world are building more nuclear power plants in order to reduce carbon dioxide. But
the nuclear power plant boom was actually in the mid-1980s (Figure 1). Hardly any new nuclear
plants were built after this period. This amazed me.
If we were to maintain the current level of electrical power provided by nuclear plants, we would
have to build so many of them again, as we did in the ’80s when production peaked. But having
experienced the Fukushima events, would the world welcome a move toward constructing new
nuclear power plants when we have so few of them now? I think we the people need to discuss
this issue again.
Either way, as the prime minister says, we must raise operation safety standards of existing
nuclear power plants. Some of my suggestions are: (1) Principally halt all reactors whose lives
have expired, (2) Prohibit exchange of executives/officials among the Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry (METI), Nuclear Safety Commission, Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency(NISA) and the power companies, (3) Toughen safety assessments concerning cracks and otherabnormalities, (4) Safely disclose information on abnormalities, (5) Release IAEA international
standard figures together with Japanese figures and (6) Reevaluate operation of plants in areas ofheightened earthquake risk.

Son: Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan85

Are nuclear power plants actually cheap while natural energy is expensive?
From the standpoint of practical, economical logic, solar power and natural energy are
expensive. I had always believed that nuclear power was the most inexpensive way of producing
power, at 5-6 yen per kilowatt-hour; therefore we have to use nuclear power and construct newplants. I am sure that many people thought the same.
But is this really true? According to figures listed on an application for approval of the nuclear
power plant installation, its unit cost is 15-20 yen. This is the actual data; the pre-accident cost.
So then what happens if we add the cost of the accident? TEPCO obviously should pay this, but
any cost beyond its capacity will fall to the government; in other words, tax. If we include thefull cost of the accident, nuclear power may in fact be the most expensive form of energy.
As this example illustrates, the true cost of nuclear power should include local subsidies, nuclear
waste processing costs and accident coverage. We need to reevaluate the legitimacy of “5-6yen,” which was the initial hook, but now seems somewhat off.
Moreover, 15 yen was a figure derived from commodity prices 30 years ago, so I wonder what
the figure per kilowatt-hour (kWh) would be for a new nuclear power plant today. The number 3
reactor at Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland was slated for an initial construction budgetof 350 billion yen, but the work was continually delayed as safety standards continued to rise,and has already cost 1.5 trillion yen despite still having no schedule for completion. Accounting
only for capital investment and without fuel or operating costs, the plant already costs 14
yen/kWh, and fuel and operating costs would add to this. The world no longer makes new
nuclear power plants because the truth is, as this case shows, they come at a huge cost.
A graph shows some surprising data. Power production costs for solar and nuclear energy in the
U.S. crossed over each other last year, in 2010 (Figure 2). I, like many others, had thought thatnatural energy was ideal but expensive, that solar power would not work in the rain or at night,
and nuclear energy could mass-produce and was inexpensive. But a crossover of the two actuallyoccurred last year, with all the rain and night concerns accounted for and looking only at
production cost during operation. Looking at this case makes us think that we must shift ourenergy policy toward realizing a society in which every citizen can feel safe.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster86

Government policy changes society
Power production using natural energy is currently increasing at a dramatic level in Europe, theUnited States and China. The key to this increase is government policy. In Germany, the feed-in
tariff policy began in 2000, allowing any electricity producer to have its product purchased bypower companies at 61 yen/kWh for the next 20-25 years. A 2004 revision of the policy raised
the purchase price to 65 yen. The mere act of the government determining such policy sparked
competition among private companies and prompted an explosive spread of solar power
generation. (Figure 3)
In Europe, countries like Germany, France and Spain have set a target of supplying 20%-30% of
their energy from natural sources by the year 2020, which people now believe could beaccomplished faster than anticipated. The latest data confirms that countries such as Germany
enforce the purchase of all produced power at 40-60 yen/kWh for 20-25 years. Japan is currently
discussing purchase of surplus power for 10 years. I truly believe that we should set figures at theEuropean level or American level of purchasing all produced power at 40 yen/kWh for 20 years
to allow private businesses to compete and develop a market. Otherwise, businesses will notthink of producing power since the returns will not match their investment.

Son: Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan

87

Looking at trends of the next 10
and 20 years brings an
expectation that fossil fuel prices
will rise. On the other hand,costs are declining for naturalenergy, owing to effects of mass
production and technologicalinnovation as seen in the U.S. It
is time for our government todraw up a grand vision.
The average monthly electricity
bill of a common household isabout 8,000 yen, and if we
account for the 40 yen for 20
years purchase price in this, thebill temporarily rises by about
500 yen. But this buys us safety
and assurance. Fossil fuel prices
will continue to rise, and nuclear
power plants will further involve
accident costs. There is no need for us to resort to more dangerous and expensive options.
At the same time, we must reduce carbon dioxide. For us to head toward a clean and more
inexpensive option over the long term, are we all not capable of facing up to the responsibility
and bearing the temporary added burden of 500 yen? The government should be acquiring thisconsensus from its citizens.
This requires no large-scale financial investments from the government. All the government
needs to do is take the solar power purchasing policy it is already discussing one step further andsimply add a line, “Purchase of all produced power at 40 yen for 20 years” or shift the policy inthat direction. Recall the U.S. case given above: Is it not sheer nonsense to cling to nuclear
power when it will recede in the future instead of taking the path that is already crossing over
and which will definitely lead to cost reduction?
Feeling that I should produce action instead of just talk, I established a Natural Energy
Foundation to bear my share of responsibility as a citizen and decided to personally input one
billion yen. I am hoping that the people of the world gather their wisdom here to present theirresearch findings and give proposals for government policies. It is a dream of mine to see thefoundation trigger discussion and play a role in offering practical alternatives to nuclear energy.
The sun will rise again
Solar, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, biomass, oceanic energy and other blessings of nature
can be used for thousands of years without contaminating the Earth. These are forms of energythat coexist with nature without destroying it. I have one suggestion to make concerning a vision
on recovering from the quake. It is known that land salinized by the tsunami cannot be cultivatedfor the next decade. How much money would it take to “recover” such farmland and create tallerPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster88

