Antinuclear Citizens: Sustainability Policy and Grassroots Activism in Post-Fukushima Japan [1 ed.] 1503635406, 9781503635401

Citation preview

Antinuclear Citizens

Anthropology of Policy

Cris Shore and Susan Wright, editors

Antinuclear Citizens Sustainability Policy and Grassroots Activism in Post-­Fukushima Japan

Akihiro Ogawa

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2023 by Akihiro Ogawa. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-­f ree, archival-­quality paper ISBN 9781503635401 (cloth) ISBN 9781503635906 (ebook) Library of Congress Control Number 2022043706 CIP data available upon request. Cover design: Daniel Benneworth-­Gray Cover photo: Anti-­Nuclear Power Plant Rally on September 19, 2011 at Meiji Shrine Outer Garden Typeset by Elliott Beard in Brill 10.5/15

To the late Shoji Miyashita who inspired my research on civil society

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction

1

1

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

23

2

Young Precariat at the Forefront

50

3

The Right to Evacuation

75

4

Community Power

101

5

Unethical Politics

131

6

State of Exception

164



Epilogue Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan

195



Notes for Anthropology of Policy

211

Notes

217

References

231

Index

263

This page intentionally left blank

Illustrations

Map Map 1.1

Location of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

24

Figures Figure Intro.1 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Unit 3

5

Figure 2.1

Friday mass rally on June 29, 2012

66

Figure 2.2

Rally participants waiting at Hibiya Park

67

Figure 2.3

Mass rally in central Tokyo

69

Figure 2.4

Rally participants with an antinuclear flag at the National Diet square

71

Figure 4.1

Solar panels at the Fukushima Ryozen Citizens’ Joint Power Plant

104

Figure 4.2

Solar panels tilted at different angles at the Fukushima Airport Mega Solar Project

106

Figure 4.3

Solar panels installed by Kodaira Solar

119

Figure 4.4

Solar sharing set up by REPT

122

Figure 5.1

Site of planned nuclear power plant, Cape Inceburun, Sinop

160

Figure 5.2

Sunset over the Black Sea at Cape Inceburun, Sinop

163

Figure 6.1

An abandoned gas station on National Route 6

168

Figure 6.2

Blockade at Namie Town in the difficult-­to-­return zone

169

Figure 6.3

Children playing with “radiation” at Commutan Fukushima

183

Figure 6.4

Flecon bags piled up in Minamisoma City

192 ix

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

This book is the culmination of my intellectual encounters over the past ten years, since the March 11, 2011, disaster. In particular, I thank Wakana Adachi, Hiroko Aihara, Pinar Demircan, Nobuyo Goto, Yasuo Goto, Toshiko Okada, Masami Ueno, Tilman Ruff, and Toshio Yanagihara. I appreciate the insightful comments I received on earlier versions of several chapters from Jeff Kingston, Simon Avenell, Philip Seaton, Alexander Buhk, and Glenda Roberts. Also Cris Shore, Sue Wright, and four anonymous reviewers all made useful suggestions that contributed a lot to the final revision. Lastly, I thank Dylan Kyung-­lim White, Marie-­Catherine Pavel, and Tiffany Mok at Stanford University Press for their assistance, and Susan Olin for her careful copyediting. I should note here my appreciation for the support that I received from my friends and research collaborators, Tatsuya Horie and Toru Shirai. My wife Deborah was always the first reader of the manuscript and gave me honest comments to improve it, and Hannah’s smile is always a source of energy to write. Because this book is regarded as a factual record, all public figures were documented using their real names. All of my research collaborators who gave me consent were also documented using their real names. All interviews are by the author unless otherwise indicated. Regarding translations, unless otherwise noted, English translations of Japanese sources are my own. Conversions from Japanese yen to US dollars are made at constant rate of 110 yen to the US dollar. Lastly, this book is dedicated to Shoji Miyashita. When I was a Kyodo News reporter in my mid-­t wenties, Miyashita and I climbed mountains in Nikko together, and he showed me the reality of deforestation caused by acid rain. As a citizen, he was actively denouncing such environmental degradation, and xi

xii

Acknowledgments

I wrote many stories about his actions. In his retired years, Miyashita began making charcoal. After the March 11 disaster, he cut down trees for charcoal production in the mountains of the Aizu region of Fukushima Prefecture. He later developed malignant lymphoma and passed away in 2016. I wonder how much radiation he was exposed to.

Antinuclear Citizens

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

“The Djang Might Kill All Over the World”

On April 7, 2011, the Sydney Morning Herald shared a story from Yvonne Margarula, a senior traditional leader of the Mirarr people of Kakadu in Australia’s Northern Territory. In the Dreaming of the Mirarr people, a sacred, dangerous power called the Djang is unleashed when it is disturbed on their land. The newspaper quoted Margarula’s late father, Toby Gangale, who had warned the Australian government in the late 1970s that the Djang “might kill all over the world” if it were disturbed at Ranger, a uranium mine being built in Kakadu.1 Despite opposition from the Mirarr, the traditional custodians of the land, uranium export from Ranger to Japanese nuclear power companies began in 1981. This exportation was a direct outcome of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka’s visit to Australia in 1974 to promote the Australian government’s commitment to develop the mine and supply Japan with uranium. The decision was made without consulting the Mirarr, who wanted the multibillion-­ dollar Jabiluka uranium deposit on their land to remain undeveloped and be incorporated into Kakadu National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site (see Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation 2014). Their request was ignored, and a long protest ensued, but to no avail. In a letter dated April 6, 2011, to Ban ­K i-moon, the then Secretary-­General of the United Nations, Margarula wrote, “Given the long history between Japanese nuclear companies and Australian uranium miners, it is likely that the radiation problems at Fukushima are, at least in part, fuelled by uranium derived from our traditional lands. This makes us feel very sad.”2 On Friday, March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m. local time, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake shook Japan.3 Reactor Units 1, 2, and 3 at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were operational at the time, and emergency shutdowns were activated. The tremors damaged 1

2

Introduction

the electricity transmission facilities and cut off the plant’s external power supply. Diesel generators were automatically activated to supply emergency power, and fuel-­cooling operations began in all six of the plant’s units. At approximately 3:37 p.m., a fifteen-­meter-­high tsunami wave hit the plant. It destroyed the emergency diesel generators, seawater-­cooling pumps, electric wiring system, and the power supply to various units, and it damaged the reactor buildings, machinery, and equipment. The tsunami also carried off debris, vehicles, heavy machinery, oil tanks, and gravel. At 7:03 p.m., Prime Minister Naoto Kan declared a state of nuclear emergency (Genshiryoku kinkyū jitai).4 A state of nuclear emergency is declared when a spatial radiation dose rate of 500 μSv (microsieverts) per hour or more is detected near the boundary of a nuclear facility, when a criticality accident occurs, or when reactor coolant is lost during reactor operations and all emergency core cooling units fail to operate.5 The chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, issued the following statement: At 4:36 pm on March 11, 2011, at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, an event corresponding to the provision of Article 15, Clause 1 and Paragraph 2 of the Act on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness occurred. In order to prevent the spread of a nuclear disaster, we recognize that it is necessary to implement emergency measures. Thus, based on the provisions of the same Article, we have declared a nuclear emergency. (Note) At present, no radioactive substances have been found to affect areas outside of the facility. Therefore, residents and visitors in the target area do not have to take any immediate special action. Please stay in your home or current location. Do not rush or begin to evacuate. Disaster prevention administrative radio and television can provide you with up-­to-­date information. Again, we repeat that radiation is not actually leaking out of the facility. Keep calm and wait for further information.6

Edano said that the government had declared this state of emergency as “a precautionary measure” (Cabinet Office 2011a). At 8:50 p.m., Fukushima Prefecture issued an evacuation order for 1,864 people living within a two-­k ilometer radius of the power plant. At 9:23 p.m., the national government issued an evacuation order to those living within

Introduction

3

a three-­k ilometer radius and instructed those otherwise living within a ten-­ kilometer radius to stay home. At 5:44 a.m. the next day, March 12, the national government issued an evacuation order for people living within a ten-­k ilometer radius. The towns of Futaba and Okuma, both of which host the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and the neighboring towns of Tomioka, Naraha, and Namie ordered a total evacuation of all residents. At 3:36 p.m., following a large aftershock, a hydrogen explosion blew the roof off the Unit 1 building, and the walls surrounding the pool where spent nuclear fuel rods were kept for cooling collapsed. A video of that moment—­ white smoke from the plant accompanied by the sound of explosions—­was taken by an unmanned camera installed by the local Fukushima Central Television on a mountain seventeen kilometers away in likely one of the first captures in history of the exact moment when a nuclear power plant exploded. Five minutes after the explosion, the footage was televised in Fukushima Prefecture, and it was distributed nationwide approximately an hour later. At 6:25 p.m., the national government issued an evacuation order for people living within a twenty-­k ilometer radius of the plant. Further hydrogen explosions occurred at Unit 3 at 11:01 a.m. on March 14 and at Unit 4 at 6:14 a.m. on March 15. Unit 3 was considered a greater threat because it had been burning a mixed fuel known as MOX since 2010, which contained plutonium-­239, a more dangerous radioactive material than depleted uranium-­238. According to a Japanese government report (Prime Minister’s Office 2011a, VI-­1) to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a total of 1.5 x 1016 becquerels, or 168.5 times the cesium-­137 of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb (as per Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency 2011), was released due to these explosions. By March 14, approximately 470,000 people had been evacuated from their homes in Fukushima and the neighboring prefectures (Cabinet Office 2012). Meanwhile, foreign media, such as the Guardian (March 16, 2011), carried stories featuring the “Fukushima 50,” a group of workers who stayed at the crippled nuclear power plant, including plant engineers, policemen, firefighters, and self-­defense forces. Everyone struggled to contain the disaster. Kyodo News (March 31, 2011) reported that nearly a thousand bodies had been found within a twenty-­k ilometer radius of the plant. The police mea-

4

Introduction

sured high levels of radioactivity in a body found in Okuma, about five kilometers from the plant: the needle of the Geiger counter, which can measure up to 100,000 cpm,7 jumped past this range when placed near the body. Meanwhile, twelve people had been killed by the earthquake and tsunami in Okuma.8 Prime Minister Kan later wrote that he had been considering the evacuation of fifty million people living within a 250-­k ilometer radius of the plant, including the Tokyo metropolitan area (Kan 2015, 27). Kyodo News (December 30, 2020) reported that the Kan administration had unofficially approached the emperor and his family to evacuate to Kyoto or further west, but the emperor declined the idea. On April 12, 2011, the national government raised the Fukushima accident’s severity rating to 7 (major accident)—­t he highest rating possible on the IAEA’s International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale—­t hus making it the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, which was also rated 7. Ten days later, the national government designated evacuation zones depending on radiation dose levels and distance from the plant, creating “no-­go zones” (Keikai kuiki) within a twenty-­k ilometer radius, “planned evacuation zones” (Keikakuteki hinan kuiki), and “evacuation-­ready zones in case of emergency” (Kinkyūji hinan junbi kuiki).9 Two months later, on May 12, 2011, TEPCO finally admitted that the meltdown had commenced in Unit 1 within approximately five hours of the tsunami on March 11, and that the meltdown then began in Units 2 and 3 on March 14, 2011. In September 2011, power was restored to the plant site and the cooling systems restarted. As of March 10, 2021, National Police Agency (2021) figures state that 15,899 people were killed and 2,526 went missing in the Great East Japan Earthquake. A further 3,767 people died from related causes, including stress-­ related illnesses, interruption of medical care, and suicide (as of September 30, 2020; Reconstruction Agency 2020). These numbers do not include those who suffered from death or sickness, such as cancer and leukemia, related to radiation exposure. That such radiation damage is passed down through generations makes matters worse. The triple disaster—­earthquake, tsunami, and consequent radiation leakage—­t hreatened the entire country. In this book, I call this event the “March 11 disaster.” The Djang might kill all over the world—­these words have repeatedly echoed in my heart since then. Has humanity opened a Pandora’s box?

Introduction

5

Figure Intro.1 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Unit 3, which exploded on March 14, 2011. Photo taken by TEPCO on March 21, 2011. Courtesy of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.

A State of Nuclear Emergency as a “State of Exception”

Japan’s state of nuclear emergency had still not been lifted as of March 11, 2021—­t he ten-­year anniversary of the disaster.10 This state of nuclear emergency is similar to what Giorgio Agamben (2005, 2) called a “state of exception” for social and political engineering, defined as a special condition in which the juridical order is suspended due to an emergency or crisis that threatens the state. In this situation, the sovereign or executive power prevails over all others, and a nation’s basic laws and norms can be violated by the state for the duration of the crisis. This concept can be traced back to the French Revolution (2005, 4). In the modern-­day context, a state of exception is a primal form of government and a paradigm in contemporary politics. Agamben (1998, 15) identified the state of exception’s point of departure within Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology (Schmitt 1986) and argued that “the exception is that which cannot be subsumed.” The Japanese word sōteigai—­meaning something which is unexpected or presumably difficult

6

Introduction

to imagine—­was used often after the March 11 disaster to explain the overwhelming magnitude of earthquakes and tsunamis. It can be applied to social and political life in post-­Fukushima Japan, as Agamben (1998, 16) suggested: “The exception appears in its absolute form when it is a question of creating a situation in which juridical rules can be valid. Every general rule demands a regular, everyday frame of life to which it can be factually applied and which is submitted to its regulations.” A crucial case of the suspension of judicial order following the March 11 disaster was a policy decision made by the Japanese government on April 19, 2011, to drastically increase the official “safe” radiation exposure levels for residents in Fukushima Prefecture to 20 millisieverts (mSv) per year above background from the original 1 mSv per year (MEXT 2011). The 1 mSv per year threshold is defined under the Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law (Genshiro tō kisei hō) and the Radiation Hazard Prevention Law (Hōshasen shōgai bōshi hō). This reality seems even more incomprehensible when we consider that this new standard applied only to Fukushima Prefecture residents. The revised limit of 20 mSv per year had previously been the limit for nuclear experts or scientists who worked with nuclear radiation regularly. Under Japan’s state of nuclear emergency, 20 mSv per year, a measurement twenty times higher than the normal limit, became the new official limit or the “new normal” for radiation exposure for regular civilians in Fukushima. As Agamben (1998, 170; emphasis in original) claimed, post-­Fukushima Japanese society and politics represented “the structure in which the state of exception . . . is realized normally. The sovereign no longer limits himself . . . to deciding on the exception on the basis of recognizing a given factual situation (danger to public safety): laying bare the inner structure of the ban that characterizes his power, he now de facto produces the situation as a consequence of his decision on the exception.” An immediate consequence of such an exception is “bare life” (Agamben 1998, 4), which refers to the existence of subjects who are denied political and legal representation under a state of exception. As Agamben suggested, I would argue that Fukushima residents lived in a state of “bare life” because state powers sublimated conceptions of zoê or “the simple fact of living common to all living beings” to a bios or “the form or way of living proper to an individual or a group” (1998, 1). “Bare life” under the sovereign exception is captured in a specific relation to sovereign power, which Agamben termed a “relation of exception” (1998, 18) or “relation

Introduction

7

of ban” (1998, 28). Agamben (1998, 17–­18; emphasis in original) argued that “the most proper characteristic of the exception is that what is excluded in it is not, on account of being excluded, absolutely without relation to the rule. On the contrary, what is excluded in the exception maintains itself in relation to the rule in the form of the rule’s suspension. The rule applies to the exception in no longer applying, in withdrawing from it.” In the context of the March 11 disaster, those who most immediately exemplify the plight of bare life are the residents of Fukushima, particularly children and pregnant women, who are more vulnerable to the effects of radiation. The state of exception legally exposed them to twenty times more radiation than previously permissible. However, the 20 mSv per year benchmark falls on the scale recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), a pronuclear lobby. Ten days after the March 11 disaster, the ICRP (2011) declared that it would continue to recommend the choice of reference levels in the band of 1 to 20 mSv per year, with the long-­ term goal of reducing reference levels to 1 mSv per year. However, to protect the public during emergencies, the ICRP recommended that national authorities set reference levels for the highest planned residual dose in the band of 20 to 100 mSv per year. Consequently, the new annual 20 mSv threshold became the dominant paradigm in post-­Fukushima Japan and has defined Japan’s new normal since the March 11 disaster. Japan’s policy change prompted Toshiso Kosako, a University of Tokyo professor and radiation safety specialist who was appointed as a special advisor to the cabinet shortly after the March 11 disaster, to resign. Kosako criticized the government’s decision to set this new threshold, which would apply to infants and schoolchildren among others, asserting that any measures taken by the government should be based on law and justice. He noted that the government had not followed the associated laws regarding Nuclear Emergency Preparedness or the guidelines and manuals for nuclear emergency, and he emphasized its short-­sightedness, which resulted in a slow resolution.11 Kosako tearfully said, “It’s a ridiculously high acceptable dosage, and if it is accepted, my scholarship is over. I refuse to see my children playing [in such an] environment” (Asahi Shimbun, April 29, 2011). By raising the safe annual radiation limit, the Japanese government was able to downplay the dangers of the radiation exposure and avoid evacuating contaminated areas. Admittedly, it was not technically or financially feasible

8

Introduction

to deliver on a total cleanup commitment to reduce the annual effective dose of radiation to below 20 mSv per year. According to Asahi Shimbun (November 11, 2011), the Japanese science ministry possessed maps that showed aerially measured accumulations of radioactive cesium from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that had spread to eighteen prefectures in eastern Japan.12 Surviving this new reality requires people to prepare with new, workable, and sustainable imagination, subjectivities, technologies, and knowledge. This book documents Japan’s micropolitics on nuclear policy and ordinary people’s struggles in everyday life while surviving this new normal in post-­ Fukushima Japan.13

Antinuclear Citizens

This book analyzes the impact of Japan’s nuclear policy through the lens of civil society, centering on conscientious citizens as agents for policy change in the field of post-­Fukushima Japanese nuclear power. Those I call “antinuclear citizens,” activists who played a significant role throughout Japan’s antinuclear movements in the post–­World War II era, have remained at the forefront of change. Social movements are change-­oriented political formations and conduits for active citizenship, whereby subjects transform themselves into “citizens” through claims to justice (cf. Isin 2009). Further, the advocacy of social-­movement identities and new conceptions underpinning democratic practices may also allow social movements to play an important role in the transformation of the public sphere (cf. della Porta 2013). Instead of merely protesting the government’s nuclear policy or demanding that the government abandon nuclear power plants, today antinuclear citizens take specific actions for social change. They are key agents in building a nuclear-­ free, sustainable way of life. Thus, this book addresses a key question: How have grassroots civic actions centering on sustainability shifted national and global agendas? A consistent topic in my exploration is how citizens access policymaking to shape governance. Current scholarship highlights the growing influence exerted by civil society over public affairs (e.g., Scholte 2007; Kohler-­Koch 2010; Sikkink 2011; Rashid and Simpson 2019; see Fujioka and Nakano 2012 for a Japanese context). Civil society is a public sphere that broadly comprises nonstate institutions and associations critical to sustaining modern democratic participation (Ogawa 2009, 2). It is an arena where grassroots activists

Introduction

9

have access to public affairs via policymaking and, thus, a hybrid sphere. For example, Japanese civil society encompasses various actors shaping the dynamic public sphere and who are not limited to institutionalized groups such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), nonprofit organizations (NPOs), and neighborhood associations.14 It also incorporates issue-­focused social movements, including peace, antinuclear causes, the environment, labor, and human rights. Citizen initiatives have enhanced the democratic, legal, moral, and technical standing of regulatory agencies with planetary constituencies and jurisdictions (Scholte 2007). I credit civil society with three major contributions to public affairs. First, civil society is an instrument of greater transparency and heightens social accountability for improving the governance of public institutions. Such mechanisms comprise citizens’ advisory boards, community councils, participatory budgeting, public expenditure tracking, monitoring public service delivery, and consumer protection (Anheier 2017, 5). As the background for accountability, civil society is the glue binding increasingly diverse societies, strengthening the nexus between social capital and economic development, and creating social cohesion and democratic structures (Putnam 2000). Second, civil society is increasingly a part of new types of public governance (Osborne 2010; Pestoff, Brandsen, and Vamstad 2012) and provides a promising, relatively well-­defined alternative to either a continued reliance on new public management or a return to classical public bureaucracy (Torfing and Triantafillou 2013). For example, my research on Japanese NPOs (Ogawa 2009, 2015, 2020, 2021) documents the role of civil society in human services provision as a form of “co-­production” (Pestoff 2006)—­t he core of new public governance thinking in contemporary advanced democracies. Coproduction is a substantive policy tool used by governments that prefer collaborative forms of governance to implement policy goals. Third—­and most relevant to this book’s argument—­civil society is a source of innovation for identifying real problems and presenting them to governments, policy elites, and public audiences. Its members’ experiences are embedded in everyday life, and, thus, civil society is capable of spotlighting better, more sustainable solutions. In the context of incidents such as the March 11 disaster, civil society shapes new “terms of political debate,” which can “frame issues, define problems and influence agendas” (Sheingate 2003, 188), infuse new ideas and grassroots insights into Japanese nuclear governance, and even help generate a new policy

10

Introduction

paradigm that aims at a postnuclear society. In fact, civil society’s contribution to the policymaking process can have distinct practical value through its processing of key assets such as technical information, knowledge, and expertise (Rashid and Simpson 2019, 67). In times of crisis, civil society has been effective and powerful, and it can be even stronger when it is tasked with getting an issue onto the policy agenda (Robinson and Murphy 2013).