embankments? What future do we see there? Can the government instead take the lead increating an “East Japan Solar Belt” as an area for producing new energy for the future?
Ports of the past could gain new life as ports of solar and wind energy. Such a recovery project
would create huge job opportunities for the region’s people, and Japanese manufacturers alreadyhave the number-one solar technology in the world. Instead of exporting it, we should use it
domestically to create the world’s largest Solar Belt.
In this way, the sun of 21st century Japan would rise again rather than continuing to set. And
with safety and assurance, people could live on this land for many thousands of years. I believethat our nation can come up with such a hopeful vision.
Translated from “Higashi-nihon ni sora-a beruto chitai wo: Taiyo no minato, kaze no minato denihon ha yomigaeru,” Sekai, June 2011, pp. 44–51, by Son Masayoshi. Japan Echo Web No. 7
August-September 2011.
SON Masayoshi is Chairman & CEO, SOFTBANK Corp. Representative Director & President,
Yahoo Japan Corporation. Born 1957 in Saga Prefecture. Graduated from the Economics
Department of the University of California, Berkeley. Founded SOFTBANK Corp. Japan in
1981. Established the Broadband Association in 2003 and assumed the role of Representative
Chairman.

Scalise: Hard Choices

89“Hard Choices: Japan's Post-Fukushima Energy Policy in the 21st Century”
Paul J. Scalise
From Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan's 3/11,
edited by Jeff Kingston, 2012.
Paul Scalise, a supporter of nuclear power, addresses the challenges facing Japaneseenergy policy following the Fukushima disaster. He begins by acknowledging the massivechange in public opinion on nuclear power, even pointing out Son’s solar belt as one of themost popular new proposals. However, he questions whether a shift away from nuclear
power will put Japan on a sustainable path: “Can Japan achieve a nuclear-free society
without risk of rolling blackouts? Are energy security and environmental sustainability
fundamentally compatible or mutually exclusive? Is economic efficiency still possible in anenergy market that also promotes and subsidizes renewable energy sources?” Scalisereminds us that public opinion should not always dictate policy. Instead, he urges, majority
rule should be set aside for what is best for Japan, even if this option may be unpopular.
Scalise explains the current dynamics of Japanese politics regarding Japan’s energy
future. Given the massive loss of support for nuclear power, what is likely to happen? Are
Japan’s politicians responsive to the desires of the general population, or are they more
receptive to the opposing opinion of Japan’s business elite? Opponents of nuclear power
maintain that Japan’s major corporations have too long dominated Japanese politics,
resulting in policies favorable to nuclear power at the expense of the environment andhuman health. Scalise argues, however, that corporations do not have as much power in
the Japanese government as nuclear power opponents fear. He says that the influence offormer bureaucrats now working in the private sector, often on a board of directors(amakudari) and politicians who lobby for a particular industry (zoku)—some of the main
mechanisms by which firms influence policy—is not very large, particularly for energy.
Scalise frames the debate as one between “energy security and economic efficiency(nuclear power) [and] environmental sustainability (renewable energy),” addressing thesafety of nuclear power on only a limited basis. To him, Japan’s future is brighter if itchooses the path of reliable energy and the resultant stronger economy. How do hisarguments in favor of nuclear power stack up against the anti-nuclear opinions presented
above?

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster90

Hard Choices: Japan's Post-Fukushima Energy Policy in the 21st Century
Paul J. Scalise1
The 'Great East Japan Earthquake' of 11 March 2011 inadvertently shook more than justinfrastructure and private property; it threatened to create what some observers call a subsystem
collapse (Baumgartner and Jones 1991). For most of the postwar era, a policy subsystem
involving multiple actors evolved to meet Japan's market challenges and industrial development
by offering energy diversification, energy efficiency, and finally greater reliance on nuclear
power. These efforts risked sudden reversal in a matter of weeks following Japan's
unprecedented magnitue-9 earthquake. The resulting 15-meter (49.2 feet) high tsunami flooded
the back-up diesel generators cooling the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station, owned andoperated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO). Within hours, the exposed fuel rods overheatedleading to a nuclear meltdown (Evans 2011).
Today, this tsunami-induced nuclear disaster has kindled renewed interest in renewable energy
development at the expense of nuclear power. On 31 March 2011, Prime Minister Naoto Kan
expressed his intention to reconsider Japan’s Basic Energy Plan (Enerugi kihon keikaku or BEP)
and start discussions over from a clean slate (Fackler and Pollack 2011). Twenty-two days later,
the entrepreneur, Masayoshi Son— Japan's richest man—presented his idea for an East Japan'Solar Belt' in which billions of yen would be funneled away from nuclear power towards
renewable energy. Speaking at a press conference on 10 May 2011, Kan acknowledged that thenuclear incident coupled with global warming led his cabinet to 'work to ensure an enhanced
level of safety for nuclear power, while at the same time more vigorously promoting natural andreusable energy' ("Press conference by Prime Minister Naoto Kan" 2011). This idea notsurprisingly morphed into the premier's desire for a 'nuclear-free society' in Diet hearings held on
13 July 2011 ('Kan says Japan should aim for nuclear-free society' 2011).
As Japan raucously debates the future of nuclear power and renewable energy in both the
National Diet and the courtroom of public opinion, some observers have wondered in which
direction Japan's once 'quiet politics' of national energy policy, in which highly organizedinterest groups dominated the policy process in arenas shielded from public view, would take thecountry now that energy has become a 'high salience issue' (Culpepper 2011). Can Japan achievea nuclear-free society without risk of rolling blackouts? Are energy security and environmental
sustainability fundamentally compatible or mutually exclusive? Is economic efficiency still
possible in an energy market that also promotes and subsidizes renewable energy sources?
This chapter seeks answers to these fundamental questions. It begins by discussing thefundamental principles of Japan's national energy policy since BEP in broad strokes—what haschanged and how. It then explores the origins and logic of this policy by analyzing the country's
electricity sector in cross-national and longitudinal context.2 The third section of the chapter
analyzes the feasibility of BEP pre-and post-Fukushima. It finds that many of the policy goals
and aspirations of its political actors to be sometimes vague, contradictory or logistically difficult
given Japan's market structure. The final section discusses the political will and capacity actors
have to change Japan's energy policy, concluding that no single actor dominates the process. If a
subsystem collapse is imminent, to whom or what can this change be attributed and what lessons
can be draw from it?

Scalise: Hard Choices

91

Basic energy plan: background, structure and targets
Japan's national energy policy, like its electric power regulations, can be described best asreactionary. For much of its post-Meiji history, decision-makers lacked a comprehensive energy
strategy choosing to rely on an assortment of ad hoc rules, regulations, and laws that weregenerally wielded in times of national uncertainty and economic crisis (Scalise 2009: 73-106,
148-192). In the postwar era, these measures were adopted often in response to the oil shocks ofthe 1970s, the 'lost decade' of the 1990s, and the global warming initiatives of the newmillennium.
Current national energy policy is broadly outlined in the Basic Act on Energy Policy (Enerugi
seisaku kihon hō, Act No. 71) of 14 June 2002.3 It generally sets out to improve what is known as
the 3 E's: energy security (Article 2), environmental sustainability (Article 3); and economic
efficiency (Article 4). Like most Japanese laws, the Act does not offer much by way of detail andnumerical targets. However, under Article 12 of the Act, the BEP diverges from previous
policies by authorizing the government to 'formulate a basic plan...in order to promote measureson energy supply and demand on a long-term, comprehensive and systematic basis'. It isreviewed every three years, and revised when needed.
Revisions proved necessary in May 2006. Along with growing resource competition with China
and India, the price of imported crude oil rose by almost 400 per cent from 1998 ($12.8/barrel) to2006 ($63.5/barrel) precipitating a re-evaluation of policy (Figure 1). The Ministry of Economy,
Trade, and Industry (METI) drafted The New National Energy Strategy (Shin-kokkai enerugii
senryaku or NNES), which established a target for the proportion of nuclear energy in total
power generation of 3040 per cent or higher by 2030 (OECD/IEA 2008: 30). In June 2010, thistarget was raised to 50 per cent or higher. Other revisions in 2010 included:
•
•
•
•
•

doubling Japan's "energy independence ratio" from 38 per cent to 70 per cent;increasing the proportion of renewable energy in total power generation to 20 per cent or
higher by 2030;
doubling the zero-emission power source ratio from 34 per cent to 70 per cent;cutting the CO2 emissions from the residential sector by half; andmaintaining and enhancing the energy efficiency in the industrial sector at the highest
levels of the world.

The energy independence ratio is defined as the sum of its energy self-sufficiency (sources thatcan be produced domestically) and the purchase of fossil fuels under independent development.
Because Japan is resource poor and dependent on 96 per cent of its primary energy supply,
especially as it imports virtually 90 per cent of its imported oil from the politically volatile
Middle East, finding alternatives that shield the country's vulnerability to severe fossil fuel pricefluctuations and potential shortages on the world market have become the priority (ANRE 2006,
Scalise 2004). In order to reach these new targets, Japan would have been required to increase its
share of nuclear power in the generation of electric power from 29 per cent to 50 per cent while
simultaneously raising its share of renewables from 9 per cent (of which 8 per cent is hydro) to
20 per cent. Concurrently, fossil fuels would have to have decreased in both absolute and relative
terms. According to the Strategic Energy Plan, liquefied natural gas (LNG) would have to fallfrom 28 per cent to approximately 10 per cent; coal would fall from 25 per cent to 10 per cent;and petroleum-based sources would fall from 13 per cent to less than 1 per cent (METI 2010:

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

92

10).
The second broad target, which is related to the first, concerns Japan's zero-emission powersource ratio in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The world scientific consensus sees astrong linkage between fossil fuel burning, climate change, and environmental impacts(Houghton and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Working Group I. 2001). Because
approximately 63 per cent of Japan's electric power continues to be generated from fossil fuels,
expanding the generation technologies of renewables and nuclear power would help dramaticallyto reduce GHG emissions (Hoffert et al. 2002, Service 2005). Consequently, Japan's energy
independence ratio would need to correspond to its zero-emission power source ratio in order toachieve success. One of the greatest obstacles is economic.
Japan's energy economics in the 21st century
Japan's capital expenditures (setsubi tōshi) in the electric power sector have been propelled bycost-benefit considerations, including resource availability, application technology, the usefullife expectancy of the generation asset, its utilization rate (how much capacity is used in a given
period relative to potential output) and political will. Table 1 below provides Japan's current
energy economics at a glance. As mentioned above, Japan’s energy portfolio for electric power
generation still predominantly consists of fossil fuels (63 per cent), followed by nuclear (28 percent), hydro (8 per cent), and other renewables (0. 3 per cent).
Historically, Japanese electric power companies have shifted from one power source to anotherbased on cost and value (Figure 1). Abundant and inexpensive hydroelectric power gave way todomestic coal production after most appropriate hydroelectric sites were captured, thus slowly
increasing political and economic costs to further building large-scale dams in remote locations.
Domestically-mined coal gave way to inexpensive and abundant supplies of imported oil
following import liberalization in 1961 (Culter 1999). Oil then gave way to a diversified energy
portfolio including imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), imported coal, and inexpensive nuclear
power in equal measure following the 1973 oil shock. A major shift towards nuclear power was
set to become the next phase.