Action Narratives

This book’s proposition is tested by ethnography. I undertook a narrative inquiry of civil society and public policy, developing what I call “action narratives,” which illuminate my commitment to document and cocreate knowledge about the issues that citizens face and to jointly generate actions for social change. I am an action-­oriented social anthropologist; I am not a visitor, tourist, observer, or Western critic of nuclear accidents. Numerous scholars have engaged in the narrative analysis of public affairs (e.g., Fischer and Forester 1993; Roe 1994; Schneider and Ingram 1997; Yanow 1997, 1999; Stone 2002; Fischer 2003; Hajer and Wagenaar 2003; Czarniawska 2004). However, some positivists believe political life to be a linear, rational choice exercise (e.g., von Neumann and Morgenstern 1944; Buchanan and Tullock 1962; Schelling 1980). Discourse regarding the narrative inquiry of public affairs, in which I have been engaging, owes its intellectual trajectory to the linguistic turn in the social sciences and humanities from the 1960s onward (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Rabinow and Sullivan 1979, 1988). This marked transition opened new pathways for research that focuses on interpreting society and has been referred to as the “argumentative” (or discursive, linguistic, communicative) turn in understanding public affairs (Dryzek 1990; Fischer and Forester 1993). Jerome Bruner (1986) argued that we interpret the world in two ways: analytic and narrative. When we analytically map the world, we identify patterns, discern cause-­a nd-­effect relationships, and hypothesize claims and test them. Meanwhile, we narratively map the world by coding experiences, objects, and symbols through focusing on good stories that convince us through their lifelikeness. Narrativization becomes a powerful knowledge-­creation device, underpinned by the belief that realities are multiple and constructed (cf. Lincoln and Guba 1985). My work was originally inspired by Emery Roe (1994), who produced one of the first major works on the narrative inquiry of public affairs. Roe pointed out

Introduction

11

that narratives are rich vehicles for the multiple and complex meanings that different stakeholders bring to a public issue. Meanings become shared in the policymaking process, and eventually there is a shift to bring the milieu and context into closer focus (see also Morgan 1980). Goffman’s (1974) idea of frames also informed my research. Frames are interpretative schemes that present how people understand situations by selectively highlighting aspects of the issue and that introduce a specific perspective that then allows the capture of reality. To understand a reality such as the March 11 disaster, I document socially constructed elements of reality, framed by “language, knowledge, and metaphor” (Dodge, Ospina, and Foldy 2005). These elements were neither limited to regular policy or legal documents made by governments nor to policy proposal drafts crafted by civil society. They appeared as appeals at rally sites, public testimony, dialogues between policy elites and citizens, and reflection opportunities, or in stakeholders’ interviews that I conducted. I also examined brochures and leaflets; statements made at conferences and workshops; press conferences and press releases; newspapers, television programs, and magazines; and public museum materials. Since TEPCO has not fully disclosed the necessary information, other media sources, including independent journalists’ and civil society’s investigation of the events at Fukushima Daiichi, were paramount. I look at the language (Dodge, Ospina, and Foldy 2005, 291–­92) around public affairs, which is used to construct social reality and is not neutral. Languages carry with them a semantic field of potential meanings, partly governed by a social code and partly individualized by the unique characteristics of the person who utters or interprets a given word (Sholes 1980). What and who the issue, stakes, and stakeholders and their roles in the policy issue are might be constructed in language as targets, beneficiaries, victims, or agents of policy (cf. Schneider and Ingram 1997). I consider all elements to craft my action narratives, which are stories strategically deployed by citizens and which capture social realities and the imagination of governmental decision makers (or the policy elite) and civil society to rally around a policy initiative and form a coalition to support it (cf. Lejano 2012). While documenting narrative accounts generated by policy elites, the construction of effective counternarratives from civil society members or antinuclear citizens challenges the dominant policy discourse to significantly change in strategy.

12

Introduction

My action narratives are, in essence, socialized commitments to envision our future (cf. Grobstein 2005).15 The central aspect of my approach is a focus on the relations, activities, and practices that generate actions within civil society. My agency-­oriented approach, which is tied to myriad historical and social trajectories, examines how the multiple, interconnected practices of politics, economy, and culture play out in diverse forms of civic action, and how legitimation takes place. Legitimacy, accountability, and the common good must be defined through processes in specific contexts, in power-­with instead of power-­over relationships (cf. Egholm, Heyse, and Mourey 2020). My action narrative is an invitation for joint knowledge creation with my research collaborators, or antinuclear citizens, to select the aspect they consider relevant, with stories framed to communicate it to others (cf. Toledano and Anderson 2020, 12). Narrativization is indeed an exercise in the creation of knowledge (Dodge, Ospina, and Foldy 2005, 292–­93) based on actual experiences and an example of what I call civic knowledge (Ogawa 2015, 74), as opposed to state-­sponsored knowledge. Civic knowledge is a vibrant grassroots response to such official knowledge that attempts to inject values and voices that bolster the moral and democratic legitimacy of governance. It promotes adjustments to existing policies by foregrounding the latest developments or providing alternative views that official circles cannot access. To mobilize civic knowledge, my research becomes a knowledge cocreation process in which repeated cycles of action take place between speakers (my research collaborators or myself) and listeners (myself or collaborators) in envisioning the subsequent action as a solution. In this process, the researcher becomes both a coresearcher and cosubject, while the subjects of the study join as co-­inquirers rather than mere informants (Heron 1988). Through commitments to knowledge cocreation, we work together at the field site to understand and act in our environment; the inquiry focuses on problem identification, action planning, and implementation. Producing new civic knowledge was a challenging process as the post–­ March 11 experiences were never completed and are still constantly being reshaped and reconfigured. For example, when my collaborators and I discussed our next action following the March 11 disaster, we often had to ask ourselves questions such as why we must act, how we could act, and what we must learn. Creative analytic thinking could help us answer how we use cur-

Introduction

13

rent resources to detect opportunities. We may need to learn new skills to answer the what. However, to understand why it matters, we must turn to narrative. The why question is not simply why we think we ought to act, but rather why we must act: what moves us, our motivation, our values (cf. Ganz 2011, 275). My research collaborators tried to connect their actions to make them meaningful and understandable for others. Working with them, as “action-­ oriented” (Greenwood and Levin 2007; cf. Ogawa 2006, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2018) researchers, we “can better resolve intractable policy controversies, can better meet democratic goals by using stories to find unheard voices, and can better understand the ever-­present value dimension in policy conflict” (Jones and McBeth 2010, 337). My ultimate objective is cocreating new knowledge; stakeholders work collaboratively toward solving a problem by carefully understanding one another’s views, values, and perspectives. This collaboration yields new engagement and insights, which can be synthesized and applied to new social and organizational welfare, thus leading to new policy. I consider my ethnography as an attempt to design a blueprint for democratizing society by documenting such policy dynamics via civil society. The origins of the qualitative investigation of public affairs are also found in the anthropological work mainly led by Cris Shore and Susan Wright (e.g., Shore and Wright 1997a; Shore 2000; Haller and Shore 2005; Shore, Wright, and Però 2011; Shore and Trnka 2013; Shore and Wright 2017; Shore, Raudon, and Williams 2020; Goodman 2002 for a Japanese context). Anthropologists can indeed best reveal or capture the political, social, and cultural dimensions of real experiences. They have studied policy “as cultural texts, as classificatory devices with various meanings, as narratives that serve to justify or condemn the present, or as rhetorical devices and discursive formations that function to empower some people and silence others” (Shore and Wright 1997b, 6). This conceptualization relates to metaphor (Dodge, Ospina, and Foldy 2005, 293–­94), within which policies are politically selected stories that narrate the relationship between the state and individuals (cf. Schram and Neisser 1997). Thus, the primary goals of this approach are to “unveil the powerful but invisible meanings embedded in historical and institutional life and to identify suppressed or competing narratives, thus proposing alternative interpretations” (Dodge, Ospina, and Foldy 2005, 293). This approach allows me to recognize the narrative—­the “text”—­as the reality under examination, and its interpretation demands constructing bridges between the policy

14

Introduction

analyst as a reader (including myself as a researcher and my collaborators or antinuclear citizens) and the text as reality. It also contemplates the text and its policy producers, between the historical context and the present text (cf. Kincheloe and McLaren 2000). Furthermore, I study policy through the lens of civil society because it is forward-­looking and justified only by a vision of the future. My research is future-­oriented in its scope, while civil society is also good at envisioning the future. In fact, action narratives documented as a form of ethnography serve not only as primary data but also as powerful sources of inspiration for future action, thus highlighting tensions between the real and the imaginary, or what the real should be. To envision the future in post-­Fukushima Japan, the action narratives documented herein operate at three levels of analysis (Lakatos 1970; cf. Shanahan, Jones, and McBeth 2011, 541). Civil society has been built from the local level upward. The first unit of analysis is micro, or individual citizens (chaps. 2 and 3): How do individual opinions shape narratives for their subsequent actions? I examine antinuclear movements across Japan and capture the ways in which individual beliefs, values, and experiences molded and enhanced antinuclear sentiments, thereby causing people to propose specific policy measures against nuclear power, for example, the right to evacuation. The second unit is meso, or groups and coalitions (chaps. 4 and 5): How do stakeholders expand and contain narratives in a policy subsystem to influence policy outcomes? Citizens from local activist groups share their insights and experiences with their counterparts. At this level, narratives are generated and disseminated by interest groups, individual citizens, elected officials, and media outlets (Shanahan, Jones, and McBeth 2011, 542). These stakeholders form “advocacy coalitions” (Sabatier and Jenkins-­Smith 1993, 25) based on congruent policy beliefs, coordination, and desired policy output. I consider two kinds of citizen groups, one for renewable energy and the other against nuclear technology export, for example. Members of these groups have one stable core policy belief (e.g., renewability of energy is the best option for human society) and strategically construct narratives for taking action, attempting to persuade government decision-­makers. My action narratives also capture civil society’s networking efforts at the national and transnational levels with the aim of advancing the coalitions’ preferred policy outcomes effectively. The third unit is macro, or institutional and/or cultural (chap. 6 and the epilogue): How do new institutional settings affect and shape policy narra-

Introduction

15

tives and counternarratives? I study Japan under the state of nuclear emergency since the March 11 disaster, which was the most dramatic extension of the state into Japanese society since World War II. I examine how the government’s role has expanded to deal with the nuclear crisis and document how the state creates new policy narratives to navigate a new normal and how civil society responds to them (cf. Clark 2011). In fact, one cannot comprehend emergency and disaster management without understanding the various roles civil society plays in these processes. Eventually, a group of my research collaborators, or antinuclear citizens, proposed generating a Japanese version of the Chernobyl Law—­t he first law in the world that explicitly covered the universal human right to life for people affected by a radiation disaster. The research for this book started in 2011 as I saw my country reel as a result of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the tsunami, and the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The crisis worsened as people in Fukushima were forced to live with levels of radiation exposure twenty times higher than normal. In my research, the term “nuclear power,” or genshiryoku, provides a powerful analytical lens through which to understand post-­Fukushima Japan. In this book, I document the reflections of the Japanese upon the present and their vision of the future. Exclusive reliance on exogenous shocks, or in this case, the March 11 disaster, to account for policy change is overly simplistic and fails to explain the absence of change in the wake of a crisis, as Vivoda and Graetz (2015, 495) pointed out in their analysis of Japanese nuclear policy. Endogenous factors or sources within institutions must also be considered for potential policy change; specifically, from where “idea generation and idea advocacy” (Hogan and Feeney 2012, 2) originate in policymaking. In other words, my action narratives engage with the question of how policy dynamics unfold across historical conjunctures (Clarke 2014), an issue I address consistently in this book.

Envisioning a Sustainable Tomorrow

Genpatsu saye nakereba to omoimasu If only there wasn’t a nuclear power plant Nokotta Rakunōka wa genpatsu ni makenaide ganbatte kudasai The remaining dairymen should do their best not to lose to the nuclear power plant

16

Introduction Sakidatsu fukō wo (Forgive me) I choose to die Shigoto wo suru kiryoku wo nakushimashita I have lost the energy to carry on working

On June 10, 2011, a dairy farmer in his fifties in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, chalked these lines onto the wall of his cattle shed before hanging himself.16 Before March 11, the man had raised and tended about forty cows. After the nuclear accident, he and his family evacuated to his wife’s home country, the Philippines. In his absence, a neighborhood farmer took charge of his cows. The man later returned to Fukushima, culling his livestock after raw milk shipments from his area were stopped (Asahi Shimbun, June 14, 2011). If only there wasn’t a nuclear power plant, he may have not lost the will to live. This man’s case is not isolated: Many were forced to leave their homes and become refugees to avoid radiation exposure, and quite a few committed suicide. During my fieldwork for this book, I explored what the Japanese people can learn from the March 11 disaster and what lessons we can draw from these extreme experiences.17 An important value that the Japanese people acquired from their nuclear experiences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was peace, or pacifism, which entails the belief that a state waging war and individuals participating in war, under any circumstance, are wrong. This belief was enshrined in Japan’s postwar constitution: Japanese pacifism prescribes disarmament of the nation’s own accord in Article 9, and the preface advocates the right to live in peace not only for the Japanese but for every global citizen. Further, history has witnessed various civic movements and efforts to realize a war-­f ree world: thinkers such as Rousseau and Kant contributed to the progress of ideas for peace, and Japan’s constitution reflects their philosophy. The constitution may be criticized on grounds of having been written by the US occupational forces and therefore not being an original product of the Japanese; however, Japan, as an independent sovereign state, could have revised the constitution. It did not do so because most Japanese people defend and love it. In fact, it has not been amended since it was enacted on May 3, 1947, making it the world’s oldest “untouched” national constitution. As I have argued elsewhere (Ogawa 2011), peace, as defined by the constitution, is a set of contested, dynamic identities constructed through politics and everyday life for Japanese people. The March 11 disaster proved that human beings and nuclear power

Introduction

17

cannot coexist. A key term that comes to mind is “sustainability.” As Anna Tsing (2017, 51) wrote, “ ‘Sustainability’ is the dream of passing a livable earth to future generations, human and nonhuman. The term is also used to cover up destructive practices.” Echoes of this sentiment can be found in the use of the term in tandem with nuclear power, which is done by pronuclear supporters to claim that it is sustainable and environmentally friendly because, like other renewable energy sources, it does not emit greenhouse gases when it generates electricity. The current president of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan (Nihon genshiryoku gakkai), the largest academic community promoting the peaceful use of atomic energy in Japan, even said, “We would like to contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals from the field of nuclear energy and contribute to a better planet for future generations” (Atomic Energy Society of Japan 2019). On March 11, 2021, the tenth anniversary of the March 11 disaster, five nuclear power plants were operating in Japan, and twenty-­eight nuclear power plants were halted for regular checks.18 Meanwhile, one nuclear power plant has been under construction in Kaminoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in western Japan, as the Japanese government has not abandoned nuclear power production. The head of the Kaminoseki construction office of Chugoku Electric Power Company stated that its business would greatly contribute to the Japanese government’s strategy to establish the sustainable “best mix of power sources” (2013)—­no doubt using the term to praise Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policy. This statement was published a month after Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party were reelected after the Democratic Party of Japan, which proposed the nuclear phaseout policy, lost a lower house election in December 2012. The company went on to claim that constructing the new nuclear power plant would “simultaneously address the three issues—­stable energy supply, environmental protection, and economy.”19 Japan possesses highly sophisticated technology. Mycle Schneider, who worked with Jinzaburo Takagi of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, said that it was impressive how high-­tech-­driven Japan had shown the world that it was possible to replace more than half its electricity from fossil fuel with nonfossil-­f uel sources over just the five years following 2011, primarily through the development of renewable energy (Schneider 2019, 104). Japanese authorities have imposed strict standards for constructing nuclear plants, given the country’s seismic risk. However, advanced technology can never be

18

Introduction

perfectly secure, and the list of significant nuclear accidents may continue to grow. So far, it includes Kyshtym, 1957; Windscale, 1957; Three Mile Island, 1979; Saint Laurent des Eaux, 1980; Chernobyl, 1986; Tokaimura, 1999; and Fukushima, 2011.20 Japan is entering an era of massive nuclear plant decommissioning. A recent annual paper on nuclear power urged plant operators to plan ahead to enhance safety (Japan Atomic Energy Commission 2019). Shunichi Tanaka, former chief (2012–­17) of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (Genshiryoku kisei iinkai), even suggested that nuclear power would disappear (Mainichi Shimbun, March 6, 2020). Moreover, reactors restart slowly, a process that has become even more complex after the March 11 disaster as nuclear regulators undertake lengthier inspections. In 2013, new nuclear safety standards were introduced, in which the Nuclear Regulation Authority now required power companies to plan for severe accidents and which demanded measures such as the construction of sea walls to protect nuclear power plants from tsunamis. These standards also mandated that power companies build facilities on the plant premises that allow remote-­controlled reactor cooling systems to ensure continuous operation and avert a meltdown in the event of a terrorist attack. In 2018, an agreement made by the Japan Atomic Power Company (Genden) and six municipalities in Ibaraki Prefecture regarding the Tokai Daini nuclear power plant gained nationwide attention. The agreement highlighted risk sensitivities in the areas where nuclear power plants are located: the plant operator was required to obtain consent from all local neighboring municipalities to restart it (Nikkei, March 30, 2018; see also Aldrich and Fraser 2017). This may set a precedent for restarting other nuclear power plants in a country where grassroots, antinuclear sentiments are widespread. People have realized that nuclear power threatens human existence and that life with it is not sustainable. Humanity cannot manage nuclear technology in its existing capacity. I documented ordinary people’s actions as they sought to survive and navigate a new reality in post-­Fukushima Japan. Sustainability requires developing collaborations in civil society, foregrounded by voices that “challenge hegemonic ideology and practices, both locally and globally”; it “requires re-­imagining and reworking communities, societies, and landscapes, especially those dominated by industrial capitalism, to help us build a productive symbiosis with each other” (Brightman and Lewis 2017, 22, 2). The dynamic interface between radiation-­tainted environments

Introduction

19

and human societies is necessarily mediated by actions, which are carefully processed by civil society. Furthermore, sustainability is concerned with the global and long-­term impact of our practices, relationships, and institutions in a connected world (Thiele 2013, 3) where our choices have consequences. My experience of documenting peoples’ efforts to seek sustainability inspired me to take action for social change—­I joined antinuclear rallies in central Tokyo (chap. 2), engaged in dialogues on the right to evacuation with lawmakers and bureaucrats (chap. 3), visited renewable energy production sites in rural Fukushima (chap. 4), attended Japan’s nuclear plant construction site in Sinop, Turkey (chap. 5), and reflected upon my explorations in the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework, a project led by the Japanese state (chap. 6). All these aspects entailed engaging with a network of people who envisioned a sustainable future. Eventually, I encountered a citizens’ group that aims to create a Japanese version of the Chernobyl Law. I became committed to this group as I believe their aim to be productive for post-­Fukushima Japan (epilogue). This book presents historical records of the decade following the March 11 disaster. It records the voices of ordinary people, or “antinuclear citizens,” who have contributed to national reconstruction efforts in post-­Fukushima Japan.21 Consistently, I asked these citizens how they envisioned the possibility of a sustainable life through participating in grassroots actions organized by civil society. In fact, Japan’s civil society entered a new phase following the March 11 disaster, with citizens helping to propose and generate new policies and practices for building self-­sufficient, sustainable lives. This feat was accomplished through the efforts of individuals I have been fortunate to associate with. Furthermore, the ethnography I document in this book resonates with the reality of the COVID-­19 crisis—­a society in a state of emergency during the Great Lockdown bears witness to a much bigger and more interventionist state. Japan is prepared in terms of its state of emergency experience; it is a society that is resilient in the face of tragedy.