Scalise: Hard Choices

93Japan's policymakers originally chose nuclear power as a strategic necessity in order to enhancenational energy security, buffer the economy from energy shocks, and perhaps even serve as animportant export product (Kim and Byrne 1996). Japan's unique lack of natural resources
justified not only nuclear power, but also a commitment to plutonium fueled fast breeder reactors(Byrne and Hoffman 1996). This extensive support was tacitly based on a 'lesser of two evils'
rationale in which the risks posed by fossil fuels outweighed the risks posed by nuclear power. In
his chapter, Daniel Aldrich discusses the ways in which authorities mapped out locations andused policy instruments to induce public support in order to complete this technocratic vision—atask that became increasingly difficult over time.
Activists, students, and policy entrepreneurs have long debated the political economy ofcompeting energy sources to replace nuclear power since the events of Three Mile Island in
1979. Nuclear power's positive media image characterized as 'atoms for peace' (jobs, economic
growth, and abundantly cheap and clean power) slowly shifted towards a negative image
consisting of mushroom clouds, radioactive waste, nuclear fallout, and the like. Yet despite thisnegative image, clear trade-offs have prevented decision-makers from placing all of Japan's eggs
into another energy basket. Fossil fuel-powered generation (coal, natural gas, and oil) continues
to be among the most cost competitive and reliable electric power sources in Japan, but rising
imported fuel prices coupled with a high carbon footprint and death toll linked to its extraction,
operation and maintenance make it politically and environmentally unattractive.4 By contrast,
solar power is quiet and clean, but its prohibitive cost per kWh and low utilization rate ensure its
marginalization for energy-intensive industries requiring stable 'baseloads' to operate efficiently
during business hours. Wind power is far less costly per kWh, and offers a slightly higher
utilization rate, but its unreliability requires increasing fossil-fuel back-up sources while thePublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster94

windmills pose a danger to avian wildlife. Hydroelectric and geothermal power—both called'mature' renewable energy sources—show strong promise on economic and environmental
grounds, but face political opposition from activists and small business owners alike who
disapprove of flooded valleys, alterations to the ecosystem, and unpredictable exploration
prospects in environmentally fragile locations (sometimes national parks) where, for example, it
is hot enough to produce geothermal steam close to the surface.
Because new renewables are relatively high-cost and intermittent (Table 1), support mechanisms
such as feed-in tariffs, green certificates, premiums, and production tax credits are still needed toinduce residential and industrial support. The political support for and the inducement policies
towards increasing renewable energy, however, began long before the events of March 11. One
such example is the Special Measures Law Concerning the Use of New Energy by Electric
Utilities (Denki jigyōsha ni yoru shin-enerugii nado no riyō ni kansuru tokubetsu sochi hō, Act
No. 62), which the National Diet passed in 2002 and implemented in 2003 reinforcing renewableenergy promotion measures. The eponymously named 'Fukuda Vision' announced by the former
premier in response to growing concern in Japan about Climate Change is another such example.
Following a speech entitled 'Action Plan for Achieving a Low-carbon Society' on 29 July 2008
(GWPH 2008), a series of policy measures were implemented by the government to counter
GHG emissions. On the residential front, starting in January 2009 METI provided subsidies andtax credits for the installation and renovation of solar panels on residential homes. On theindustrial front, METI encouraged the beginnings of a feed-in tariff that required electric powercompanies to buy surplus solar power from residential homes at 50 yen per kWh until at least
2020.

Scalise: Hard Choices

95

Sources: For generation cost per kWh by fuel type, 1951-2000, see: Kantō no denki jigyō to tōkyō denryoku (ElectricPower Industry and TEPCO in the Kanto Region), CD-ROM (2000). Tokyo: Tōkyō Denkryoku. For generation cost
per kWh by fuel type, 2001-2010, see: Yūka shōken hōkokusho [Annual Report] (various years). For historical crude
oil prices, see Nihon enerugi keizai kenkyū sho (Energy Data and Modeling Center), author’s calculations based onthese sources. Notes: actual power generation costs fluctuate depending not only on the operating period but also on
the load factor, imported fuel costs, weighted average cost of capital, and other fixed costs. Decommissioning andreprocessing of irradiated fuel are included in nuclear power's generation cost per kWh, pre-Fukushima.

Feasibility and performance: whither Japan?
Speaking at an energy symposium in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, on 31 July 2011, Prime Minister
Kan argued that Japan 'cannot take a risk [with nuclear power] that could destroy the Earth even
if it is a one in a hundred million chance...Renewable energy will lead to Japan's new industrial
revolution' (Kyodo 2011). Such rhetoric aside, one of the most important questions to analyze isthe feasibility of Japan’s national energy policy in a post-Fukushima Japan. Notwithstanding thetechnological constraints and innovations of new renewables versus nuclear power, one should
consider underlying supply and demand for electric power in cross-national context—two sidesof the same political and economic coin.
In fiscal year 2010 (ending March 2011), almost 1,112 terawatt-hours of electricity weregenerated in Japan, a 4 per cent increase from 2000. The Japan Center for Economic Research
forecasts 1.1 per cent growth in GDP in 2000-2025 for its positive case. If GDP growth leads toincreased consumption of electricity in Japan as econometric studies have suggested (ChengPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

96

1998, Lee 2006), new renewables would need to increase by seven to eight times to achieve the20 per cent generation target and the 70 per cent targets for energy independence ratio and zeroemission generation sources, respectively. Yet, this increase of seven or eight times assumes nogrowth in conventional fossil-fuel generated sources or nuclear power. Moreover, should Japan’s
54 nuclear power plants gradually be decommissioned without further nuclear build—as Kan andothers have suggested should happen—these targets will be extremely difficult to reach.
About 18.8 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity are currently under construction with mostbeing gas-fired and coal-fired power plants. A further 30.8 GW is planned, including 42
megawatts (0.1 per cent) of new renewables, by 2015. If Japan hopes to achieve its GHG
emission target reductions, it will depend greatly on the amount of renewable energy and nuclear
power it can commercially introduce over the next 20 years. As of August 2011, these prospects
appear dim; only 19 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors (35 per cent) are on-line with politicalpressure to maintain the status quo until safety assurances are met (JAIF 2011a).

Virtually all OECD countries provide 'new renewable' generation at some level. However,geography, market structure, and government policy determine the quantity. Denmark (wind),
Germany (solar), Iceland (geothermal), and Spain (wind/solar) provide 15~30 per cent of their
total generated electricity from new renewables. In contrast with Japan, however, all four leading
countries in renewable energy had relatively low electricity prices in 1990 before theintroduction of feed-in tariffs. In addition, electricity capacity reserve margins—a common
metric for surplus capacity—indicated percentages well above 20 per cent (Table 2). This preexisting oversupply prevented the intermittent supplies generated by new renewables fromrisking blackouts as surplus back-up power existed in the event that solar, wind, and otherrenewables were unable to meet peak demand.
With Japan’s national reserve margin in the low 10 per cent range and falling year-on-year(Scalise 2011a, Scalise 2011b), rolling blackout risk places renewed emphasis on rapid
investment from stable sources with relatively quick lead times in the siting, licensing, andconstruction of new generation capacity. The Ministry of Environment (MOE) has alreadygranted TEPCO a special exemption from conducting environment impact studies before
expanding and building fossil-fuel power plants in the Kanto region, thus highlighting how
economic realities continue to trump environmental concerns (Nikkei 2011). This economic

Scalise: Hard Choices

97

reality militates against strong support for new renewables among industry and the incumbent
suppliers in the short-to medium-term as TEPCO and Tohoku EPCO struggle to bring capacity
back online.
On the demand side of the equation, Japanese industry continues to be the largest consumer ofenergy as well as the largest producer of CO2 emissions by sector at 46 per cent and 34 per cent,respectively. Yet from 1990-2008, they also made the strongest improvements in both energy
efficiency and reduced CO2 emissions by sector, thus creating further challenges as setsuden(energy conservation) becomes more important in Japan (EDMC 2010: 38, 47). With Keidanren,
the principal industrial peak association for virtually all big businesses and companies in Japan,
quite vocal in its opposition to higher electricity prices from the introduction of feed-in tariffs
and other austerity measures sacrificing business productivity, a larger share of the burden willneed to be carried by the largely inefficient residential and commercial sectors if the goals of the
BEP and NNES are to be met.
Is a subsystem collapse imminent?
A fundamental move away from nuclear power towards renewable energy sources would require
more than just technical blueprints and economic incentives to surpass Japan's structural
challenges analyzed in previous sections of this chapter; it would require a shift in actor
perceptions and policy images that form what some observers call 'policy whirlpools,' 'irontriangles,' or 'subsystem politics' (Griffith 1939, Heclo 1978, Redford 1969). This phenomenon
characterizes several actor interests that come together in certain political venues for the purposeof compromise and coordination. Consequently, success or failure of Japan's national energy
policy partially rests with the level of support from Japan's decision-makers at local, prefectural,and national levels in these policy venues.
Since the Fukushima disaster, public opinion polls indicate a gradual souring towards nuclear
power in the 13 prefectures that host nuclear plants. Telephone surveys conducted by The Asahi
Shimbun in the months of April, May, and June 2011 suggest diminishing support for nuclear
power in Japan. In its April 2011 survey, the newspaper found that 32 per cent disapproved of
nuclear power while 50 per cent were in support. One month later, the same newspaper recordeda slight increase in disapproval while support levels dropped to 43 per cent. By June 2011, thesituation reversed: disapproval was almost half of respondents while approval for nuclear power
fell to only 37 per cent (JAIF 2011b). This political souring has forced most prefectural
governors to refuse permission to restart those that are offline until they have convincing
assurances of their safety.
It remains to be seen if this gradual shift in voter perceptions will materially impact the politicalarena. The Democratic Party of Japan-led government, once a vocal supporter of lowering
Japan's GHG emissions by 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020 under the Hatoyama Cabinet,
began to backtrack on renewable energy development and their emission targets as soon as theparty encountered industry opposition and conflicting budget priorities in 2009-2010 (Hughes
2009, Scalise 2010). If the Kan Cabinet, and successors, hopes to promote a shift towards new
renewables, it will need to take stock of the political landscape.
There are 10 major electric power corporations (EPCOs, ippan denki jigyōsha) in Japan:
TEPCO, Kansai (KEPCO), Chubu (CEPCO), Tohoku, Chugoku, Kyushu, Hokuriku, Shikoku,
Hokkaido, and Okinawa. All nine EPCOs except Okinawa own and operate nuclear powerPublic Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster98