The Chapters Ahead

The upcoming chapters present the stories or action narratives I collected. They belong to antinuclear citizens who have demanded change to make their lives sustainable and are documented chronologically from 2011 to 2020. These stories hint at events that other regions of the world may also experience in the future under a new normal.

20

Introduction

Chapter 1 reviews Japan’s nuclear policy and antinuclear activism throughout the early post–­World War II period. Japanese nuclear governance was formulated by an epistemic community surrounding nuclear policy, called a “nuclear village.” The chapter explains how the nuclear village controlled the development of the nuclear power industry and documents Japan’s distinctive history of antinuclear movements following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki experiences. Chapter 2 documents Japan’s post-­Fukushima antinuclear movements. These differed from postwar protests in that they had no political affiliations, and the activists’ claims have not been limited to nuclear energy issues: they have called for a fundamentally fairer society and have proposed alternative ways of life. This chapter is an ethnography that documents the real voices of protest against nuclear power in post-­Fukushima Japan. It particularly focuses on the voices of young precariat participants, who have been spurred to action by the neoliberal economic policy that Japan has adopted since the 2000s. Based on the evidence provided by the antinuclear rallies, I argue that their mounting anger is a catalyst for new post-­neoliberal politics in post-­Fukushima Japan. Chapter 3 documents the new human rights advocacy that has occurred in Japanese politics. It argues for the rationale that led to the development of the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act in 2012, which emphasizes the right to evacuation and presents the grassroots struggle of the people against public authorities. The chapter outlines the ways in which Japanese civil society groups have played a significant role in ensuring that people’s voices are heard by policymakers. Further, it presents a picture of the actual implementation of recuperation programs for children who remained in Fukushima after 2011. Advocacy for such fundamental human rights is gradually progressing and is no longer merely perceived as a criticism of the government; rather, the advocates present the government with alternative actions and support policy reform. Chapter 4 explores new possibilities for Japan’s energy policy in the post-­ Fukushima era. The major issues currently faced by Japanese society are how to revise the energy policy and energy production practices. This chapter presents a picture of a Japan in which there is a strong grassroots “community power” movement toward renewability and sustainability, and where there is greater local control over energy production and more extensive public participation in energy policy.

Introduction

21

Chapter 5 examines the development of transnational civil society networks that have evolved in opposition to Japan’s efforts to export nuclear reactor technology. The chapter focuses on the approach that civil society groups adopt in criticizing the current Japanese nuclear export policy, deeming it “unethical.” Actors from transnational networks have frequently stressed the need for a stricter nuclear technology safety regime, often emphasizing a demand for higher levels of democratic transparency regarding safety issues. I have documented the actions taken by civil society groups in Japan and Turkey, where grassroots voices interjected to demand changes in their governments’ national energy policymaking processes in response to the intention to export Japanese nuclear power plants to Turkey. Chapter 6 provides an updated account of contemporary Japan under the ongoing state of nuclear emergency. The government justified making exceptional interventions in the domain of policymaking by claiming that it was necessary for the maintenance of the national economy. I documented my visits to Hamadōri, where the defunct Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located. I observed the emerging high-­tech modeling and robotics centers under the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework, which is being actively developed as a major reconstruction policy. The visit is an important reflection point in my action narratives via observations and experiences. It forms the basis for the suggested actions for social change that follow in surviving a new normal or living with 20 mSv radiation in contemporary Japan. I also explore what “being sustainable” means under such a “state of exception.” The epilogue documents an emerging demand that the Japanese government replicate the Chernobyl Law, which has been organized by a citizens’ group, Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice: Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan. The group’s first step toward institutionalizing the Chernobyl Law in Japan was to propose the creation of a series of local ordinances on the rights to settle out, or resettlement without return, across the country. This chapter documents the first trial of the law in Ise City, Mie Prefecture, and group members’ reflections on its implementation. Finally, the Notes for Anthropology of Policy summarize my arguments to clarify my contribution to the anthropology of policy and suggest implications for policymaking practice. My notes present an anthropological gaze and actions aimed at problem-­solving in the real world.

This page intentionally left blank

ON E

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

Fukushima: Tokyo’s Backyard Engine

Located on the Pacific coast, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is about 220 kilometers (130 miles) northeast of Tokyo. To get there, I usually took the Shinkansen bullet train for about one and a half hours from Tokyo station to Fukushima station, then drove along the local road for approximately two hours. Another way, which takes more than four hours, is by the local JR (Japan Railway) Joban Line from Tokyo station to Tomioka station, the nearest station when I visited, plus a fifteen-­minute taxi ride. After the March 11 disaster, the train service beyond Tomioka station was suspended for nine years; it resumed in March 2020, and Futaba station also became operational again. The population of Fukushima, Japan’s third-­largest prefecture, is approximately two million. It is part of the Tōhoku region, which comprises six prefectures in the north of Japan’s largest island, Honshū. It is a scenic region with many tourist destinations, including volcanic landscapes, hot springs, medieval castle towns, and ski resorts. Fukushima Prefecture is divided into three localities: Hamadōri, Nakadōri, and Aizu, from east to west. The nuclear power plant is in the easternmost part, Hamadōri (literally, “coastal path”). The coastal plains of this region are bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Abukuma Highlands to the west. The Hamadōri area has functioned as an energy supply base for the Tokyo metropolitan area since the late nineteenth century amid Japan’s rapid industrialization; it is considered Tokyo’s “backyard” due to its proximity to the metropolis (Komatsu 2018, 86). Hamadōri played a crucial role in fueling Japan’s economic growth by providing Tokyo with coal from the Joban coalfield, or Joban-­tanden, located at the eastern foothills of the Abukuma Mountains. 23

24

Chapter One

Map 1.1 Location of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant; Fukushima Prefecture is highlighted.

The JR Joban Line was originally built to transport coal to the industrial areas in and around Tokyo. From the 1960s to the 1970s, as oil replaced coal as Japan’s primary energy source, the coalfields lost their standing. Many mines, which had once formed the foundation of Japanese industry, were closed. The coal industry was restructured, mainly by the government, and many miners lost their jobs (see Ichihara 1997). This industrial policy change led to the heyday of Japan’s labor movements, such as the strike at the Miike coal mines in Kyushu in 1959–­ 60 (see Gordon 2012; Kumagai 2012). The General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sohyō) mobilized tens of thousands of workers nationwide to join rallies and protests in the mining regions. Though Joban was no exception to such changes, the struggle faced by workers here was relatively moderate as

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

25

Joban’s miners were reemployed by Spa Resort Hawaiians, Japan’s first theme park. Joban Kosan, the operator of the Joban coalfield, turned its focus to tourism and entertainment in 1966, and its Hawaiian-­t hemed waterpark is still operating successfully. Simultaneously, a government plan to build a nuclear power plant was in the offing. Yomiuri Shimbun (November 30, 1960) first reported that TEPCO was planning to build a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture in 1960; however, Fukushima had already started attracting nuclear business opportunities in the 1950s. Governor Zenichiro Sato played a significant role in bringing nuclear power plants to his prefecture, in collaboration with Kazutaka Kigawada, then TEPCO vice president, who was originally from Fukushima (Sato 2011, 22). Construction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant began in 1967 under Governor Sato, and the plant became operational on March 26, 1971, under his successor, Governor Morie Kimura. Eventually, Fukushima hosted the two biggest nuclear power plants in Japan—­Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini (operational from April 20, 1982), with a total of ten reactors. The Japanese public became familiar with nuclear power around this time. Astro Boy, a Japanese cartoon character and one of the first televised anime in Japan, became popular among children. Astro Boy was an android with human emotions, and the power source for his 100,000-­horsepower strength was nuclear fusion. In fact, nuclear power and Astro Boy are synonymous for many Japanese people. Meanwhile, the use of electricity generated by nuclear power was first demonstrated in Japan at the World Exposition in Osaka in 1970. The Expo celebrated Japan’s transformation into the world’s second-­largest economy following World War II and was a phenomenal success, attracting more than 64 million visitors to Suita City, Osaka Prefecture. It took place one year before the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant started its commercial operations in 1971. Reactor Unit 1 at the Mihama nuclear power plant of the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) reached criticality on July 29, 1970; on August 8, about 10,000 kW was test-­transmitted to the Expo venue. Mihama’s Unit 1 started commercial operations on November 28 that year, and KEPCO became the first electric power company in Japan to commercially supply nuclear power.1 KEPCO went on to build eleven nuclear power plants before the March 11, 2011, disaster, and its dependence on nuclear power plants was the highest among all Japanese electricity com-

26

Chapter One

panies (Nikkei, August 28, 2015). Over the course of the next fifty years, Japan continued to construct nuclear power plants, becoming one of the world’s top adopters of nuclear power.

A Picture of Japan before March 11

Japanese nuclear governance was formulated by an epistemic community surrounding nuclear policy called a “nuclear village” (genshiryoku mura). The nuclear village created links between Japanese elites, including politicians (primarily, but not exclusively, from the Liberal Democratic Party), bureaucrats, power companies such as TEPCO, and business lobbies such as the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren), media, and academia, working closely with their United States counterparts. These entities formed a closed inward-­looking circle or murahachibu (village exclusion), “ostracizing naysayers and critics and denying them the access and benefits that ‘members’ enjoy” (Kingston 2012a). This long period of institutional stasis was, however, punctuated by a “crisis” (Krasner 1984, 234), the March 11 disaster, which led to dynamic changes within Japanese institutions and their policies and represented a critical juncture for Japanese nuclear policymaking. By 2011, Japan had the third-­largest commercial nuclear program in the world, surpassed only by the United States and France. Nuclear power had significantly contributed to furthering Japan’s economic prosperity. Before the March 11 disaster, nearly 30% of Japan’s electricity was provided by nuclear power, generated by fifty-­four nuclear power plants across the archipelago. In a public opinion poll conducted in October 2010 (and released in February 2011), most of the Japanese population (77.4%) said they wanted nuclear power, and only 4.1% responded negatively (Japan Atomic Energy Relations Organization 2011). A year before the March 11 disaster, on February 27, 2010, the prime minister of the Democratic Party of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama, laid out Japan’s position on nuclear power at the Washington National Nuclear Security Summit. Hatoyama highlighted the country’s commitment to nuclear disarmament and the peaceful use of nuclear power and declared its support for US President Obama’s initiative to achieve nuclear security (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2010a). The Washington National Nuclear Security Summit was a global initiative started in 2010 by Obama to prevent nuclear terrorism and contin-

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

27

ued for four years until the end of his term. In remarks made in Prague on April 5, 2009, Obama declared that his presidency would see “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” and clearly developed a pronuclear energy statement: “We must harness the power of nuclear energy on behalf of our efforts to combat climate change, and to advance peace opportunity for all people” (White House 2009). Nuclear power was promoted in the context of climate change, and Japan fell in line with this global trend. With no oil or coal of its own, Japan had its own strategic and economic reasons to lean heavily on nuclear energy. Nine months before the March 11 disaster, Hatoyama’s successor, Kan, made a cabinet decision for the Strategic Energy Plan (second revision) in June 2010 (Cabinet Office 2010a), which aimed to raise the ratio of energy from zero-­emission power sources such as nuclear and renewable energy from 34% to 50% by 2020 and to 70% by 2030. With maximizing the use of renewable energy in mind, the plan also aimed to build more than fourteen additional nuclear plants by 2030, nine of them by 2020, and raise the overall plant capacity utilization rate to 90% by 2030 (85% by 2020, from 60% in 2008). Earlier, Japan had enacted the Basic Act on Energy Policy (2001), with three fundamental principles: energy security, environmental protection, and economic efficiency. However, this act does not mention any specific energy sources for the Japanese government to pursue; rather, it stipulates that the government must formulate a basic plan for energy supply and demand, called the Strategic Energy Plan, the first draft of which was completed in 2003 (Cabinet Office 2003). The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry must draft the plan in consultation with the heads of relevant administrative sections and the Advisory Committee for Natural Resources and Energy in the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, and then seek a cabinet decision on the draft. Nuclear power was further promoted as the Democratic Party of Japan government positioned nuclear technology as part of the 2009 New Growth Strategy to 2020. In particular, the foreign export of nuclear reactors was considered one of the key pillars of the new economic growth policy, linked to “green innovation” or innovation in the fields of environment and energy. The use of nuclear power is key to this policy, along with support for the promotion of renewable energy and low-­carbon investment. While promoting export-­ oriented nuclear power technology, Prime Minister Kan and his Vietnamese

28

Chapter One

counterpart Nguyen Tan Dung agreed in October 2010 that Vietnam would buy two nuclear reactors from Japan (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2010b). Even after the March 11 disaster, this nuclear reactor export policy actively continued under Prime Minister Abe’s administration with the Liberal Democratic Party, which returned to power in December 2012. This was because, regardless of the government in power, Japan’s nuclear industry was dominated by the nuclear village, which collectively considered nuclear power necessary both for sustaining the economic prosperity that Japan had enjoyed over the past half century and for maintaining geopolitical security. The regulation of nuclear reactors was entrusted to the same government bureaucracy responsible for its promotion, and regular safety checks were conducted by the members themselves. This village mentality eventually led to the March 11 disaster—­a man-­made disaster, as Kiyoshi Kurokawa, chairman of the National Diet’s Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Committee, said in the committee’s final report on the March 11 events (National Diet of Japan 2012, 9). However, Japanese civil society has consistently challenged the powerful nuclear industry dominated by this notorious nuclear village. The nation’s history of antinuclear movements, presented later in this chapter, has involved a series of conflicts with the nuclear village.

Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power

Japan’s use of nuclear power was promoted as part of the “Atoms for Peace” initiative proposed by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In a speech delivered before the United Nations General Assembly on December 8, 1953, Eisenhower spelled out the need to repurpose existing nuclear weapons technology for peaceful ends (Chernus 2002, xix). His speech was followed by an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act, which changed American nuclear policy: nuclear technology, which had thus far been monopolized by the government, was made open to the private sector and could be transferred to foreign allies. Eisenhower (1963, 313) had been against the use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and intended to control the international nuclear arms race as the Soviet-­A merican Cold War intensified in the 1950s. The United States expressed an interest in taking a strong lead in managing the risk of the proliferation of nuclear technology. Eventually, the Atoms for Peace speech inspired the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) within the United Nations in 1957. The objectives of the IAEA’s dual mission, articulated

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

29

in its statute, are “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world. It shall ensure, so far as it is able, that assistance provided by it or at its request or under its supervision or control is not used in such a way as to further any military purpose.”2 Ten years after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan had joined the Atoms for Peace initiative. In March 1954, the Diet budgeted JPY 235 million to begin basic nuclear research.3 The budget was proposed by politicians from three conservative parties; Yasuhiro Nakasone, Japanese prime minister in the 1980s, was one of the leading figures who initiated the budget proposal draft. Elected in 1947, Nakasone, a former Japanese imperial navy officer, played a significant role in promoting peaceful uses of nuclear power. Nakasone (2004, 44) wrote later that the figure “235” in the proposal was associated with uranium-­235, a material that can be used both as a fuel in nuclear reactors and an explosive in atomic bombs. The budget proposal was approved a mere three days after the Lucky Dragon incident, the third hibaku or radiation exposure experience for the Japanese, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese tuna fishing boat, Lucky Dragon 5 (Daigo Fukuryū Maru), was exposed to nuclear fallout from a US hydrogen bomb test at the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific,4 resulting in the death of crew member Aikichi Kuboyama from acute radiation syndrome. Yet, the Japanese government promoted nuclear policy as if nothing had happened. Nakasone wrote that after World War II, he was keenly aware of how Japan lagged behind the United States and Europe in science and technology; he felt strongly that Japan needed to focus on developing new technology, especially in the field of nuclear research and development, in order to reconstruct the nation (Nakasone 2004, 41–­46). Shortly after the budget decision, however, the Science Council of Japan (Nihon gakujutsu kaigi), Japan’s independent community of academic scholars, raised concerns about whether nuclear research would involve military research under American influence. In fact, the Atoms for Peace initiative was devised to ensure that the postwar West, including Japan, would accept strategic plans created by the US government and corporate sector that promoted the civilian use of nuclear fuel and technology, including nuclear power. The program was also designed to subjugate these states to US nuclear policies and new technologies, making them potential corporate consumers of uranium fuels and proprietary technologies developed by US nuclear industries

30

Chapter One

and corporations. The point was to separate nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, give the latter to other countries through the private sector, and use the “peaceful atom” as a way of legitimating nuclear technology, including US nuclear weapons (see Bundy 1988). Thus, in 1954, the Science Council of Japan claimed that nuclear research should follow three principles: democratic methods (minshu), independent management ( jishu), and transparency (kōkai). In fact, these three principles were clearly reflected in Japan’s key nuclear policy, defined in the Atomic Energy Basic Law (Genshiryoku kihon hō), which was passed by the Diet in December 1955. Article 2 of this act stipulates that the research, development, and use of nuclear power should be limited to peaceful purposes, aim at ensuring safety, and be performed independently under democratic administration, and that results obtained should be made public to actively contribute to international cooperation. In the mid-­1950s, Japan started developing human resources specializing in nuclear power. Kyoto University was the first Japanese university to offer a nuclear engineering major in 1958, followed by the University of Tokyo in 1960 and Osaka and Tohoku Universities in 1962. Policy infrastructures were also established based on the Atomic Energy Basic Law. In January 1956, the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (Genshiryoku iinkai) was established to systematically carry out national policy measures under a democratic administration for atomic energy operations. The commission planned, deliberated, and made decisions from a broad neutral perspective on matters related to the peaceful use of nuclear power. When the commission deemed it necessary, it could recommend and seek reports from the heads of relevant administrative organizations through the prime minister. Matsutaro Shoriki became chairman of this commission in January 1956. Shoriki was a former Class-­A war criminal, indicted for crimes against peace in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (also known as the Tokyo Trial) after World War II. As head of the conservative daily Yomiuri Shimbun and its subsidiary Nippon TV, he was also a media mogul, which allowed him to play a key role in promoting nuclear power and its peaceful use. In February 1955, Shoriki was elected to the lower house from his hometown in Toyama Prefecture. By October 1956, he had been appointed the Japan Atomic Energy Commission chair and the first director of the Science and Technology Agency (Kagaku gijutsu chō).5

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

31

As he investigated Shoriki’s role in Japanese media history in the early post–­World War II era, Waseda University professor Tetsuo Arima discovered a 474-­page document titled “CIA Shoriki File” at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC (see Arima 2006). Arima (2006, 6) proclaims that Shoriki acted as a CIA agent under the code names “PODAM” and “POJACKPOT-­1.” One of Shoriki’s main agent assignments was to propagate nuclear power plants using US technologies across Japan through his media network, which started a pronuclear campaign in January 1955, introducing Atoms for Peace. Shoriki made an inaugural statement at the Japan Atomic Energy Commission’s first meeting, demonstrating a strong intention to begin nuclear power generation: The purpose of the Commission is to  .  .  . [make] atomic energy available for general use. In light of the successful experiments that have been carried out by the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries, I am confident that we, too, will succeed within five years in atomic power generation.6 . . . The first task of the Commission will be to import from the United States research reactors, as the result of coming into effect of the Japanese-­A merican Atomic Energy Agreement. . . . By adopting and assimilating the facilities and advanced technologies we will seek to complete in good time the groundwork for independent study and research of our own.7 (JAEC Monthly Report 1956)

Indeed, Japan’s close relationship with the United States has been key in framing its nuclear policy since the early post–­World War II period. The United States lifted the ban on Japanese nuclear research and instead provided support by establishing the US-­Japan Agreement for Cooperation Concerning the Civil Use of Atomic Energy in 1955. The bilateral agreement provided for cooperation in nuclear power research, including the lease of enriched uranium from the United States, which Japan used to seed a nuclear power program. The agreement also required the return of spent nuclear fuel to the United States, the use of the loaned fuel as intended, and the annual reporting of usage (Japan Atomic Industrial Forum 1986, 37), which is the standard for any country that receives nuclear technology from the United States. Based on this agreement, the Japan Research Reactors 1 (JRR-­1) and 2 (JRR-­2) were imported from the United States to the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI, Nihon genshiryoku kenkyūjo), a new nuclear research arm in Tokaimura Village, northeast of Tokyo. On August 27, 1957, JRR-­1 went critical (Suzuki et al.