plants. Organizing their common interest via The Federation of Electric Power Companies ofJapan (Denki jigyō rengōkai, hereafter FEPC), they are the most obvious of the agenda setters
though not necessarily the most powerful. Their relative size, de facto monopoly status,
relationship with wholesale suppliers, privately owned assets, and control of pricing informationis stronger than that of almost any other developed nation, yet evidence of direct linkages withthe political process is circumstantial, at best. Despite the roughly 70 known electricity suppliersin Japan’s nationwide market that range from joint-ventured electric power utilities (JVs, kyōdō
karyoku hatsuden denki jigyōsha) to municipal utilities (kōei denki jigyōsha) to larger wholesale
electric-power suppliers (oroshi denki jigyōsha), none of the 10 major EPCOs have made(reported) cash contributions to any of the major political parties since 1977 (Scalise 2009: 5762, Tatsuru 1983: 81-84). Only an occasional donation from one of the JVs or regional
municipals can be seen over time, and such donations are relatively small.
There are several reasons for this lack of overt political maneuvering. One is size. The Japanesecompanies are among the largest in the world, measured in terms of kilowatt-hours and installedcapacity. TEPCO, for example, remains the largest privately owned electric power company inJapan, and is surpassed worldwide only by The State Power Corporation of China, EDF, andE.ON. We should stress the word private in this context. The sheer size of such electricity sales
and installed capacity suggests a lucrative market for potential new entrants should full
liberalization occur. Moreover, because of the size of the industry, we should consider thevarious corporate linkages and political aspects of employment—areas of concern that directly
and indirectly affect more than just the EPCOs.
Leaving aside the political and economic question of new entrants into the electricity market,
there is a stable number of suppliers and growing number of generators in postwar Japan. Basedon these initial figures, one could easily mistake this seemingly fragmented market as conducive
to greater price competition under more liberalized market conditions. However, appearances
can be deceiving. Since their 1951 postwar reorganization into the nine regionally independent
vertically integrated utilities, the incumbent suppliers have predominantly controlled the meansof electricity generation as well as its transmission and distribution to the vast majority of end
users. This “vertically integrated” structure has led to nine regional de facto monopolies on
power.5
Their regulator, METI (formerly MITI), takes a decisively pro-business approach in theirdealings with the electric power companies and their competitors. In recent years, the MOE has
competed with METI for upper-hand in the regulatory control of the sector (Peng Er 2010).
While the MOE takes an actively pro-environment approach for obvious reasons of self-interest
and preservation, the political necessity (mentioned above) of maintaining a stable supply of
power in Japan sometimes forces the MOE to turn a blind eye to certain environmental
regulations in the name of economic efficiency and stability. Some observers argue that the
government-business relationship is theoretically strengthened via amakudari (literal translation:‘descent from heaven’). If ministerial career advancement seems unlikely between the ages offorty-five and fifty-five, ministry officials usually “descend” into either a private sector positionor politics. Amakudari is an omnipresent phenomenon in the electric power sector; all major
listed utilities have at least one former career bureaucrat sitting on the board of directors(yakuinkai) and elsewhere, though their exact purpose, connections, and usefulness is debatable.6
It remains to be seen if politicians will adopt a similar 'pro-stability' tact in the coming years. All

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99

draft bills concerning the economic development of the electricity industry and regulatory
matters related therein fall under the purview of the Commerce and Industry Committee (Shōkō
i'inkai, hereafter CIC) in the postwar period, later renamed the Economy, Trade and Industry
Committee (Keizai sangyō i'inkai) in 2000.7 The Lower House’s CIC is comprised of 40
members, and the Upper House’s CIC is comprised of 20 members; it is one of the larger
standing committees in the Diet and one of the most active. Historically, the LDP occupied the
majority of seats on both CIC with a smattering of opposition parties thrown into the fray. In
1999, for example, LDP members held 23 out of 40 or 58 per cent of the Lower House’s CIC
seats versus 10 out of 21 or 48 per cent of the Upper House’s CIC. The number of bills brought
before a given committee range widely in any given year. The figure can be as low as one to as ahigh as sixteen.
Some observers have argued that the Diet is a mere rubber-stamping organ of the bureaucracy(Johnson 1982: 48-49, van Wolferen 1990: 44). Yet, politicians have the legal authority either toreject or revise draft bills at their discretion.8 In the case of energy, postwar politicians have been
known to attack bills drafted by the METI bureaucracy when they either failed to support
political expectations or did not stand up to scrutiny during standard question-and-answer
periods. One appropriate example in recent years dealt with partial revisions to the laws
regulating the electric power industry and nuclear waste from reactors (Denki jigyō hō oyobi
genryō busshi, kakunenryō busshi, oyobi genshiro no kisei ni kansuru hōritsu no ichibu o kaisei
suru hōritsu). In November 2002, the Lower House CIC voted to revise the bill (and again in theplenary session) after several tense questioning bouts revealed serious safety flaws in the
proposed bills overlooked by both the shingikai (advisory councils) and the bureaucracy. Such an
occurrence has been commonplace in the postwar period. One scholar found that of the 9,135
draft bills presented to the Diet in 1947–2001, 1,811 (or 20 per cent) were revised significantly
before passage at the instruction of the standing committees (Masuyama 2003: 35).
The extent to which zoku (‘policy tribes’) set the agenda in Japan's government-business
relationship surrounding energy policy is debatable, of course. These zoku are politicians who
are actively involved in the jurisdictional activities of one particular ministry, acquire a level ofexpert knowledge in that area, and then represent (i.e., lobby for) the interests of that industry in
the Diet (Curtis 1999: 53-55, Inoguchi and Iwai 1987, Ishikawa 1990) As a result, area specificzoku tend to build close relationships with the bureaucracy.
There is no specific electricity industry zoku. The closest equivalent is either the energy zoku,
which oversees the activities of METI regarding basic energy policy and strategy, or thecommerce and industry zoku, which by definition covers a much broader range of industries.
These two groups have never publicly championed the interests of the EPCO as a business.
Indeed, the energy zoku under the leadership of Toshizuku Kanei in the Research Commission
on Oil, Resources and Energy (Sekiyutō shigen enerugī chōsakai) are primarily concerned withthe problems associated with electricity supply and demand. In particular, these energy zoku
concern themselves with long-term strategies not only to meet the demand, but also to secure its
supply through the further implementation of nuclear power. Electric power restructuring is notconsidered relevant.
Individual politicians might have a special interest. Tokio Kanō (LDP) is a former TEPCO vicepresident, serving his second six-year term as a member of the House of Councilors. As of 2003,
he sits as vice chairman of the influential House of Councilors’ Economy, Trade and Industry