32

Chapter One

1971); it was the first criticality in a nuclear reactor in Japan. Tokaimura has since become a nuclear research hub, and the JAERI is currently known as the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (Nihon genshiryoku kenkyū kaihatsu kikō). The United States took the lead in constructing Japan’s nuclear power plants, including the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 1967. General Electric retained intellectual property rights to the nuclear power units supplied to Reactor Units 1, 2, and 6, while Toshiba supplied structural materials for Units 3 and 5, and Hitachi for Unit 4; the six units followed the GE design and were built by Kajima, a Japanese construction company (see Krooth, Edelson, and Fukurai 2015, xvi). All were the BWR (boiling water reactor) type, which produces steam with heat from fuel rods, turns a turbine, and generates electricity.8 The US-­Japan bilateral agreement for nuclear cooperation has been expanded several times since the 1950s with the nationwide growth of the use of commercial nuclear power reactors (Chunichi Shimbum Shakaibu 2014). The Japan Atomic Energy Commission published its first long-­term plan in 1956, which was then updated every five years, aiming to establish nuclear power as a homegrown energy source.9 In particular, Japan has been proceeding with the development of advanced reactors that make efficient use of uranium resources since the 1950s. Japan adopted a nuclear fuel cycle—­ the most advanced technology in the peaceful use of nuclear power—­which calls for reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear power plants, extracting plutonium, recycling civil plutonium by fabricating it into mixed-­oxide (MOX) fuel, and reusing it. The Atomic Fuel Corporation (Genshi nenryō kōsha) was established in 1956 and started developing technology for uranium exploration and nuclear fuel manufacturing as well as technology for spent nuclear fuel reprocessing, uranium enrichment, and radioactive waste disposal (see Japan Atomic Energy Commission 2017, 2). The project was taken over by the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (Dōryokuro kakunenryō kaihatsu jigyōdan), which was founded in 1967. In fact, uranium was successfully enriched using gaseous diffusion in Japan for the first time in 1969, before the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons came into effect in 1970 (see Yoshioka 2011, 130–­33).10 Furthermore, a nuclear fuel cycle promotion policy gained popularity due to the increased awareness of the need for energy security after the oil shock in 1973, which led to increased support of nuclear power.

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

33

Since 1970, light water reactors (LWRs) developed in the United States have mainly been used for power generation in Japan, primarily because of their low construction cost, further increasing Japanese power companies’ reliance on the United States (Akiyama 2017, 4). In 1972, the Japan Atomic Energy Commission updated its long-­term strategy and envisioned a “pluthermal” plan for the use of plutonium in thermal reactors, that is, LWRs. In 1986, a few MOX fuel assemblies began to be used in LWRs at the Tsuruga nuclear power plant Reactor Unit 1 of the Japan Atomic Power Company, establishing the groundwork for the commercialization of LWRs. Before the March 11 disaster, commercial pluthermal technology had been used in four LWRs (Japan Atomic Energy Commission 2017, 3). Japan also followed the 1960s trend of planning to construct and operate fast-­neutron breeder reactors (FBRs), aiming to increase the energy value of uranium by converting more of it into plutonium for use as a reactor fuel (see Kuperman and Acharya 2018). However, this attempt was unsuccessful. The prototype FBRs at Monju in Tsuruga began operation in 1994 and helped provide various experimental results and knowledge; however, a sodium leak and fire at Monju in December 1995 caused it to go offline until 2010. The Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation, owner of Monju, restarted it in May 2010 but encountered problems just three months later. In 2016, the Japanese government declared that it would decommission this nuclear facility (Japan Atomic Energy Commission 2017, 2). There were confrontations with the United States in the 1970s over the nuclear fuel cycle. In 1974 the Gerald Ford administration adopted a new nuclear policy, aimed at stopping the reprocessing and recycling of plutonium to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation. India declared itself a nuclear power with the results of the Pokhran tests on May 17, 1974. The next US president, Jimmy Carter, shared the antiproliferation sentiment with the previous Ford administration and announced in 1977 that the United States would indefinitely defer the reprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978 required recipients of US nuclear assistance to obtain prior US approval for the retransfer and reprocessing of materials of US origin. In September 1977, Japan reached an agreement with the United States to bring the pilot reprocessing plant in Tokaimura Village into operation. The agreement stipulated that the Tokai facility would reprocess 99 tons of spent fuel annually for two years and that both the US and Japanese governments would

34

Chapter One

convert to coprocessing after two years if they found this option technically feasible and effective, although this collaboration never took place (see Japan Atomic Energy Commission 2017). Japanese authorities did their best to persuade the United States that reprocessing was essential to maintain their alliance (Kim 2017, 698), which was indeed important in an era of alarming Soviet expansion, particularly after the communist takeover of South Vietnam. The 1988 US-­Japan Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, or the 123 Agreement,11 reinforced the long-­standing energy partnership between the two nations, with the United States granting advance approval for Japan to transfer, separate, and use plutonium from fuels of US origin. Japan and the European atomic energy agency Euratom are the only US counterparts with advance consent for reprocessing. Japan has been allowed the exceptional right to possess large quantities of plutonium extracted from the fuel at its nuclear power plants because it is reused as MOX fuel, thus closing the nuclear fuel cycle. The agreement enabled Japan to envision a long-­term program of improving the technological sophistication of LWRs that would produce a new generation reactor model (Yoshioka 2011, 190). This was after the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and the subsequent stagnation in the US nuclear power industry. Further, this favorable development for Japan could be attributed to the close relationship between President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Nakasone. The Reagan administration’s policy can be characterized as a return to the “atoms for alliance” (Akiyama 2017, 11) approach, which involved strengthening bilateral relations in the context of nuclear power used as a lever for alliance management. Nakasone, who drafted the first nuclear budget in the mid-­1950s, stepped down two days after this agreement was signed, following five years as premier. After the March 11 disaster, there were nationwide discussions about Japan ceasing nuclear power generation (e.g., Midford 2014; Duffield 2016; Takao 2016; Saito 2021). In fact, the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant forced the country to drastically alter its energy policy. On July 13, 2011, Prime Minister Kan of the Democratic Party of Japan called for the country to develop into a nuclear-­f ree society (Prime Minister’s Office 2011c) amid rising public anger at the continuing Fukushima crisis. Earlier, on May 6, 2011, Kan successfully got Chubu Electric Power Company in central Japan to suspend operations of the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, which is believed to be located near the epicenter of a potentially massive

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

35

earthquake zone in the Nankai Trough. On May 10, 2011, Kan ordered a review of the 2010 Strategic Energy Plan (Cabinet Office 2010a), which established a policy to significantly expand nuclear power. On July 7, 2011, Kan instructed all nuclear power plants to conduct “stress tests” to confirm their resilience to extreme and multiple disasters, in addition to the standard safety checks already being conducted on all of Japan’s nuclear reactors. On September 14, 2012, the government of Kan’s successor, Yoshihiko Noda, proposed a zero-­ nuclear-­power policy that would see all nuclear reactors shut down by the late 2030s. The government would abide by the three principles: strict application of a maximum forty-­year lifetime, only restarting reactors approved by the nuclear regulatory commission, and not building new reactors (Asahi Shimbun, September 14, 2012). This new policy was a natural consequence of the consultation with the public that the Noda government undertook in the summer of 2012 to inform a new post-­Fukushima energy policy. Many people favored doing away with all reactors, and in eleven public hearings, about 70% of participants supported the idea of a nuclear-­free future (see Eto 2014 for details on the nationwide discussion around energy policymaking). The sentiment against nuclear power was also led by scholars like Kenichi Oshima who claimed that nuclear power is not the cheapest (2011, 104). In the context of the above-­mentioned 1988 US-­Japan Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, the Democratic Party of Japan’s policymaking was entirely unrealistic because the bilateral agreement strictly bound Japan’s nuclear policymaking, stipulating: Article 14 1. With a view to promoting cooperation under this Agreement, the parties may, at either’s request, consult with each other through diplomatic channels or other consultative fora. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1988)

Therefore, Japan cannot simply decide to stop nuclear power generation independently. In fact, in September 2012, US Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Poneman raised the concern with Seiji Maehara, former chairman of the Democratic Party of Japan’s Policy Affairs Research Council, that the premise of the 1988 Japan-­US Nuclear Cooperation Agreement would go wrong if Monju were to be abolished and the nuclear power plants not restarted (see Ota 2014, 162). The premise for the bilateral agreement was reducing plutonium reserves in Japan: Japan would need to reduce massive stockpiles of

36

Chapter One

unirradiated plutonium by boosting the use of MOX fuel in the country’s nuclear reactors. By the end of 2018, Japan had accumulated approximately 45.7 tons of separated plutonium, managed both within and outside Japan over the past five decades, approximately 9 tons of which were stored domestically and approximately 36.7 tons of which were stored abroad, for example, in the United Kingdom and France. The stockpile had shrunk by about 1.6 tons in a year, reflecting increased plutonium thermal power generation (Office of Atomic Energy Policy, Cabinet Office 2019, 1).12 This amount, 45.7 tons, could make more than 5,000 nuclear weapons (see IWJ, June 28, 2018). The Japan Atomic Energy Commission, the key nuclear policy-­setting body, stated in the annual white paper on nuclear power that Japan was pursuing its divisive spent-­f uel reprocessing ambitions and a plan to develop an FBR amid international concerns over the country’s plutonium stockpile. The commission called for more efforts to reduce the stockpile and increase transparency (Japan Atomic Energy Commission 2019). After the March 11 disaster, only some reactors for pluthermal power generation in Japan, such as KEPCO’s Takahama Units 3 and 4 and Shikoku’s Ikata Unit 4, can use MOX fuel, but most are offline and, thus, not contributing much to decreasing the plutonium stock. Monju also stopped operating in 1995. Japan has been planning to start the commercial operation of a reprocessing plant in Rokkashomura Village in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan. Utilities are obliged to reprocess spent fuel, and the Rokkasho fuel reprocessing plant would generate 8 metric tons of plutonium annually when the plant is operating at full capacity.13 Japan became the only country without nuclear weapons that reprocesses its spent nuclear fuel, creating yet more plutonium.14 Other countries might imitate Japan in using the nuclear fuel cycle as a justification for possessing plutonium, which is easily convertible for use in nuclear weapons. On September 7, 2022, however, completion of the Rokkasho plant was delayed for the twenty-­sixth time, and no new completion target has been set (Asahi Shimbun, September 8, 2022). The Democratic Party of Japan’s proposal on the zero-­nuclear policy faced heavy criticism from nuclear village figures, who claimed that nuclear power was necessary to sustain Japan’s economic prosperity. After the new policy was reported by Nikkei (September 6, 2012), which represented nuclear village voices, the business daily expressed its concern in an editorial (Nikkei, September 7, 2012). Furthermore, following Noda’s official announce-

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

37

ment, three heads of Japanese business lobbies and members of the nuclear village—­Keidanren, the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Nihon shōkō kaigisho), and the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai dōyukai)—­held a joint press conference, during which Keidanren chairman Hiromasa Yonekura claimed that the policy would make it difficult to secure the technologies and human resources necessary for nuclear safety and would negatively impact US interests (Japan Business Federation, September 18, 2012). Consequently, Noda could not make a cabinet decision on the zero-­ nuclear-­power policy. In December 2012, the pronuclear Liberal Democratic Party returned to power, led by Shinzo Abe. Abe distanced himself from a nuclear phaseout, claiming that such an option would need to be reconsidered (Nikkei, December 21, 2012). While actively promoting nuclear cooperation with the United States post–­World War II, Japan has also explored independently sourcing uranium and negotiated for the development of enriched uranium and uranium mines with France, Canada, Niger, and Australia, which provided uranium to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, as mentioned in the introduction. Meanwhile, the Japanese government has been institutionalizing incentives to build nuclear power plants since 1974 through a set of three interrelated laws, known as Dengen Sanpō or the Three Power-­Source Development Laws. Extensive funds flowed into the targeted regions, which otherwise faced depopulation, and provided hope that the regional economies would be revived. Furthermore, the power development promotion tax, which was initially JPY 85 per 1,000 kWh (kilowatt-­hour), was gradually increased to JPY 300 in 1980 and JPY 445 in 1983, and the number of grants given to local governments with nuclear power plants grew significantly (see Yamamoto 2015, 140). This money could be used as a budget for nuclear power development promotion measures and for further grants and subsidies to promote nuclear power supply locations. Consequently, nuclear power played a significant role in the mid-­1980s when Japan began pursuing neoliberal economic restructuring (cf. Harvey 2007) as the country maintained its position as the second-­largest economy in the world. The portion of nuclear power in Japan’s total electricity generation jumped from 16.9% in 1980 to 27.2% in 1985, eventually peaking at 34.3% in 2000 (Agency for Natural Resources and Energy 2019).

38

Chapter One

Civil Society as a Driver for Antinuclear Action

Antinuclear sentiment is well ingrained in Japan and began with civil society organizing antinuclear movements in the early post–­World War II period.15 One of the first antinuclear movements was led by Gensuikyō (Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs), which was established in September 1955. Coupled with the atomic bombing experiences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, antinuclear weapon sentiment was triggered by the emergence of a ban on atomic bomb activities in the wake of the Lucky Dragon incident and the death of crewman Aikichi Kuboyama.16 The hydrogen bomb test at the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in March 1954, code-­named “Bravo,” had a thousand times the explosive power (15 megatons) of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Fragments of coral broken by the explosion were brought up in the mushroom cloud and became radioactive “ashes of death” that fell on the surrounding sea and islands, contaminating the ocean and atmosphere. By the end of 1954, 856 Japanese vessels had caught radiation-­contaminated tuna. Many fishermen had possibly been exposed to radiation, although not much is clear about the impact on their health.17 Following Kuboyama’s death, a group of homemakers in Suginami, western Tokyo, initiated a nationwide petition against both atomic and hydrogen bombs (Suginami Ward 1972; see also Higuchi 2008). Within one year, 32 million of Japan’s total population of 89 million had signed it, demanding a ban on nuclear weapons and representing a strong desire among members of civil society for peace.18 Amid this nationwide campaign, the First World Conference against A-­and H-­Bombs was held in Hiroshima in August 1955, where the three principal goals of the antinuclear weapons movement were confirmed: the prevention of nuclear war, the abolition of nuclear weapons, and relief and solidarity for atomic bomb survivors (hibakusha). The discussion culminated in the establishment of Gensuikyō in September 1955 as an organizational body to continue the movement’s work. The Japanese government enacted the Atomic Energy Basic Law in the same year. The Lucky Dragon incident also inspired the antinuclear imagination of Japanese pop culture. In November 1954, just eight months later, the Japanese film Godzilla was released. In the film, a legendary prehistoric monster, Godzilla, is awoken by a hydrogen bomb test in the South Pacific. After

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

39

attacking a ship in the Pacific Ocean, Godzilla emits radioactivity from his mouth and attacks Tokyo. The capital is overrun and turned to ruins. Ishiro Honda, director of the Godzilla series, commented, “The truth I aim for is the psychological deformation of modern humans fighting the fears of a hydrogen bomb. The fear of destruction and despair come to life in the fiction of the film.”19 The series’ first installment was an unprecedented success, attracting 9.61 million viewers (https:​/​​/​godzilla​.jp). Since then, more than thirty Godzilla films have been produced in Japan alone, with viewers exceeding 100 million. When I was a child in the 1970s, my father took me to watch one of the Godzilla movies, but I had no idea about their background. I was just a boy who liked monsters. In the 1960s, ideological differences over nuclear weapons split Japan’s movements into several camps: Gensuikyō, supported by the Japanese Communist Party, and Gensuikin (Japan Congress against A-­and H-­Bombs), supported by the social democrat Japan Socialist Party. The communists contended that nuclear testing by socialist nations was for defense purposes; the social democrats opposed atomic experiments by all nations. Koichiro Ueda, former Japanese Communist Party vice chairman, argued that the socialist military power is the minimum material guarantee for human survival that curbs destruction in an imperialistic aggression war and does “not turn a cold war into a hot war” (Ueda 1962, 61). In 1977, a year before the United Nations Special Session on Disarmament in New York, these two groups agreed to unify their antinuclear movements (though not their organizational entities) and continued to organize the world conference together until 1986, after which they separated again due to constant internal conflicts. The National Council for Peace and Against Nuclear Weapons (Kakuheiki haizetsu heiwa kensetsu kokumin kaigi or Kakkin) also works to abolish nuclear weapons and offers support to hibakusha, although it promotes the peaceful use of nuclear power. Kakkin includes members of the Federation of Electric Power–­ Related Industry Workers’ Unions of Japan (Denryoku sōren), a group of utility company workers who favor nuclear power. Another active group is the Japan Confederation of A-­ and H-­Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon hidankyō), which represents more than 300,000 people officially recognized as victims of the US bombings during World War II. The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengō), the country’s largest trade union, takes a middle-­of-­t he-­road

40

Chapter One

approach, maintaining a strong antinuclear weapons stance while promoting the peaceful use of nuclear power. I attended the World Conference against A-­and H-­Bombs organized by Gensuikin in Hiroshima in 2015, which commemorated the seventieth anniversary of the bombings. Gensuikin, Kakkin, and Rengō have collaborated on such events, while Gensuikyō has held them separately. The 2015 slogan was “A peaceful twenty-­f irst century without nuclear weapons and war! Do not repeat the nuclear disaster! Let’s aim for a nuclear-­f ree society!” Since the March 11 disaster, nuclear power and weapons have been key issues at the conference, with the world conferences starting their sessions in Fukushima Prefecture before moving to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 2015, the conference was held August 4–­6 in central Hiroshima, mostly at the International Convention Center attached to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Many of those I met at field sites, not only hibakusha, made connections between experiences in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukushima, and other places such as the Marshall Islands and Chernobyl, identifying nuclear power as the cause of the problems and, thus, enhancing antinuclear solidarity. During the keynote speech on August 4, Yasunari Fujimoto, head of the secretariat of the world conference, noted that “we had completely returned to the era of the ‘safety myth’ of nuclear power before Fukushima.” His comments came after we had heard of the new energy policy proposed by Abe in April 2014, which planned to have nuclear power account for 20 to 22% of the country’s total electricity supply by 2030. Questioning Abe’s announcement that nuclear power had been deemed safe enough by the regulatory committee to be restarted, Fujimoto asked how we could ever believe the claim that “nuclear power is safe” (Gensuikin 2015). Civil society organizations facilitated rallies, symposia, discussion panels, and fieldwork or site visits during the conference. The conference discussions reflected the current nuclear situation, including the Fukushima accident and the choice for a postnuclear society, the restarting of nuclear power plants and Japan’s energy policy, and Okinawa and challenges for the denuclearization of Northeast Asia. Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace (Heiwa no tameno Hiroshima tsūyakusha gurūpu), an NPO of volunteer interpreters and guides who have been sending out global peace messages since 1984, hosted a testimony session with three hibakusha in both Japanese and English. One group member shared her experience of the atomic bomb when she was eight and witnessed the event from the road near her house, 2.4 kilometers from the

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

41

hypocenter. Events such as these provided people with the rare opportunity to hear actual hibakusha voices. While walking around the conference site, I received a bilingual Japanese-­English flyer made by the informal citizens’ group Action Committee of the People, titled “Tomorrow It Might Be Me” that declared, “From Fukushima, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and all over the world, we would like to call out, once again, to stand up for the total abolition of nuclear power plants and armaments, to stand hand in hand with all Fukushima victims, survivors of the atomic bomb from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and also those from Chernobyl.”20 One site that particularly attracted my attention was the annual open house of the Radiation Effect Research Foundation (Hōshasen eikyō kenkyūjo), or Hōeiken, a US-­Japan cooperative research institute that investigates the health effects of radiation. The foundation, established in 1975, was preceded by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, which was originally established in 1947 by the US National Academy of Sciences with funding from the US Atomic Energy Commission.21 The research program focuses on studying the effects of radiation among hibakusha in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the laboratory has established several fixed cohorts or subcohorts that provide epidemiological and clinical data on the health status and mortality of the survivors and their children.22 The laboratory researched past doses, conducted follow-­up studies, and accumulated data about genetic-­level changes following the radiation exposure. The open house I attended related its studies to a more current topic: the health effects or risks of radiation exposure. One presentation addressed how radioactivity alters human chromosomes based on atomic bomb radiation studies. This presentation claimed that since we know that chromosomal abnormalities increase in proportion to the amount of radiation cells receive (the radiation dose), examining the percentage of chromosomal abnormalities can provide an estimate of how much radiation an individual has been exposed to. While I found the content somewhat technical for a general audience, it was a timely discussion, as radiation exposure, particularly low-­dose exposure, was exactly what the Japanese people, especially those in Fukushima, had been subjected to after the March 11 disaster.

42

Chapter One

Civil Society’s Awareness of the Environmental Impact of Nuclear Power

I return now to the early postwar era, when the Japanese antinuclear movement was institutionalized as Gensuikin, Gensuikyō, and Kakkin in the 1960s. Antinuclear sentiment was growing across the country amid mounting public pressure and countrywide protests from civil society, pushing the Japanese government toward innovative policymaking. In 1967, the government adopted the Three Nonnuclear Principles (hikaku sangensoku). On December 11, 1967, Prime Minister Eisaku Sato commented that “my responsibility is to achieve and maintain safety in Japan under the Three Nonnuclear Principles of not possessing, not producing, and not permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons, in line with Japan’s Peace Constitution” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1967).23 In his policy speech on January 30, 1968, Sato then declared four pillars of Japan’s nuclear policy: the Three Nonnuclear Principles, nuclear abolition and disarmament, dependence on nuclear deterrence by the United States, and the peaceful use of nuclear power. This policy was later reaffirmed by a resolution made by the Diet in 1971. Sato was eventually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because of Japan’s Three Nonnuclear Principles policy. All subsequent Japanese governments continued to pursue this policy. When the Japanese Diet ratified the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1976, foreign affairs committees of both houses made a resolution to faithfully implement the Three Nonnuclear Principles and have no nuclear weapons.24 On May 23, 1978, when the United Nations Special Session on Disarmament in New York was convened, the Diet made a resolution, as the only A-­bombed country and one with the Three Nonnuclear Principles as its national policy, to urge all countries to sign the Treaty on the Non-­ Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.25 More recently, Prime Minister Noda of the Democratic Party of Japan also referred to the policy at the Global Zero Summit in October 2011: “The realization of a world without nuclear weapons is a common aspiration of the human kind. Being the only country to have ever suffered from atomic bombings, Japan is particularly convinced that the tragic consequences of the use of nuclear weapons must never be repeated” (Prime Minister’s Office 2011d). Japan has consistently sustained its inclination for making changes through civil society’s actions following its experiences of social movements in the 1950s and 1960s. Activities included not only antinuclear activism but

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

43

also labor protests such as the strike at the Miike coal mines, peace movements such as protests against the US-­Japan Security Treaty (also known as Anpo tōsō), protests against the Vietnam War led by Beheiren (Betonamu ni heiwa wo! Shimin rengō, or Peace for Vietnam! Citizens’ Committee), and environmental movements such as the protests over Minamata disease, which also raised national awareness about environmental pollution. In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of new NGOs were established in Japan (see Avenell 2022): Shapla Neer (Citizens’ Committee in Japan for Overseas Support) in 1972, the Pacific Asia Resource Center in 1973, the Japan International Volunteer Center in 1980, and Peace Boat in 1983. These NGOs focused on humanitarian aid, human rights advocacy, development assistance, environmentalism, and peace and disarmament. As part of this trend, the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (Genshiryoku shiryō jōhōshitsu), an antinuclear advocacy group, was established in 1975 in Tokyo. This was one year after the Japanese government institutionalized incentives to build nuclear power plants in 1974 through the Three Power-­Source Development Laws. As a series of nuclear power plants were constructed across the country to meet the energy demand for economic development, this NGO, which was “dedicated to securing a safe, nuclear-­free world,”26 began to function as an independent watchdog on nuclear issues. Its cofounder and director Jinzaburo Takagi (1938–­2000) took the lead in antinuclear advocacy in Japan. Takagi disseminated the Japanese terms datsu genpatsu (phasing out of nuclear power or denuclearizing) and han genpatsu (antinuclear power), which are often used interchangeably. He argued that the term datsu genpatsu originally derived from the German word Ausstieg, which was widely used in Germany after the Chernobyl disaster. In everyday terms, Ausstieg means to disembark a train or bus; Takagi (2000, 197) claimed, “In the real world, rather than just saying ‘antinuclear power,’ there may be more positive meaning in the expression if we say that we are going to leave nuclear society—­t his is the vehicle that we are riding.” Even after the March 11 disaster, the term datsu genpatsu has been popularly used at antinuclear rally sites as a slogan, conveying that all nuclear plants should eventually be decommissioned. Takagi’s advocacy contributed to the scaling down of the plutonium program. His work, jointly developed with Mycle Schneider, founder of the World Information Service on Energy (WISE-­Paris), was acknowledged in

44

Chapter One

1997 with the Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the “alternative Nobel Prize” (Right Livelihood Award 1997). Takagi and Schneider facilitated an international research project from 1995 to 1997 on the use of MOX fuel in LWRs called the IMA Project (IMA stands for International MOX Assessment and also means “now” in Japanese; see IMA Project/Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center 1997), receiving generous funding from the Toyota Foundation. The IMA report, which criticizes the use of MOX in LWRs, has become the benchmark for complex international technological debates. The Right Livelihood Award recognizes the unique Japanese-­French collaboration in “the struggle to rid humanity of the threat posed by the manufacture, transport, use and disposal of plutonium” (Nuclear Monitor Issue, October 10, 1997). Consequently, as France was becoming increasingly isolated due to its nuclear policy, it closed its Superphénix FBR in 1998. Takagi used his prize money to establish the Takagi School (Takagi Gakkō), where he discussed ideas on alternative systems of energy supply in a bid to advance students’ ecological consciousness. Takagi envisioned educating individuals to be “citizen scientists,” a term coined by Frank von Hippel (1991), who offered insights into the choices scientists must make and how science can help people make them. Takagi’s 1999 book, Shimin kagakusha toshite ikiru [Living as a Citizen Scientist], explores the meaning of living as an independent scientist while reflecting upon his life. He identified himself as a citizen scientist, sharing von Hippel’s views on the realm of science and the role of scientists. In line with this, the Takagi School aims to nurture “a person who can share the anxieties and concerns of citizens with regard to the environment, nuclear, and human rights issues in contemporary society, think about things from the citizen’s eyes.”27 The school continues to function under the supervision of Takagi’s colleagues and supporters following his death in October 2000. In a book he completed three months earlier, Takagi predicted, “From now on, the number of nuclear power plants over thirty years from the start of operation will increase to two, five, and ten units in 2010. If the nuclear power plants are not stopped by then, the number of nuclear power plants with a lifespan of about forty years will increase. I am really worried about the possibility of a major nuclear accident in the upcoming years” (Takagi 2000, 263). In the 1970s, the Japanese media, an important civil society actor, significantly shaped antinuclear activism. After the Osaka Expo in 1972, Gijutsu

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

45

to Ningen (Technology and Humans) started publication. The magazine explored the relationship between modern technology and humans, covering topics such as nuclear power, life sciences, computers, and pollution and environmental issues. According to Akihiro Yamamoto (2015, 137), a Japanese historian specializing in nuclear issues, most current nuclear power–­related problems were pointed out by Gijutsu to Ningen in the 1970s. Such problems included the management of radioactive waste, the genetic effects of radiation, and the dangers of the military use of nuclear material by states and terrorists (see Takahashi, Amagasa, and Nishio 2012, a collection of major articles by the magazine). In 1976, an important book on antinuclear activism, Genshiryoku Hatsuden (Taketani 1976; literally, “Nuclear Power Generation”) was published and used the phrase Benjo no nai manshon (apartments without toilets) to describe nuclear power plants, as coined by nuclear physicist Mitsuo Taketani: “Without knowing how to dispose of the ‘ash of death’ that remains until the end, large-­capacity nuclear power plants are being built one after another, as if ‘apartments without toilets’ were being built one after another” (189). The antinuclear camp still repeatedly uses the expression “apartments without toilets” even forty years after its invention. I have also heard it in my fieldwork. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the USSR further strengthened antinuclear activism across Japan. Writing retrospectively on the thirty years since Chernobyl, Nuke Info Tokyo (2016), a newsletter by the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, documented how the disaster spread the antinuclear movement but that it took approximately two years to become visible and for people to begin rallies against nuclear power. Many others I met during my fieldwork confirmed this belated reaction but provided no clear explanations for it. In 2019, the monthly Hangenpatsu Shimbun, a major source of antinuclear information, listed the antinuclear events in Japan from 1957 to 2019 (see Hangenpatsu Shimbun, November 7, 2019). There were only three entries in 1986, making it one of the lowest years on record, and all were minor. In 1986, I was in my late teens, and I remember the Japanese mainstream media repeatedly blaming the Chernobyl tragedy on poor Soviet technology and safety standards, claiming that a similar accident would not occur in Japan. One direct reaction to the Chernobyl disaster took place in Kumano City, Mie Prefecture, where Chubu Electric Power Company had been planning to build a nuclear power plant since the 1970s. The city altered its course, instead adopting a nuclear power rejection resolution in 1987. After the March

46

Chapter One

11 disaster, the Asahi Shimbun (May 13, 2014) retrospectively reported this decision in an article referring to Kumano Kodō (“old ways”), a network of ancient pilgrimage routes that crisscross the Kii Hantō peninsula in central Japan and which had just celebrated the tenth anniversary of its registration as a UNESCO World Heritage site. According to the article, in the 1987 Kumano City council election, fourteen members opposed to nuclear power were elected and became the majority; the “nuclear power plant” item was removed from the city’s comprehensive plan, and, eventually, the resolution protected this beautiful World Heritage site from nuclear power. As a result of the Chernobyl accident, the growth of antinuclear sentiment in Japan was further triggered by the repeated media coverage of imported foodstuffs that Japan returned to Russia since they were found to be contaminated with radioactive cesium in excess of Japan’s provisional standards. Nuke Info Tokyo (2016) reflected upon the thirty-­year anniversary of the Chernobyl accident and noted that antinuclear sentiment at that time was enhanced by the output adjustment test performed at Reactor Unit 2 of the Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku.28 The test to decrease output reminded people of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and the resistance movement grew rapidly. On February 11 and 12, 1988, a rally of over 3,000 protesters demanding the test’s cancellation was organized in front of the Shikoku Electric Power Company head office in Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture. Most of these protesters were educated homemakers who had previously been unaffiliated with conventional antinuclear movements and who were dubbed the “New Wave” (see Nakajima and Sumino 1988). Further, during this time, some activists concerned with nuclear power issues actively began exploring alternative lifestyles as part of the antinuclear movement in postwar Japan (Ando 2019). They migrated to rural areas to live self-­sufficiently and engaged in organic practices such as permaculture and renewable energy production. It was not until 1988, two years after Chernobyl, that Japanese citizens organized a national meeting against nuclear power. In April 1988, “Genpatsu tomeyō! 1 man nin kōdō” (Stop nuclear power! 10,000 people in action) was held in central Tokyo (Ohara Institute for Social Research 1988). Worried about food contamination, 3,000 homemakers and residents in municipalities that were host to nuclear power plants gathered on April 23 to prepare for panel

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

47

discussions and government negotiations. The following day, approximately 20,000 people from 243 groups, including antinuclear groups and trade unions, assembled at Hibiya Park in central Tokyo and held an antinuclear demonstration. During this meeting, Jinzaburo Takagi of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center called for the Basic Act on Denuclearization (Datsugenpatsu hō). That October, a nationwide petition to promote the proposed law began, and two months later, the National Network for Calling for the Basic Act on Denuclearization (Datsugenpatsuhō zenkoku nettowāku) was established, with Takagi as its secretary-­general. The major points of the proposed law included:

• Plans for nuclear power plants under construction and in the planning stage shall be immediately abandoned.

• Operating plants shall be completely decommissioned within the period specified as part of the interim measures. Research on decommissioning measures presenting the least danger shall be permitted.

• Nuclear fuel cycle facilities other than nuclear power plants, as well as nuclear-­powered ships, shall be completely closed, and their development plans terminated.

• The law shall not allow the disposal of nuclear waste underground, in

the ocean, or in any other state in which it is impossible to manage. Waste shall be kept in a state possible to manage, and the parties who produced the waste shall assume responsibility for its management.

• The government must not rely upon nuclear energy and must endeavor

to take responsibility for the formulation of an energy policy that is not environmentally destructive.29 (Takagi 1988, 3)

The national campaign collected a total of 3.28 million signatures by 1991. However, neither house of the Diet brought the draft bill to the discussion table, mainly because the opposing Japan Socialist Party did not fully support it. In the lower house election in February 1990, 136 Social Democrats were elected, but only forty-­f ive supported the draft bill (Tsuneishi 2015, 123) because supporters of the Japan Socialist Party at that time included trade unions such as Rengō, which approved the use of nuclear power. Two decades later, a second push to enact a law to abandon nuclear

48

Chapter One

power began. In August 2012, a group of lawyers, politicians, and civil society groups, including the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, established a similar national network calling for the realization of zero-­nuclear-­power policies through the establishment of the Basic Act on Denuclearization in the late 1980s. On September 7, 2012, a group of 103 members of the House of Representatives submitted a draft bill, the framework for which included the realization of zero nuclear power plants as early as possible between 2020 and 2025. Deliberation on the proposal was carried over to the next Diet session. On March 11, 2013, a group of twenty-­seven members of the House of Councillors also submitted the same draft bill. While Japanese opposition parties were being reorganized in the mid-­2010s, the sentiment was maintained by the Democratic Party, which outlined a bill for the Basic Act on Zero Nuclear Power (Genpatsu zero kihon hō) in July 2017. Another movement exploring zero-­nuclear-­power policy joined the efforts, led by the Federation of Promotion of Zero Nuclear Power and Renewable Energy (Genpatsu zero shizen enerugī suishin kaigi, or Genjiren). This group was advised by two former prime ministers, Junichiro Koizumi and Morihiro Hosokawa, both major antinuclear advocates after the March 11 disaster. The antinuclear forum unveiled details about a bill calling for an “immediate halt” to Japan’s reliance on nuclear power to prevent a recurrence of the Fukushima disaster, together with a more ambitious national goal for renewable energy (Mainichi Shimbun, January 10, 2018). Jointly working with this federation, the successor of the Democratic Party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and other opposition parties, including the Liberal Party, Social Democrats, and Communists, submitted a draft bill for the Basic Act on Zero Nuclear Power to the House of Representatives in March 2018. The draft law required nuclear plant operators to promptly cease all nuclear power plant operations and stated a goal to decommission all nuclear power plants within five years of the law’s enactment (Kyodo News, February 21, 2018). On June 26, 2019, opposition parties demanded deliberation over the Basic Act on Zero Nuclear Power; however, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party did not respond, and, thus, the draft bill was never discussed (Tokyo Shimbun, June 26, 2019). The bill is unlikely to be brought to the discussion table as long as the current Liberal Democratic Party rules the Diet. This chapter documented an overview of Japan’s nuclear policy and its

Japan’s Nuclear Policy and Antinuclear Activism

49

civil society’s activism as a driver for antinuclear action over the past seventy years. Radiation politics in post-­Fukushima Japan are in line with this distinctive history but also fundamentally differ since people today face a new challenge—­living with the new annual 20 mSv threshold or low-­dose radiation exposure. The following chapters present people’s struggles and voices as they live with this harsh reality under a “state of exception” in post-­ Fukushima Japan.

T WO

Young Precariat at the Forefront

“No More Nukes”

On March 18, 2011, a young man stood in front of the TEPCO headquarters in Tokyo, shouting “Genpatsu iranai!” “No more nuclear plants!” and “TEPCO should take full responsibility for ending the ongoing nuclear crisis.” In the wake of the disastrous events in Fukushima that had occurred just a week earlier, he believed that Japan did not need nuclear power plants.1 This man, then thirty, was Ryota Sono, a member of the precariat (Standing 2011)—­an emerging social class characterized by the insecurity and uncertainty that stems from the global trend for flexible workforces. The word “precariat” is a neologism, coined by combining the words “precarious” and “proletariat.”2 Globally, the precariat has emerged as the negative outcome of neoliberal economic policies, which have primarily featured deregulation and labor market liberalization. As Guy Standing (2011) demonstrated, the precariat has access only to poorly paid short-­term or part-­time jobs with no employment security. For the precariat, wages are often little better than social security payments, and marginal tax rates are so penal that there is little motivation to seek work. People in this situation see no prospect of change and become dispirited and disaffected. Japan was once described as a generally middle-­class society (Economic Planning Agency 1979, 166), a stereotype that has been prevalent since the 1960s. However, the increasing socioeconomic divide, popularly termed kakusa, has produced a new social class (cf. Tachibanaki 2004). Japan’s precariat came into being as a result of the neoliberal politics engineered by Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party administration in the early 2000s. By 2011, 38.7% of Japanese workers, including many young people, had become part of the flexible or nonregular workforce (MHLW 2011), forcing the Japanese population to face unprecedented social and economic experiences. 50

Young Precariat at the Forefront

51

After the March 11 disaster, Japan became fiercely divided over its nuclear power policy. Pronuclear advocates, led by the state and TEPCO, were pitted against grassroots citizens’ antinuclear dynamism. However, Japanese politicians showed no intention of closing the country’s nuclear power plants, claiming that nuclear power was the cheapest energy source and necessary to sustain Japan’s economic growth. Prime Minister Noda, who took office in September 2011, emphasized the continuing need for nuclear power plants in Japan, pledging to “raise the safety of nuclear plants to the highest level” (Kyodo News, September 22, 2011). This statement freshly irritated the antinuclear camp, given that the safety and credibility of Japan’s nuclear plants had already been compromised. A Japanese grassroots movement was developing antinuclear rallies across the country. Since the early post–­World War II period, Japan has had a rich history of antinuclear social movements, led by peace activists within key umbrella organizations such as Gensuikyō and Gensuikin in response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, their major point of contention was not so much the fear of radiation pollution but compensation for relinquished landholdings and fishing rights (Avenell 2012, 270). It was not until 1975, when the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center was established, that grassroots actors in Japan began actively questioning the safety of nuclear plants. In the mid-­2000s, as Japan headed toward conservative politics led by the hawkish Prime Minister Abe, such antinuclear sentiments were somewhat revived. A peace group called the Article 9 Association (9 jō no kai) began to oppose the revision of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution—­t he clause renouncing war and adhering to pacifism—­extending their claims against the use of nuclear sources. They claimed that any form of nuclear power is reminiscent of the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that the production of massively destructive nuclear weapons, justified under the Cold War cosmology, was also a concern. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons use the same technology. I have documented elsewhere (Ogawa 2011) a narrative account by a hibakusha (an atomic bomb survivor), who expressed concern over the radiation leakage from a nuclear power plant in the Niigata Prefecture that was damaged by an earthquake in July 2007. Her account was supported by members of a local branch of the Article 9 Association in eastern Tokyo. Ryota Sono’s actions ignited a series of antinuclear rallies in 2011, includ-

52

Chapter Two

ing one in Shibuya, Tokyo, on March 20, which was originally planned to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war but shifted its focus to antinuclear action (Zenshin News Network, March 21, 2011); in Ginza, Tokyo, on March 27, with 1,000 attendees (Mainichi Shimbun, March 27, 2011); in Nagoya on March 27, with 450 participants demanding the shutdown of the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture (Labornet, March 31, 2011); in Koenji, Tokyo, on April 10, with 15,000 participants (Alterna, April 10, 2011), as well as in Sapporo and Toyama (News 24, April 10, 2011); and in Tokyo on June 10, a call for antinuclear action made by one million people (IWJ, June 10, 2011).3 All these rallies were against the nuclear power policy: participants demanded the abolition of all nuclear plants and the development of alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, and liquid natural gas. Indeed, the March 11 disaster offered an opportunity to forge a new energy policy. However, the activists’ claims were not limited to energy issues: the rallies called for a fundamentally fairer society and proposed alternative ways of life, viewing nuclear power as a symbol of Japan’s post–­World War II economic development. For the precariat, such economic prosperity meant sacrificing their right to decent employment, and, in fact, sacrificing their lives. Their opinion was shared by Hiroaki Koide, a leading antinuclear voice in Japan, who noted that “our affluence gave us license to indulge in abundant energy production. Nuclear power is a symbol of the trend” (2011, 49). Koide, an assistant professor at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University, was in his early sixties when he made this statement. He had consistently been denied promotion in academia, perhaps because he had continuously warned about the possibility of a catastrophic nuclear power accident since the 1970s and had dedicated his academic career to stopping the nuclear generation of electricity, a key national policy in postwar Japan.4 The actions described above renewed Japanese antinuclear interest. These developments have been characterized by several additional, novel aspects, including diversified participation, patterns of behaviors and appeals, and expressions of values and beliefs.