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster100

Committee (Keizai sangyō i'inkai). Mr. Kanō makes thinly veiled pro-EPCO statements by
advocating the importance of energy security and stability over greater competition and has thefull support of the incumbent EPCOs ('Chū, in tono kankei hatten ga jūyō [it is important forJapan to develop relations with China and India]' 2006). Kiyoshi Hasegawa (DPJ) is a former
TEPCO employee and Vice President of the Electric Power Labor Federation (Denryoku roren).
Like Mr. Kanō, he served two six-year terms in the House of Councilors’ Economy, Trade andIndustry Committee before retiring from politics in 2004. Mr. Hasegawa’s interests rest firmly
with those of organized labor, as evinced by his induction into the SDPJ in 1992—a party thatreceived large cash contributions from organized labor and held clear pro-labor platforms.
Finally, Masashi Fujiwara (DPJ) might also have a special interest. A former KEPCO employee
and active labor union leader for over thirty years—first for KEPCO and later for Denryoku
Sōren as vice president—Mr. Fujiwara was elected to the House of Councilors in 2001. It is
possible that all three of these politicians received funding from the electricity industry, thoughnothing in this investigation was conclusive in that respect.
To be sure, the presence of such an ambiguous force may present another obstacle to theimplementation of a new and successful energy policy as '[T]he active presence of zoku [makes]
it more difficult' for politicians to coordinate policies (Schoppa 1991).
Conclusions
This chapter has sought to elucidate the broad evolution of energy policy in postwar Japan, how
it has changed and why; to explain the nature of policy change more generally, in particular therole of framing; to analyze the economic and technical realities of Japan's energy market incross-national context as decision-makers apply foreign roadmaps to their country's policies; andfinally to learn about the capacities of various interest groups in Japanese democracy, who cancreate policy changes and who cannot.
To be sure, Japan's national energy policy is at a crossroads. In the short span of four months,
public opinion has soured towards Japan's nuclear power program as TEPCO failed to containthe nuclear crisis at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station. What was once the domain of
consummate insiders has now spread to a public increasingly apprehensive about nuclear safety.
Re-election minded politicians, career-minded bureaucrats, energy-intensive industries
concerned about high prices, eco entrepreneurs and beleaguered power companies now jockey
for position in the courtroom of public opinion.
How did all of this occur and what does it teach us about the future? This chapter argues thatJapanese national energy policy is a fragile consensus that unravels once the underlying
assumptions surrounding the policy's purpose change; that external shocks tend to provoke crisesthat force decision-makers to import workable blueprints of sector reorganization. The energy
diversification and demand management programs that emphasized nuclear power set in placefollowing the 660 per cent rise in imported oil prices in 1973-1981 continued uninterrupted fortwo decades despite eroding power company profit margins, high electricity prices, and declining
shareholder value. Following the relative failure of electricity liberalization and the neo-liberal
ideas that propelled it in the 1990s, Japan embarked on the next great wave of sectoral reorganization in the midst of resource nationalism, the meteoric rise of China, global warming
initiatives and the Kyoto Protocol, and final the coup de grâce: renewed oil price spikes in 19982008. 'Energy security,' not 'energy efficiency,' became the political mantra that produced the2002 BEP and the 2006 NNES.

Scalise: Hard Choices

101

If the latest shock to the system provokes a increasingly anti-nuclear backlash, the lack of
nuclear power to meet demand will certainly place further risk on electric power companies
struggling to maintain a secure, stable supply of electricity. Such a political environment would
almost certainly force decision-makers to abandon their ambitious GHG emission targets byincreasingly resorting to conventional thermal fossil fuel generation. Setsuden (energy
conservation) might be one of the policy tools needed in curbing future blackout risk in Japan,
but the more conventional power used to replace nuclear power opens renewed threats to volatile
imported fossil fuel prices.
Today, the question of which paradigm will dominate public discourse—energy security andeconomic efficiency (nuclear power) or environmental sustainability (renewable energy)—plays
out in the National Diet and the media. Japan struggles to implement public policies once again
to counter recurring external shocks reinforced by the latest incident at Fukushima, but faces
technological uncertainties and economic risks. As overseas renewable energy policies—feed-in
tariffs for all new renewables in particular—are the latest subject of interest, many observers
wonder if Japan's democracy will produce suitable answers. High cost and unreliability could
make new renewables a hard sell to a country that values stability and certainty. The
manufacturing sector and electric power utilities, which prioritize stability in energy prices andsupply, will oppose pro-renewable energy proposals that risk even higher electricity prices. Yet
politicians will come under growing anti-nuclear pressure as the full costs of the Fukushimadisaster, and the real costs and risk of nuclear energy, emerge and many businesses seek newopportunities in renewable business opportunities.
Notes
1

Paul J. Scalise is JSPS Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo,
and Nonresident Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University
Japan Campus. The author would like to thank Naomi Fink, Tai Inada, Taro Ishida, Jeff
Kingston, Samuel Lederer, and Ikuo Nishimura for their helpful comments and suggestions.
2This chapter focuses exclusively on the issue of electric power generation and its spillover
effects. It will not discuss energy policy as it pertains to upstream fossil fuel exploration and its
downstream distribution businesses.
3

An English-language translation of this bill is available at:
http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp
4

According to a study commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, there were arecorded 4,290 energy accidents worldwide, 1,943 defined as severe, between 1969 and 1996.
The number of corresponding energy-related fatalities were 19,650 (coal), 12,638 (hydroelectric), 15,257 (oil), 3,236 (LPG), 1,375 (natural gas), and 33 (nuclear). See Hirschberg, S.,
Spiekerman, G. & Dones, R. (1998). Severe accidents in the energy sector (first edition).
Comprehensive Assessment of Energy Systems Villigen: Aul Scherrer Institut.
5

Okinawa EPCO was established with full government funding on 15 May 1972. The company
was privatized after 16 years of public control on 1 October 1988 becoming the tenth privately
owned EPCO. In this chapter, any general reference to “EPCOs” alludes to all ten companies
unless stated otherwise.