Young Precariat at the Forefront

53

Rallies for “No More Nukes”

The afternoon of September 19, 2011, was unseasonably hot and humid. A crowd of demonstrators gathered in Meiji Park, central Tokyo, for the antinuclear event Goodbye Nuclear Power Plants. Nine prominent public intellectuals played key roles in launching this event, which would prove to be one of the largest antinuclear rallies in Japanese history. The organizers estimated the turnout at around 60,000, although the police approximated 20,000. One of the organizers was Kenzaburo Oe, the Nobel Prize laureate in Literature. Author Hisae Sawachi was also present. Both were leading figures of the Article 9 Association. I also saw Satoshi Kamata, a well-­k nown author/journalist who had extensively covered Japan’s nuclear industry for over four decades, and Keiko Ochiai, an author and popular disc jockey. Oe informed the crowd of the demonstration’s rationale, citing an Italian case in which a national referendum was held on nuclear power and the people voted down the prospect of building new reactors; the result was influenced by the March 11 disaster: What is now clear is this: in Italy, human life will not be threatened by nuclear power anymore. We Japanese, however, must continue to live under the fear of nuclear disaster. We have a will to resist. We need to let leaders of political parties, as well as leaders of the Japan Business Federation [Keidanren], know the strength of our will. What we can do is have democratic public meetings and demonstrations.5

The website calling for action read as follows: We are determined to take action for a “peaceful and sustainable society,” reconsidering our lifestyles, as they exploit nature and waste limitless energy, and turning our focus to natural energy. To this end, we set the following goals: First, the cancellation of construction plans for new nuclear power plants; second, the planned termination of existing nuclear power plants, including the Hamaoka nuclear power plant; and third, the abolition of Monju and nuclear reprocessing plants that use plutonium, the most dangerous radioactive material. We will achieve these goals in order to save our own lives and fulfill our responsibilities to future generations. (http:​/​​/​sayonara​-nukes​.org​/​yobikake​/)​

Ultimately, the organizers aimed to collect 10 million signatures that supported reducing Japan’s dependence on nuclear power by ceasing to build new nuclear power plants and by decommissioning existing ones.

54

Chapter Two

Another impressive aspect of this demonstration was the diversity of its participants. Among the crowd, women—­in particular, women with children—­youth, labor union members with their union flags, and victims from Fukushima were dominant. All those present vented their anger over the national crisis caused by the March 11 disaster; most were armed with colorful signs calling for “No More Nukes!” Sitting in the park, I listened to a speech by Ruiko Muto from Fukushima, who describes herself as a hibakusha and took to the stage to tell the crowd about her daily life, speaking out against the state and TEPCO: Since March 11, the people in Fukushima have had to make decisions every day on matters ranging from whether to evacuate or not, eat or not, whether to force children to wear face masks for such mundane tasks as drying laundry outside and plowing their fields, and whether to say something against [keeping nuclear power] or not . . . Now that six months have passed, we are starting to see things a bit clearer. We now know that the facts have not been fully revealed, and we now know that the government does not protect us, the people. The Fukushima nuclear accident is still ongoing, and people in Fukushima will become material for a nuclear experiment. Yet, in this country, there are people who still want to promote nuclear power.

Her mourning, anger, and fear reminded me of the work of Satoshi Kamata, one of the event’s organizers. Kamata (e.g., 2001) pointed out that during the post–­World War II period, the Japanese government promoted nuclear power, and local communities received financial benefits for accepting nuclear power plants. Under Japan’s Three Power-­Source Development Laws, if a community built a single nuclear plant, it would receive JPY 50 billion over the decade leading up to construction and JPY 40 billion for another decade after the plant began operation. The mayor of Tsuruga in Fukui Prefecture, where nuclear power plants are concentrated, said that 14% of the 2010 annual budget, nearly JPY 8 billion, came from nuclear-­related businesses. Some 5,000 out of the municipal population of 69,000 are employed by the nuclear power plants. The municipality also asked to build two more nuclear plants, which would bring in JPY 14.5 billion (Asahi Shimbun, October 26, 2011). A couple of days after the rally, I read an interview with Kamata, which

Young Precariat at the Forefront

55

offered an interesting analogy of the relationship between the government and local communities that accept nuclear plants: The nuclear industry is like the big bad wolf from the fairy tale [Little Red Riding Hood]. Grandma won’t open the door to let him in the house. But . . . she [then] thinks it is not the wolf but her granddaughter. So, she opens the door, and the wolf eats her. The house is Japan, and grandma is the local communities. (Asia Times, September 21, 2011)

Kamata (2001) documented how all the areas that had nuclear power plants once also had active antinuclear movements. However, electricity companies stopped these movements by buying people off with cash. The nuclear power market, which represents vested interests, monopolized and organized the so-­called nuclear village using several means: the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI); power-­unit producers such as Toshiba, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi, all of which are key actors in Japan’s Keidanren business lobby; giving local people a lot of money through the implementation of the above-­mentioned laws; and through pronuclear academic scholars and the media, both of which appeared to be under the government’s influence. Further, at that time, more than fifty former state bureaucrats were working at TEPCO after having retired from the ministries (Mainichi Shimbun, September 25, 2011). This scenario is an example of amakudari (“descent from heaven”), a heavily criticized institutional practice that creates a nexus between public and private institutions in Japan. Until the March 11 disaster occurred, I observed that ordinary people in Japan did not say much about the country’s nuclear power policy: The issue of nuclear power plants was part of not-­in-­my-­backyard politics. Without victims to defend or high-­profile incidents, antinuclear activists enjoyed none of the popularity that fueled earlier movements (Avenell 2012), such as the antipollution activism related to Minamata disease. Further, for most urban residents, nuclear plants were invisible because they were located far away. Nuclear power plant locations were not selected randomly by Japanese policymakers but were based on social capital levels (Aldrich 2008), while “by placing atomic reactors in rural, depopulating, often poverty-­stricken areas where horizontal associations were waning, decision makers hoped to avoid controversy and strife” (Aldrich 2012, 136).6

56

Chapter Two

Nuclear power was developed by means of the state’s strategy for promoting its peaceful use, which had been in action since the 1950s (see chap. 1). Nuclear power appeared to Japanese leaders as the only long-­term option to produce sufficient electricity for the country. As early as the 1950s, Yasuhiro Nakasone saw nuclear power as something through which Japan could contribute to the international scholarship on nuclear science and technology. Furthermore, the nuclear policy fit well with the Yoshida Doctrine, proposed by Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida shortly after World War II, which argued that Japan should focus on economic development fueled by technology. The government further propagated nuclear energy sources using the global warming discourse. Some media and academics joined the governmental voices. However, the Fukushima disaster forced people to realize the huge risks and uncertainty nuclear power caused in their everyday lives; though it was too late to prevent the crisis, this realization led individuals to raise their voices in protest. Thus, chanting slogans and waving banners, the people began their march against nuclear power in central Tokyo, from Meiji Park in the Aoyama and Omotesando districts toward Yoyogi Park.

The Old and New in Japan’s Social Movements

The ongoing antinuclear movement shares many characteristics with older movements in Japan, which has hosted a series of active social movements since the 1960s, for example, the movement against the US–­Japan Security Treaty (known as the “Anpo” movement) and the anti-­Vietnam War movement Beheiren (Peace for Vietnam! Citizens Committee). The antinuclear weapons movement following Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the push for human rights for zainichi Koreans (ethnic Koreans in Japan), and the movement against the US military base in Okinawa were other major activist forces during the postwar period. Within these movements, public intellectuals played a significant role in leading the public (Avenell 2011). Women were also dominant figures and have often led Japanese social movements, including environmental and consumer movements (e.g., Chan-­Tiberghien 2004). Many participants of the 1960s movements were mobilized through labor unions—­key actors in Japan’s modern social movements. I saw many labor union flags (mostly red, indicating left wing) at the 2011 antinuclear rally site, as well as those of social democrats and communists, who had also been involved in mobilizing people. As usual, the police forced rally participants to

Young Precariat at the Forefront

57

pass through a narrow street, a historical tactic for controlling street demonstrations in Japan. I also discovered that the secretariat of the Goodbye Nuclear Power Plants rally is located at the headquarters of Gensuikin, which has been active in Japan’s antinuclear movements since the early postwar era, indicating some overlap with previous social movements. Another antinuclear rally scheduled in early 2012 was based at the secretariat of Peace Boat, a major peace NGO in Tokyo. This antinuclear activism in contemporary Japan was indeed a conflation of old and new social movements, with insights gleaned even from Charles Tilly (2004, 53; see Melucci [1989] and Touraine [1981] on new social movements). They shared many commonalities in their organizational efforts, campaign claims, repertoires of political action, and aims to constitute recognizable constituencies with stable conceptions of unity and commitment. Several “new” aspects were seen at the antinuclear movements after the March 11 disaster. There were many “rally beginners” who had never participated in a political demonstration. The organizers had anticipated this and distributed an advice leaflet, instructing activists to drink water because they would be walking for an hour, wear comfortable shoes and hats, and follow the staff’s instructions. Furthermore, though members of labor unions frequently attended Japan’s previous demonstrations, I saw that the Japan Trade Union Confederation, or Rengō, was participating in an antinuclear rally for the first time since its establishment in 1989. This 6.8 million–­strong federation of labor unions had never demonstrated against nuclear power before because many of its members were nuclear industry employees. However, the trade union, an important backer of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, froze its promotion of nuclear power three months after the Fukushima disaster, and its antinuclear stance was finalized at the meeting of representatives from member labor unions in Tokyo in October 2011 (Mainichi Shimbun, October 4, 2011). The most distinctive phenomenon was the participation of young adults in social activism. These youths are coming to the forefront of society, energizing social change in contemporary Japan. There is a new popular culture, with new ideologies and new strategies among protest organizers. From April 2011, Tokyoites often (mostly monthly) came to see the antinuclear rallies in central Tokyo, ignited by Sono’s action. The series of demonstrations against nuclear power plants attracted thousands of young people. However, these individuals

58

Chapter Two

were not a mobilized force: instead, they spontaneously came to the rally sites after watching Ustream, which was broadcast live, and receiving messages from social networks. “I learnt through Twitter that something interesting was happening. That’s why I came here. I just want to change present-­day Japan,” one young woman told me. One of the rally organizers, Keiko Ochiai, later commented that she was impressed by the number of attendees, who came to the site after collecting information for themselves and deciding whether to participate (Asahi Shimbun, October 20, 2011). Thanks to social media, the younger generation was able to discover what was happening in grassroots Japanese social movements, although the major Japanese media, including the state-­r un broadcaster NHK, ignored the rally, even though it ended right next to the NHK headquarters. As a former journalist at a Japanese wire service, I understood this news selection as a regular practice in mainstream Japanese journalism: this series of antinuclear demonstrations represented a one-­sided political opinion; thus, no coverage was given to such “biased” stories (Ogawa 2014). However, social media is adept at connecting people, and the antinuclear rallies took advantage of this capacity to reach the public. I could see the young precariat becoming a key actor in these “new” antinuclear protests. Originally, such young people participated in a series of demonstrations in Koenji in Suginami, a hub of youth culture in western Tokyo. The demonstrations were organized by Hajime Matsumoto, a secondhand-­store owner. Along with other owners of secondhand shops and bars, Matsumoto formed a group called “Shirōto no ran” (Amateur’s Riot), which had previously organized demonstrations against the deterioration of working environments and the drop in young people’s income. Born in 1974, Matsumoto was a former student activist and freeter (the more colloquial Japanese term for “precariat”) after graduating from college in Tokyo (http:​/​​/​hajime​.dotera​.net​/)​ . I witnessed an antiglobalization demonstration in Kōenji in 2008 when the Group of Eight (G8) summit was held in Tōyako, Hokkaido. I was impressed with the high level of activity; it was like a street party. Participants wore whatever they wanted: I saw people dressed in animal costumes and as cosplay and kimono girls. They were dancing, singing, shouting, chatting, eating, and drinking on the streets while DJs and musicians were playing punk rock and hip-­hop. Matsumoto’s group also organized an antinuclear rally in Koenji on April 10, 2011, just one month after the great earthquake, where 15,000 (mostly young) people marched.

Young Precariat at the Forefront

59

Ryota Sono had been arrested on September 23, 2011, during an antidiscrimination and antiexclusion rally. In early October 2011, shortly after he was released from jail, Sono recorded an interview that circulated on YouTube. An interviewer asked him why he had participated in such a rally, which seemed not to be directly related to the antinuclear cause: Actually, everything is connected. . . . Nuclear power plants are always built in [the] rural, marginal, coastal countryside . . . never in Tokyo. The contamination does not happen equally to everybody. People who do not have work in the rural areas and [have no choice but to] work at nuclear power plants will be the first target of radiation exposure. . . . Thus, I believe nuclear power plants are based on the sacrifices of certain members of society and are a form of structural discrimination.7

Indeed, the physical setting of nuclear power plants is based on structural discrimination. The marginal location of power plants makes them convenient suppliers of the energy needed to maintain urban residents’ quality of life. TEPCO, headquartered in Tokyo, provides electricity—­an inevitable component of economic growth—­t hat is generated by nuclear power plants. In fact, thirty of Japan’s fifty-­four nuclear power plants were concentrated in Fukushima, Fukui, and Niigata—­a ll marginal prefectures. The economic affluence that the Japanese enjoy is based on the sacrifice of their fellow citizens in rural, marginal areas. This highly dualistic structure can also be projected onto the emergence of the socioeconomic divide, or kakusa, in Japanese society, where there are winners (kachigumi) and losers (makegumi). A rising number of young people are falling into the loser category, the precariat. For them, economic prosperity is based on the sacrifice (some of my interviewees used the term sakushu or “exploitation”) of their right to decent work. Thus, with mounting anger, they have come to the forefront of society through the antinuclear movement. The emerging resistance was not just an antinuclear power movement but the beginning of a large-­scale protest by ordinary people against the dominant politico-­economic discourse, namely, neoliberalism. Japan’s emerging precariat is a product of the political engineering of the late 1990s. The Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations (Nikkeiren), a Japanese business lobby that was highly influential with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party at that time, proposed a strategic human resources policy to increase firm compet-

60

Chapter Two

itiveness in the global market (Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations 1995). The federation advocated for a flexible workforce in the Japanese labor market, allowing firms to conveniently adjust labor costs. This proposal suggested three types of employment: (1) long-­term employees at the organization’s core, (2) highly specialized professional employees with limited-­term employment contracts, and (3) a flexible workforce to undertake simple and routine work. Japan’s labor market was deregulated, and, about fifteen years later, the proposal was had become reality, with more than one-­t hird of Japanese workers becoming part of the flexible workforce.

The Link to the Global Occupy Movement

The modern “global consciousness” (Robertson 2011) against the discourse of neoliberalism has been key in the drive to change the world, with the angry young precariat at its center. Japan’s antinuclear movements became linked to the global Occupy movement as well. The Tokyo action was initiated on October 2, 2011, through Twitter and Facebook, by a Brazilian who had been living in Japan for two years. He asked for help from somebody who could speak Japanese, and the Tokyo action was gradually generated from the responses to his message. The action did not seem to have any solid leaders nor to be led by any particular organization. People came to know each other virtually through social media and then gathered physically, alike in their common belief that something was wrong in Japanese society. I saw several Twitter messages about this action, which took place at Mikawadai Park in Roppongi, a trendy district of Tokyo. More than a hundred people gathered on October 15, the day of the global action Occupy Together, a social justice movement that began with the Occupy Wall Street movement of September 2011. In the park, I observed the participants freely expressing themselves: some sang songs with guitars; some were drumming, whistling, and dancing. Even a plastic water bottle became a drum, its rhythm contributing to the vibrant atmosphere. Karin Amamiya, a major critic and author covering the ongoing precariat issues, appeared. She told participants that her main motivation for being there was that she had seen some actions in New York City and had realized that what they were talking about was the same situation faced by the Japanese precariat. I also saw a well-­k nown human-­r ights NGO

Young Precariat at the Forefront

61

activist there, who was apparently behind the Occupy Tokyo action. She said to the participants: The problem is not just that we don’t have [decent] jobs. [It] is that if we don’t have them, we [will] not be treated as human beings. We are living in such a society. . . . There are several ways to solve this problem, including appealing to politicians. However, I believe that the first step is to raise our voices together.8

All participants then had a chance to make their own demands. Someone mentioned how the socioeconomic divide stemming from income disparity had continued to worsen, while another expressed concern over radiation contamination from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. An anchor from an internet TV channel specializing in labor issues made an interesting comment, saying that, usually, “we are mobilized for this kind of action, for example, by labor unions; but, today, we didn’t have [this mobilization].” She highlighted that the participants had gathered themselves together through social media. One man, who appeared to be in his early thirties, stood up and began to talk: I am angry about globalism and [the narrative around] economic growth. People who believe in neoliberalism claim it is good, but I don’t think so. Such economic growth exploits us and is not the kind of economic growth we need. We need some money to survive, but we do not need to live a life that depends on money!

Another man in his late twenties, who was from Fukushima, said: I just wanted to tell [you] that one of my relatives died last week. She seemed to be recovering until March, but she was evidently overwhelmed by nuclear radiation. I believe that it was a high level of anxiety [due to the radiation exposure] that sent her to her death.

Addressing her comments to the police surrounding the park, one woman in her late twenties claimed, “What I want is a society for the 99 percent. Such [a] society [should] protect us, the 99 percent. I don’t [want] police [to] protect the 1 percent.” The demonstrators were told by police that the term Tokyo senkyo (“Occupy Tokyo”) should not be used because it sounded too radical, which was the major reason that the organizers had avoided using it (Asahi Shimbun, October 13, 2011). However, the term was used in the real march:

62

Chapter Two

following the rally in the park, the demonstrators started a march in central Tokyo, their voices echoing among Tokyo’s skyscrapers. One labor union member wrote to me that it was significantly important to locate this Tokyo action within the global movement against neoliberalism. The Roppongi action received a solidarity message from Occupy Seoul and interacted with members of Occupy Washington, DC, via Skype. The union leader emphasized that this action was just a starting point and that the Japanese people needed to seriously reflect on what direction they desired for their society. Later, I discovered that Sono was participating in another Occupy Tokyo action in Shinjuku, which I was able to observe on YouTube. I saw Sono at the front of the march, shouting: Hito no inochi wa gēmu janai! Our lives are not games to be played! Kokusai rentai! We are going to join the international action! Wall gai rentai! We are with [Occupy] Wall Street! Chunijia rentai! We are with the people in Tunisia! Fukushima rentai! We are with the people in Fukushima! Tokyo senkyo! Occupy Tokyo! Shinjuku kaihō! Liberate Shinjuku! Sekai wo kaeyō! Let’s change the world! Kanarazu dekiru! We can do it! 99 pāsento! [We are the] 99 percent! 1 pāsento wa iranai! No more 1 percent!9

Young Precariat at the Forefront

63

The shouts seemed never-­ending. The Tokyo action developed into a thousand-­ strong march. Police tried to regulate it by maneuvering participants into a narrow roadside, making them form a line somewhat oppressively. However, these policing efforts looked relatively weak in comparison with the emerging dynamism in which I participated and observed. Simply put, the anger of the ordinary people was strong, particularly that of the young precariat who had been denied decent jobs and lives. This anger motivated them to join the rally and raise their voices for change.

Friday Mass Rallies

Every Friday evening during the summer of 2012, I witnessed a series of mass rallies outside the prime minister’s office in Nagata-­chō, Tokyo, the hub of Japanese politics. These rallies, called “Kantei-­mae Demos” (literally, “demonstration in front of the prime minister’s office”), were part of a new moment in antinuclear movements that began after the March 11 disaster (see Noma 2012). They involved a large number of people specifically seeking to halt the operation of the Oi nuclear plant in Fukui, western Japan, operated by the Kansai Electric Power Company. The first of these rallies took place on Friday, March 29, 2012. It was held prior to the government’s April 3 discussion about the restarting of the Oi nuclear plant and drew some 300 people. As the rallies continued, the number of protesters gradually—­but dramatically—­increased. The organizers announced that more than 12,000 people came to the prime minister’s office to protest on June 15, the day before the government made its final decision on restarting the Oi plant. On June 29, the organizers claimed the number of protesters was 200,000, though the police estimated 17,000. By the end of August, the total number of Friday rally participants had risen to 970,000, according to the organizers.10 The demonstrations themselves began every Friday at 6:00 p.m., lasting exactly two hours. Some shouted powerfully, fists flung into the air; some came with placards bearing the phrase “Absolutely no nukes” (genpatsu iranai); and some older people simply stood, expressing their protest against nuclear power. Generally, the crowd was orderly; this was encouraged by the organizers, who told them that trouble with the police would not help their cause. The demonstrations were organized by the civic network Metropolitan Coalition against Nukes, or Hangenren (Shutoken hangenpatsu rengō), which

64

Chapter Two

was established in September 2011 and comprised eleven Tokyo-­based citizens’ groups that were active in energy and environmental issues. The groups included Tanpoposha, or “No Nukes Plaza Tokyo,” an antinuclear environmental organization founded in 1989 in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, after the Chernobyl nuclear crisis. This civic group has been active in abolishing nuclear power plants in Japan by holding regular antinuclear meetings and lectures, issuing newsletters and booklets, and sending proposals to the electricity companies and the government.11 Meanwhile, new antinuclear groups, including Drums of Fury (Ikari no doramu demo), Energy Shift Parade (Enepare), Demonstration in Kunitachi, TwitNoNukes, and No Nukes More Hearts, were also part of the network. Every group did what it could, united by a single issue: opposition to restarting Japan’s nuclear facilities. An organizer of one of the groups stated that because the coalition was a network, there was no definitive leader; however, Misao Redwolf from No Nukes More Hearts was the most visible figurehead at rally sites. She was a charismatic activist, making powerful antinuclear appeals. Hangenren was the major rally organizer in 2011 and 2012, including for the Rally for a Nuke-­Free World in Japan with the Coalition against Nukes of the United States on October 22, 2011, and the 3.11 Great March in Tokyo on March 11, 2012, which 14,000 people attended. In August 2012, Hangenren members met with Prime Minister Noda, urging him to stop using nuclear power, although they never reached an agreement (Asahi Shimbun, August 22, 2012). This was one of the most significant developments that antinuclear rally participants experienced that summer, as a meeting between the prime minister and members of a citizens’ group, or antinuclear citizens, was unprecedented in Japanese postwar history. The Japanese media’s coverage of the protests was abysmal. Major media, including NHK, did not report on the Friday rallies until July 20, 2012, when former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama appeared at the rally outside his former office. “I regret that politics has strayed far from the people’s wishes,” he told the crowd. “We must protect the new trend of democracy you represent.”12 People at the rally site viewed his appearance cynically as a possible attempt to counteract negative sentiment surrounding his inability to fulfill his campaign promise to move the US base on Futenma, Okinawa, to somewhere outside the prefecture. Only independent journalists, such as the Independent Web Journal (IWJ), had reported on the ongoing rallies. Due to the press’s poor coverage of this issue, after the Fukushima disaster, Japan ranked

Young Precariat at the Forefront

65

twenty-­second out of 179 countries in the 2011–­1 2 World Press Freedom Index, falling from eleventh place the previous year. In late June, Prime Minister Noda approved the restarting of two reactors at the Oi nuclear plant, and on July 1, Unit 3 was switched on. Japan had been left without nuclear power since early May, when the last of its fifty working reactors went offline for regular safety checks. The government decided to restart the two Oi reactors in a bid to meet a summer electricity shortage; it also considered lifting the freeze on other reactors across the country. The decision to restart the Oi reactors was seen as a victory for the nuclear village. On July 13, 2012, I joined 150,000 people (reported as only 10,000 by the police) at one of these antinuclear rallies, where I witnessed an amazing crowd gathered to declare their message: Saikadō hantai, Oi wo tomero! (“Say no to nuclear power plant restarts, stop the Oi operation!”). It was a sweaty summer night in Tokyo. The protesters included men and women in business suits who had come straight from the office, as well as the elderly, the young, and foreigners. I even saw children with their parents and some people with disabilities in a “family area” at the rally site. Kodomo wo mamore—­“Protect our children [from nuclear radiation]”—­was another phrase chanted by the protesters. A woman with two small children told me, “I have never joined this kind of demonstration before. But I can’t be indifferent. I just want a normal life, and I want to protect my children. That’s my motivation for coming here.” The rallies later expanded to cover multiple locations, from the prime minister’s office and the offices of METI, which oversees energy policymaking, to the Ministry of the Environment, and even other cities around the country. Rallies were also held in front of the Kansai Electric Power Company’s headquarters in Osaka. These actions had a shared message, “Say no to nuclear power plant restarts,” a call that reverberated through that summer evening in central Tokyo.

National Diet Rally

On July 29, 2012, I joined an antinuclear rally group that intended to surround the National Diet building despite the scorching summer heat. The organizer, Hangenren, published a call for participation, primarily via social media, reminding people that the Oi nuclear power plant might soon be restarted and that Japan’s current “zero nuclear power” situation might only be temporary. The call informed people of another mass demonstration planned for July 29

66

Chapter Two

Figure 2.1 Friday mass rally on June 29, 2012. Courtesy of the Mainichi Newspapers.

at the National Diet building that aimed to “push the voices opposed to nuclear power plants and the restart of operations to the center of politics on a larger scale than ever before.” To participate in this demonstration, I accompanied Yoshikazu Kondo, a secretariat staff member of the teachers’ labor union, who was part of a student movement in the late 1960s when he was in college and whom I met while conducting research on Japanese pacifism. Kondo is the central figure in a branch of the Article 9 Association. In an effort to expand his interest in the “right to live peacefully” (heiwateki seizonken) guaranteed by the Japanese constitution, Kondo had become more involved with antinuclear rallies. He was a particularly valuable collaborator for me because Japan’s previous social movements occurred before I was born, so I had no point of comparison for my experience at the rally. I met Kondo at the designated meeting point at Yurakucho Station near Hibiya Park. There were no police. I was expecting exit control at the station but there was none. It was around 3:00 p.m. on a hot Sunday afternoon. In the heat, I saw that a first-­aid station had been set up for any who felt unwell. There was also an ice cream truck. Kondo wore a yellow T-­shirt with the slogan Genpatsu iranai—­“ We don’t need nuclear reactors.” Yellow had come

Young Precariat at the Forefront

67

to represent antinuclear sentiments because Fukushima victims wore that color at rallies. Kondo also wore a cap with Saikadō No (“No Restarts”) written on a piece of paper attached to it. As too many people were already inside, we could not enter the park. Kondo and I stood near Hibiya Library and could hear speeches being given by celebrities, including Keiko Ochiai and Taro Yamamoto, who would be elected to the upper house a year later. Karin Amamiya facilitated the gathering inside the park. I heard Tatsuya Yoshioka, head of Peace Boat, say, “The world has a big question about why Japan, having experienced Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima, is restarting nuclear power plants, and I believe the demonstration today is the clearest answer to that question.” We were supposed to leave the park at around 3:30 p.m. and march toward the National Diet for 1.6 kilometers, passing TEPCO’s headquarters in Uchisaiwai-­cho and the METI in Kasumigaseki—­two major promoters of nuclear power in Japan. However, due to unnecessarily strict policing, the rally participants were unable to leave the park. We waited for nearly an hour; some elderly women had to squat down to bear the strong sunshine.

Figure 2.2 Rally participants waiting at Hibiya Park on July 29, 2012. Photo by the author.

68

Chapter Two

Suddenly, somebody started chanting saikadō hantai, saikadō hantai. Ahead, to my right, I saw several Japanese Buddhist priests reciting the sutras; to my left, I heard light drums and trumpets and people chanting saikadō hantai to their rhythm. I saw various flags, including the expected labor union flags. I observed several people who seemed to have come alone, concerned about their future. I saw people in wheelchairs. Some female participants put up parasols, and I saw one woman wearing a kimono. Reflecting upon his student movement experiences in the 1960s, Kondo laughed, “I never saw women in kimonos coming to demonstrations. When I was a student, both men and women usually wore jeans in case we were chased by the police.” He continued, “Nobody is being too aggressive, even though there seem to be thousands of people in this park.” Compared to the previous social movements, the post–­ March 11 antinuclear activism has been mobilized by a diverse collection of people, encompassing people of all ages from all different social classes and cultures. According to Hangenren, the number of protesters at that day’s rally reached around 200,000, though the police estimated only 12,000. Nevertheless, the commitment to nonviolence persisted. Finally, at nearly 5 p.m., the demonstrators were allowed to go out into the street. Under police control, we were only allowed to walk on the left side of the road. We encountered another rally group supporting the restarting of the nuclear reactors. They looked young and wore black T-­shirts and sunglasses, and I heard them yelling into a loudspeaker, calling us hikokumin (“unpatriotic”), a term used during World War II to refer to people who criticized national politics. I heard somebody behind me explaining that these people had been hired by someone (i.e., TEPCO) for JPY 200,000 per day. I saw a big contrast between them and us. They were shouting, being loud, and looked angry, distressed, and gloomy, while we were all quietly angry. Many of us were chanting, “No to restarting nuclear power plants” and “Stop nuclear power plants” but quite a few were just walking along. As we walked, we continued to chant saikadō hantai, saikadō hantai. We were sweating profusely and carried bottles of water. When we passed the TEPCO headquarters, a couple of organizers said, “What you see now is TEPCO. Appeal however you want.” Consequently, we started shouting Fukushima kaese—­“Return [a clean, not nuclear-­tainted] Fukushima.” The chants were fueled by music played by DJs, and many held up their middle fingers toward the TEPCO building. I saw a lot of people waving at us from the

Young Precariat at the Forefront

69

sidewalk in Nishi Shinbashi, a business and commercial district. Up the road was the news agency headquarters where I worked after graduating from college. Kondo said, “We never used to receive encouragement from nonparticipants.” One elderly woman sitting on the sidewalk sent us her encouragement. Gestures of support also came from people on the footbridge. The organizers stood along the rally route, leading us in chanting saikadō hantai. The police also stood at certain intervals, forcing us to walk on the narrow edge of the street, while they took photos and videos. After walking for about an hour and a half, we neared Kasumigaseki, the location of most of Japan’s cabinet ministry offices. We waved in support at people in the tents pitched by antinuclear groups outside the METI buildings (see Kamata 2012 on the protest activities in the tents). The three tents were set up in September 2011 on the ministry grounds as part of a continued sit-­in protest against Japan’s nuclear power policy. It was already getting dark as we walked up the hill between the Minis-

Figure 2.3 Mass rally in central Tokyo on July 29, 2012. Photo by the author.

70

Chapter Two

tries of Finance and of Foreign Affairs to the main gate of the National Diet. The road leading there was blocked off by police vehicles and metal barricades to prevent people from spilling over onto the road from the sidewalk. I saw a group of Greens Japan (Midori no tō) members, whom I heard had just held an inaugural meeting at a nearby building.13 One of the organizers showed families to the area for parents with children. There were so many people that we could barely move. Due to traffic restrictions and police interference, it was difficult for many people to reach the Diet: the police told us to turn right, but that was the way to Hibiya Park, not the National Diet. The police also forced us to stay on the small sidewalk, next to which police buses were parked, narrowing our passage. I was annoyed by their obstinate, obstructing attitude. It was our right to demonstrate as part of our freedom of expression, and they should not have impeded us. Once, in a previous demonstration, I took directions from the police and ended up going in completely the wrong direction. Before 7 p.m., the protesters began to turn on portable lights. We had filled about 1.3 kilometers of the streets surrounding the National Diet building. Demonstrators began spilling over onto the road from the sidewalk, some by stepping across the police barriers and escaping between the buses. Some of these wanderers were stopped by the police, and I heard later that two were arrested on suspicion of obstructing officers. Kondo and I followed the wave of people. The four-­lane roads in front of the National Diet form a plaza, which quickly began filling up. In that moment, we occupied the National Diet square. This may have been the first time that ordinary citizens had occupied the space since the Anpo movement in the 1960s. The organizers had originally planned to surround the National Diet with a “human chain” of portable lights they brought with them, but this was not possible for security reasons; thus, many of them poured into the main gate of the National Diet. To the sounds of drums and trumpets, we shouted saikadō hantai together, raising our fists and clapping our hands, hoping that the Oi nuclear reactors would cease to function and Japan would move from a mass consumption society to a nuclear-­f ree, sustainable society. In front of the National Diet, politicians gave speeches. A call to “go home” was made to lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. I was surprised to see that Shizuka Kamei, a conservative politician from the Liberal Democratic Party and former police bureaucrat specializing in counterextremism, appeared at the demonstration

Young Precariat at the Forefront

71

Figure 2.4 Rally participants with an antinuclear flag at the National Diet square on July 29, 2012. Photo by the author.

and spoke against restarting nuclear power plants. This suggested that even conservatives were beginning to oppose nuclear power. I saw a group of protesters holding the Japanese flag. Their aim was to protect the mountains and rivers, and their logic for supporting the antinuclear cause was that nuclear power plants would pollute the land. In the usual orderly fashion, the rally finished at exactly 8 p.m. As I walked back to the station with Kondo, I reflected on Japan’s past, present, and future through the lens of this emerging movement against nuclear power, which had now extended across the country.

A Possible Step toward a Post-­Neoliberal Politics

As I experienced this epiphany, I thought of the phrase “a sorrow close to despair” (zetsubō ni chikai kanashimi). I had heard it from one of the Friday rally participants, whose drive to participate had come from a sorrow that he was unable to manage—­a sorrow approaching despair. This sorrow was generated primarily by the unwillingness of the prime minister and other Japanese political leaders to listen to ordinary people. Though the rally participants shouted in front of the prime minister’s office, their voices never seemed to reach him. Further, because he did not seem to listen, or seemed to pay more attention to competing agendas, public distrust in him was growing.

72

Chapter Two

To the rally participants, Japanese politics seemed to be pushing the same logic that the country had practiced before the March 11 disaster, which primarily accommodated voices from the nuclear village. Thus, rather than merely sustaining Japan’s economic performance as the third-­largest economy in the world, the underlying message of this emerging social movement was something more radical. Instead of depending on nuclear power, the movement believed that Japan should look for alternative, environmentally friendly, sustainable energy sources. Making this choice would fundamentally change the existing way of life in Japan. Japanese people had reflected on their lifestyle in this way once before, in the wake of the industrial pollution resulting from the economic development of the 1950s and 1960s. However, given the extreme dangers of nuclear radiation, the scale of the present disaster was too big to control in any similar fashion. The real question was not whether people wanted nuclear power but whether alternative energy generation was possible. After the March 11 disaster, I saw some signs of hope when I witnessed several grassroots actions to generate a post-­nuclear-­power society. Japan’s high level of technology could make it an innovative force in the sustainable energy field: Japanese industries had already begun to market such energy sources as new business ventures, and local citizens’ movements, aimed at ridding Japan of nuclear power through the local adoption of solar power, had also gathered speed. The most difficult task was competing with the business interests of the dominant nuclear village. Greens Japan, the Japanese chapter of Global Greens, was established as a political party in July 2012, a day before the National Diet rally. Green Active, another political party seeking antinuclear power, started earlier that year. Although these parties were weak, Japanese people at least had the option to vote for a “green” party. Furthermore, Japanese intellectuals played a significant role in furthering the action against nuclear power policymaking. Sociologist Eiji Oguma was actively committed to Hangenren, anthropologist Shinichi Nakazawa headed Green Active, and philosopher Kojin Karatani organized the antinuclear movement associations.jp, which aimed to abolish all nuclear reactors in Japan. Once again, the rally’s major slogan—­saikadō hantai—­ signified the crucial hope that we would not return to a pre-­Fukushima Japan. We were experiencing the beginning of a contentious struggle between the old Japan and the new as we demanded a safer tomorrow.