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102

6

The exact definition of amakudari varies from author to author. For a thorough empiricalanalysis of amakudari and its various theories and hypotheses in English, see: Colignon, R. A. &Usui, C. (2003). Amakudari: The hidden fabric of Japan's economy, Ithaca: ILR Press.
7

Rules of the House of Representatives 1947, Section 5, Article 92, Clause 9. Tokyo: EHS Law
Bulletin Series; Rules of the House of Councilors 1947, Section 4, Article 74, Clause 9,
subparagraph 7. Tokyo: EHS Law Bulletin Series.
8

The Diet Law (Law No. 79, 1947), Ch. 6, Article 56, paragraphs 3 and 4. Tokyo: EHS Law
Bulletin Series; Rules of the House of Representatives 1947, Section 5, Article 143. Tokyo: EHS
Law Bulletin Series; Rules of the House of Councilors 1947, Section 5, Article 125. Tokyo: EHS
Law Bulletin Series.
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Asia-Pacific Journal Articles Recommended for Further Reading“Fukushima One Year On: Nuclear workers and citizens at risk”
Paul Jobin
March 26, 2012
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Paul-Jobin/3729
This interview with Paul Jobin touches on the opinions of nuclear power plant workers andlocal residents, and presents an analysis of their responses to government policies. Jobin
has researched nuclear power plant workers since 2002, and he conducted many
interviews after the Fukushima disaster. Jobin also discusses the health risks of exposure
to radiation.
“Ousting Kan Naoto: The Politics of Nuclear Crisis and Renewable Energy in Japan”
Jeff Kingston
September 26, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Jeff-Kingston/3610
Paul Scalise mentioned former Japanese Prime Minister KAN Naoto’s pro-renewableenergy positions several times in his article. This article explains the political ramifications
for Kan: as a result of his actions, Kingston argues, Kan lost his job in August 2011. This
article shows the political risks of being a renewable energy advocate when the politicaland corporate landscape remains largely pro-nuclear.
“Japan’s Nuclear Village”
Jeff Kingston
September 10, 2012
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Jeff-Kingston/3822
Kingston explains what people mean when they criticize “the nuclear village,” the term
widely used to refer to the cooperation between power companies, the national
government, major media outlets, and some scholars and local government officials in theirsupport of nuclear energy. He provides the perspective of MADARAME Haruki, a nuclear
expert formerly associated with the nuclear village. Madarame testifies about“fundamentally flawed” safety programs in nuclear power plants that indirectly led to the
Fukushima disaster. Kingston highlights continuing concerns about safety and lax
oversight, arguing that the pressure to cut costs is too influential when it comes to theenergy industry. He devotes a section specifically to public opinion on nuclear power, andhe analyzes the impact public opinion can have on nuclear policy, which is at present“extremely well insulated from democratic processes.” Finally, Kingston summarizes andupdates his article “Ousting Kan Naoto.”Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan After the Fukushima Disaster

107“Fallout From the Fukushima Shock: Japan’s Emerging Energy Policy”
Andrew DeWit
November 7, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Andrew-DeWit/3645
Although a large proportion of the Japanese public no longer supports nuclear power, there
is no clear alternative source of energy; every option has many drawbacks. Analyzing
Japan’s political climate, renewable energy advocate Andrew DeWit proposes what he seesas the best solution: the feed-in tariff, which is a policy mechanism used to neutralize thehigher costs of renewable energy as they are developed. DeWit also compares Japan’s
progress in adopting renewable energy to other nations, particularly China, and concludes
that Japan will need a major shift in its energy policy to maintain pace with the rest of theworld in adopting renewable energy technologies. He is in dialogue with Paul Scalise.
“Get FIT: Public Policy, the Smart State and the Energy-Environmental Revolution”
Andrew DeWit
February 8, 2010
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Andrew-DeWit/3300
In this article, DeWit gives an in-depth explanation of the feed-in tariff (FIT) which hechampions in “Fallout From the Fukushima Shock” above. Writing a year prior to the
Fukushima disaster, DeWit’s leading motivation for urging the adoption of renewableenergy is preventing the potential environmental catastrophe from climate change, rather
than the dangers inherent in relying on nuclear power.
For more information on the dangers of radiation and the failures of the Japanese
government following the Fukushima disaster, readers are encouraged to read the AsiaPacific Journal course reader, “Japan’s ‘Abandoned People’ in the Wake of Fukushima.”
Recommended Articles from Other Sources“COMMENTARY: Japan should carve out its future energy policy soon”
Robert Dujarric and Paul J. Scalise
April 30, 2012
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/opinion/AJ201204300007
Scalise and Dujarric continue to support nuclear power, believing that Japan ought not torely on imported oil, coal, and other fossil fuels, and that renewable energy cannot provide
enough power for at least 20 years. They counter many of the anti-nuclear arguments
presented above, maintaining that despite the risks of nuclear power, its use is necessary
for Japan’s prosperity to continue.

Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster

108“Development of Sustainable Energy”
Position Statement: Explanation
Atomic Energy Society of Japan: Social and Environmental Division
August 2010
http://www.aesj.or.jp/en/about_us/ps/AESJ-PS001e.pdf
This brief document demonstrates some of the arguments in favor of nuclear power
provided by the nuclear energy industry itself. The AESJ asserts that nuclear power will
help combat global warming and enhance energy security, and therefore it is important toincrease the use of nuclear power. Further, the AESJ attempts to show that nuclear poweris “sustainable” and almost like a renewable, since breeder reactors can create plutonium
to be used as fuel and other waste products from power production can be recycled as well.