Young Precariat at the Forefront

73

The prevalent antinuclear dynamism may have been a product of keen frustration and disagreement with the contemporary politics dominated by neoliberal logic, which oppressed grassroots “voices” (Couldry 2010). As Nick Couldry argued, “Neoliberalism is a rationality that denies voice and operates with a view of human life that is incoherent” (2010, 133). In this chapter, I have documented the antinuclear voices of the young precariat, such as that of Sono, and of Fukushima residents—­both of whom are victims of neoliberalism—­as well as those of women and the elderly. Those whose positions are marginal in neoliberal politics have taken positions at the movement’s forefront. I saw a huge explosion of voices at the antinuclear rallies and demonstrations, which promised a starting point for post-­neoliberal politics and could “more adequately embod[y] the value of voice” (Couldry 2010, 15). Japan was experiencing a historic movement toward change. This sentiment was carried over to another protest in the summer of 2015 against Prime Minister Abe’s so-­called “war legislation,” which gave Japan the authority to defend close military allies, specifically the United States, in combat for the first time since the end of World War II, under the right of collective self-­defense justified by a reinterpretation of the Japanese pacifist constitution. A group of Japanese university students, Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs), generated a new peace activism in response to this legislation and continued to shout “Kenpō mamore” (Defend the Constitution) at the National Diet square (see Ogawa 2018). The ongoing crisis after March 11 gave the country the opportunity to formulate a new energy policy. Nuclear power had earlier been described as “safe, clean, and cheap.” On July 13, 2011, Prime Minister Kan announced his vision of gradually phasing out nuclear power by abandoning plans to build fourteen new reactors by 2030. Subsequent media polls showed that up to 74% of the Japanese population favored at least a gradual phasing out of nuclear power (Mainichi Shimbun, August 22, 2011). Meanwhile, the nuclear village and the pronuclear camp, citing an electricity shortage, continued to advocate the necessity of nuclear power. Japan, however, had enough reserves of thermal energy and other types of power plants to maintain the country adequately. A Greenpeace Japan (2011, 3) study showed that Japan could phase out nuclear power by the end of 2012 and generate 43% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020. Further, as Australian antinuclear activist Helen Caldicott claimed, true, green, clean, nearly emission-­free solutions exist for provid-

74

Chapter Two

ing energy; they lie in a combination of conservation and renewable energy sources—­mainly wind, solar, and geothermal, hydropower plants, and biomass from algae (International Herald Tribune Magazine, December 2, 2011). Thus, the antinuclear movement went beyond the discourse on Japan’s energy policy. The major efforts would be carried out primarily by eco-­entrepreneurs who would establish social enterprises—­f inancially independent, nonprofit civic bodies with social aims (see the stories on renewable energy production in chap. 4). No More Nukes!—­t his phrase was repeated half a century ago by ordinary people as they protested nuclear weapons. The new crisis after the March 11 disaster presented a major challenge for the Japanese people and was an invitation for them to reflect on their way of life and social structures, both of which were dependent on nuclear power plants, and to consider what means were necessary for creating a new Japan. The young precariat was at the forefront of this challenge, and many antinuclear citizens in post-­Fukushima Japan followed suit.14

THREE

The Right to Evacuation

Health Issues Persisting Three Years after the March 11 Disaster

In 2014, my research collaborator, a parent with school-­going children in Fukushima, told me that in the months following the March 11 disaster, all children aged four to fifteen in Fukushima were required to wear a “glass badge” when they went out. Each badge was actually a dosimeter (senryōkei), encased in a colorful plastic sleeve dangling from the neck. On June 23, 2011, three months after the nuclear disaster, Fukushima Prefecture began requiring its 280,000 children to wear these badges to monitor the radiation exposure caused by the accident. The dosimeters were also available to parents of children under three upon request and had been made available to students in most schools by October that year. Despite their daily interaction with the devices, neither the children nor their parents could decipher their radiation readings, nor were these dosimeters designed to sound an alarm when the reading reached a level that was hazardous to the children’s health. Rather, children were expected to wear the badges for three months, after which they were collected, and the data were downloaded by the company that had produced them. Within a month, the company would report the results of the collected data to the municipalities, not the parents. Thus, the distribution of these dosimeters was not aimed at protecting children’s health but rather at collecting data, even though the significant effects of radiation exposure were becoming increasingly apparent in Fukushima Prefecture. Furthermore, this “health survey” was conducted without incorporating the opinions or requests of Fukushima residents: the data were not disclosed to parents unless they filed a formal request to the prefecture.1 My research collaborator reported feeling that the children had become subjects in an experiment to test how people could survive under certain 75

76

Chapter Three

levels of continuous nuclear radiation exposure. She felt this way because after the children had worn the dosimeters for three months, the Japanese government created a twenty-­k ilometer mandatory evacuation zone, also urging residents in an additional zone where radiation had been measured at levels of 20 mSv per year or more to evacuate. The government set the maximum allowable permitted radiation value for residents in Fukushima at 20 mSv per year, equivalent to 3.8 μSv per hour, in April 2011, increasing it from 1 mSv per year (see the introduction for more about this decision). In comparison, the Chernobyl Law of 1991, the first law in the world that explicitly covered the universal human right to life of people affected by radiation disasters, set the evacuation standard at 5 mSv per year or above for mandatory settling out, and between 1 mSv and 5 mSv per year for voluntary settling out with state support. The recommended maximum dose by the globally recognized ICRP is 1 mSv per year. While documenting these events three years after they occurred, I read a newspaper article that stated that the number of children with confirmed or suspected thyroid cancers continued to grow in Fukushima. As of May 20, 2014, the health management survey conducted by Fukushima Prefecture indicated that out of the initial eighty-­nine children with confirmed or suspected thyroid cancers, fifty had become confirmed cancer cases, with seventeen new confirmations since the previous announcement in February 2014 (Fukushima Minyū, May 20, 2014; cf. Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey 2014). Thyroid cancer, which can occur when radioactive iodine accumulates in the thyroid glands, is considered a major health concern for children. According to the National Cancer Center’s (2012) incidence data from cancer registries in Japan, the records of thyroid cancers among children in Fukushima since 2011 differ drastically from the health data collected by Japan before the nuclear power plant disaster.2 In 2008, for example, the number of thyroid cancers was only 0 to 1.4 incidences per 100,000 people under the age of eighteen. After 2011, however, among 254,280 screened children, the rate of confirmed cancers had risen to 12.99 per 100,000 by February 2014. Tsuda et al. (2016) also pointed out that an excess of thyroid cancer had been detected by ultrasound among children and adolescents in Fukushima Prefecture within four years of the March 11 disaster, which was unlikely to be result of a surge in screenings. However, Fukushima’s prefectural government

The Right to Evacuation

77

did not admit any causality between the radiation leakage from the nuclear disaster and the incidence of cancer since it believed it was too early to link the cases (it took almost five years after the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe for significant numbers of thyroid cancers to be detected).3 In fact, Shunichi Yamashita, the advisor to the governor of Fukushima Prefecture on health risk management immediately after the March 11 disaster, claimed that it was safe to be exposed to radiation up to 100 mSv per year and even said, “The effects of radiation don’t actually come to people who are smiling” (Radio Fukushima, March 21, 2011). Understandably, this statement stirred immense anxiety and even anger among Fukushima residents, including my research collaborators. These stories reminded me of Japan’s enactment of the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act (formally, the Act on Promotion of Support Measures for the Lives of Disaster Victims to Protect and Support Children and Other Residents Suffering Damage due to Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Nuclear Accident; Genpatsujiko kodomo hisaisha shienhō).4 This act was established at the National Diet on June 21, 2012, and was considered groundbreaking. It was drawn up by a multipartisan group of lawmakers who recognized the right to evacuation (hinan no kenri) for all people within the affected areas. In general, this act respects the right of citizens to avoid exposure to radiation and asserts that victims can make decisions of their own free will; for example, they can choose to permanently evacuate to a new area, return to their original homes after evacuation, or remain where they are (i.e., not evacuate). Whatever their choice, the act states that it should not be determined by the fact that their original homes are now in a severely irradiated area.

Claiming the Right to Evacuation

Governments need a civil society that can mobilize resources to conduct sustained litigation (Epp 2010). Social movements and civil society groups have been essential in developing rights advocacy, and, more specifically in this case, the right to evacuation. Kanna Mitsuta, an activist belonging to Friends of Earth (FoE) Japan, an NGO focused on international environmental issues, stated, “We are not nuclear power plant specialists. However, we are always with the people in Fukushima, and our strength lies in our knowledge of their troubles and anger. We will take advantage of our strength when we make proposals to policymakers” (Fujioka and Nakano 2012, 224–­25). Accordingly, members of civil society groups have worked to close the gap between the

78

Chapter Three

disaster victims and government officials, forcing lawmakers to recognize the reality of the situation (cf. van Zyl 2014). In addition, Kuniko Tanioka, a member of the House of Councillors who played a significant role in drafting the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act, said, “it was impossible to make the Act without the collaboration with [people from] outside [the government]” during the in-­house public gathering on July 10, 2012, that was organized by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations. In documenting the voices of the victims that I encountered following the March 11 disaster, this chapter presents the grassroots struggle against public authorities that took place as well as the legal rationale that led to developments such as the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act. On December 2, 2011, almost nine months after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, I listened to a woman named Takako Shishido testifying at the House of Councillors. Shishido had evacuated from northern Fukushima to Hokkaido after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident. She was a “voluntary evacuee”—­one of many who had voluntarily fled their homes even though they were not living in an area designated as a mandatory evacuation zone, mainly because they were concerned about health risks stemming from high radiation exposure levels. In June 2011, Shishido began living in public housing in Atsubetsu, Sapporo city, with 160 other voluntary evacuee families. Early in the reconstruction process, the Hokkaido government began actively accepting voluntary evacuees, and their number in the district kept rising. Shishido established a neighborhood association ( jichikai), one of the most common grassroots civil society organizations in Japanese society, with other evacuees in Atsubetsu. Her major reason for evacuating was her one-­year-­old child; she was aware of the data regarding thyroid complications following radiation exposure, which was available on the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) website. The data indicated that the area in which she lived had radiation levels high enough to merit a warning for her child’s age group. Many people outside of government-­designated evacuation regions also chose to evacuate voluntarily. According to one survey, more than 50% of respondents wanted to evacuate from Fukushima primarily because of persistent anxiety about radiation (Fukushima Municipal Government 2012). However, many were unable to because of the financial burden. People who voluntarily left areas that were not designated for evacuation and those who continued

The Right to Evacuation

79

to live in such areas were not eligible for assistance under the compensation framework established by the science ministry’s Dispute Reconciliation Committee for Nuclear Damage Compensation (Genshiryoku songai baishō funsō shinsakai). As such, government support was inadequate and did not provide any substantial relief to those who evacuated voluntarily or wished to evacuate (see McNeill 2012). In May 2012, the Fukushima Prefectural Government confirmed that 164,865 Fukushima Prefecture residents had been living away from their homes since March 2011, a record-­high number of evacuees.5 However, this figure did not include people who voluntarily evacuated (no official numbers of voluntary evacuees are available). Shishido’s major claim was that the Japanese government should provide the right to evacuation for voluntary evacuees and give them the same assistance and compensation as forced evacuees. She spoke before the House of Councillors on behalf of her local community, and her narrative was supported by a member of the reconstruction committee elected to the House of Councillors from Hokkaido: I am a voluntary evacuee. I left my home without waiting for the government’s instructions. It was hard to do this in a place such as Fukushima where the sense of community is very strong. . . . My parents did not understand our evacuation. “Since the government says it is safe, why don’t you believe them?” However, someone else said, “You are lucky you can escape. I wish I could.” I do [have] hope [in] politics. . . . I wish the government would acknowledge the right to voluntary evacuation. First, these are policies that could save children’s and humans’ lives. Giving compensation to voluntary evacuees means the government gives them the right to evacuate. If the government says it is okay to evacuate, many more people who want to evacuate would do so. It is important to cheer on the reconstruction of Fukushima. Simultaneously, we must acknowledge the right to evacuation for people who are planning to voluntarily evacuate. Do you think that Fukushima residents are worry-­f ree? No. Both the people who are evacuating and the people who are staying are full of anxiety. I’m asking everyone here now . . . Can you see us—­us, the people of Fukushima? Can you see me? (Takako Shishido, December 2, 2011)

Behind the scenes was the citizens’ support group Mimisuma (meaning “listen attentively”), which comprised mothers who had been working in Sapporo since five days after the March 11 disaster to provide support to those

80

Chapter Three

affected. Meguru Mikami, head of Mimisuma, explained that their activities aimed to save children from radioactive contamination. Immediately after the disaster, most people who had evacuated to Hokkaido were victims of the earthquake and tsunami. However, as the reality of radioactive contamination became clearer around May 2011, an increasing number began to move to Hokkaido to avoid radioactive contamination. Many who evacuated were mothers that were desperate to protect their children from radioactive contamination, aiming for a safe area. Mothers began to live with their children temporarily at evacuation sites,6 while fathers remained in Fukushima and sent money to their families. Many families began to live parallel lives, one at the evacuation site and the other in Fukushima, which cast a heavy shadow on each family, both financially and psychologically. Mikami, who was originally an activist supporting the restoration of Ainu indigenous peoples’ rights in Hokkaido and who understood the importance of building relationships from the ground up through advocacy activities, initiated the support activities with an evacuee mother from Fukushima, whom she called Rika. Every morning, Rika dropped her daughter off at day care and then came to the Citizen Activity Support Center, where Mikami and other mothers worked. Rika was an active woman and always well-­dressed, despite the hardship she was in, which Mikami figured was all the encouragement she could muster for herself. Mikami told me that Rika taught her it is important not only to never forget to smile but also to connect support activities with the people who were still in Fukushima.7 In fact, this experience led Mikami to actively develop recuperation programs for both children and parents in Fukushima, some of which are documented later in this chapter. While documenting the stories of voluntary evacuees, I should add one more that is related to the health controversy surrounding radiation exposure. The long-­running Japanese cooking comic Oishinbo (The Gourmet), published in the weekly Big Comic Spirits magazine (issues 22 and 23, April 28 and May 12, 2014), included a plot in which a group of newspaper journalists, including the main character, Shiro Yamaoka, visit Fukushima’s stricken nuclear power plant’s six reactors and are momentarily exposed to radiation levels of 1,680 μSv per hour. Yamaoka began to complain of extreme exhaustion and had sudden nosebleeds for days after. The group also met Katsutaka Idogawa—­t he real-­life former mayor of Futaba Town, which hosts the Fukushima plant—­and learned that he had also suffered from repeated nose-

The Right to Evacuation

81

bleeds and felt “unbearably sick” since the accident. This plot was based on the actual experiences of Oishinbo’s author Tetsu Kariya, who told Japanese media based in Australia about his experience of repeated nosebleeds after visiting radiation-­affected areas in Fukushima Prefecture from November 2011 to May 2013 (Nichigo Press, January 13, 2014). Following the comic’s publication, Shogakukan Inc., the magazine’s publisher, received strong criticism from politicians at various levels. Prime Minister Abe said, “There is no confirmation that anyone’s health has been directly affected by radioactive substances. The government will do its utmost to take actions against baseless rumors” (47 News, May 18, 2014). Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara also denied a causal relationship between radiation exposure and nosebleeds, underscoring the importance of keeping unfounded rumors in check (Asahi Shimbun, May 9, 2014). Meanwhile, Idogawa, who appeared in the comic, told a press conference that it depicted his actual experience of nosebleeds as a result of radiation exposure (Sankei Shimbun, May 9, 2014). The Fukushima Prefectural government released a statement on May 7, 2014, that stated, “We have a thorough inspection system to detect the effects of radioactive substances on health at an early stage. Through these tests, no direct health damage caused by the radioactive substances released by the nuclear accident has been confirmed. . . . Expressions depicting nosebleeds as the result of radiation in Oishinbo . . . are very worrisome because such expressions may give readers the impression that a particular individual’s opinion that appears in the comic is reflective of the current state of Fukushima itself.” However, by the time the Oishinbo story was released, I had already often heard that people in Fukushima were experiencing nosebleeds and that they suspected they were related to radiation exposure. The governor of the neighboring Akita Prefecture in northern Japan, Norihisa Satake, also had a nosebleed during a press conference, although any relation to radiation exposure was promptly denied (Sankei Shimbun, May 26, 2014).

Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act

The initial draft of the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act was submitted in December 2011 to the municipal assembly of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, as a written statement calling for health support and financial security for the victims of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Simultaneously, a bill was proposed at the National Diet by opposition parties, including the Lib-

82

Chapter Three

eral Democratic Party, to promote the protection of children and pregnant women who were victims of the nuclear disaster. One of this bill’s major efforts included preventative measures against health impacts. In addition, another bill proposed by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan called for general support for all victims, including the identification of target regions for support efforts, and for assistance for those remaining in, evacuating from, or returning to their homes. After six months of intensive discussions, the bill was unanimously approved in June 2012 at the Diet and named the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act. When writing the draft for this act, Japanese lawmakers referred to the Chernobyl Law of 1991, which stated that areas in which the amount of contamination is more than 1 mSv per year are to be declared as “areas concerned by the right to settle out.” The Chernobyl Law includes help with finding a job, accommodation, medical treatment, and food supplies for evacuated people in their new locations. After the enactment of the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act, the House of Representatives uploaded a Japanese translation of the Chernobyl Law on July 23, 2012, as part of the report on thirteen Diet members’ official visit to Ukraine in October 2011 to investigate the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear accident (House of Representatives 2011). One of the Fukushima victims commented that the Chernobyl Law was a promise the Ukrainian state made to its people that they would never have to live in a place where the maximum allowable permitted value of radiation was at or above 1 mSv per year (Tanji 2014, 78). Article 2.2 of the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act features the right to evacuation: Living support measures for victims must ensure that the victims will be supported properly regardless of whether each victim decides to move to the area where support will be provided under Article 8.1 of this act, moves to other areas, or returns to the areas they inhabited before the evacuation, so that victims can make their own decision [of] their own will.

This article clearly indicates citizens’ right to avoid radiation exposure by allowing them to choose their living location; regardless of their decision, the necessary support from the government is guaranteed. One of the major rationales for guaranteeing this right was because “the risk of radiation from the radioactive materials on human health is not fully understood scientifically”

The Right to Evacuation

83

(Article 1: Purpose in the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act). In fact, the act does not specifically name Fukushima, which means that this right is applicable to all radiation-­affected individuals. The legal rationale for this right to evacuation can be attributed to “the right to live in peace, free from fear and want” (heiwa teki seizon ken), which is declared in the Japanese constitution, as is the right to self-­determination or the “right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (kojin no sonchō to kōfuku tsuikyū ken), which shall “be the supreme consideration in legislation and in other governmental affairs.” The Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act guarantees both forced and voluntary evacuees transport, housing, education, employment, and public services. Broader support is also mentioned, including prevention of negative effects on people’s health, especially that of children and unborn fetuses (Article 2.3), measures to minimize and recuperate from radiation exposure (Article 13.1), lifelong health checkups for those who were children at the time of radiation exposure (Article 13.2), and ensuring living-­related support and medical services at a reduced cost (Article 13.3). Further, children are to receive assistance in continuing education (Article 8.2) and support to deal with split-­family living situations due to radiation-­related evacuation (Article 9). Importantly, to receive medical treatment victims do not have to bear the burden of proof that their health problems were caused by radiation. While proof was previously required in Japan, for example, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and for the Minamata mercury poisoning disease, Article 6 of the new act defined the burden of proof as falling on the government. The role of the state was now to conduct detailed research on the status of pollution caused by each type of radioactive material on an ongoing basis. Going forward, it would be the government’s responsibility to investigate the relationship between sickness and nuclear radiation exposure—­a major achievement of this lawmaking process.

Reconstruction Agency Delays and Arrogance

In June 2014, I observed growing concern, dissatisfaction, and frustration over the fact that the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act had not worked well in the first two years after it was enacted. Almost nothing had been decided or implemented and there had been a lack of major progress. One of the contributing factors was that the act was a “program act” that only specified the principles and framework; thus, concrete measures to assist the victims were

84

Chapter Three

not included. It fell on the government to create and enforce the “basic policy” (Article 5), including the range of Support Target Areas (Article 8) in a “timely and quick manner.” Based on the updated data gained from government-­ sponsored research (Article 6), every effort made by the government must be reviewed annually (Supplementary Provision). However, the government had not yet produced the basic policy, which was attributed to sabotage by bureaucrats. The president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations expressed significant concern about the absence of national support actually being provided for victims (Japan Federation of Bar Associations 2013). In fact, some victims believe that since the act was autonomously created by lawmakers, there was no nemawashi (a Japanese practice for consensus-­making among affected peoples in advance of a major change) between the legislative and administrative bodies; thus, no scheduled funding was available to implement any measures. My research collaborators from civil society groups pointed to another reason behind the lack of implementation: the arrogant attitudes of Reconstruction Agency (Fukkōchō) officials when dealing with Fukushima victims and their civil society groups. One symbolic incident occurred in June 2013 (a year after the enactment), when a senior official posted several derogatory tweets calling the people supporting the victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster “stupid leftists” (sayoku no kuso domo). The offending official was a career bureaucrat of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and a counselor in the Reconstruction Agency directly responsible for supporting those affected by the disaster. One of my research collaborators expressed his disappointment upon reading these tweets because he had believed the bureaucrat to be a collaborative partner. At a dialogue meeting between civil society groups and Reconstruction Agency officials that was organized following public outcry over the tweets, a Fukushima victim claimed that the agency had not uploaded information on the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Act to its homepage. The Reconstruction Agency takes primary responsibility for the act, and this failure to disseminate it led to concerns that many of the Fukushima victims did not even know what was included in it. The lack of seriousness shown by the officials led to victims having no trust in their ability to mitigate the situation in disaster-­affected areas. One victim said, “Why are you here and attending this meeting? I

The Right to Evacuation

85

thought that public officials exist to serve us. Yet all you have to say to us is what you can’t and what you don’t want to do.”8 In October 2013, Abe’s cabinet finally managed to approve the basic policy, although the policymaking process was far from consensus-­driven. Among several major policy implementations, it designated only thirty-­three municipalities in Nakadōri and Hamadōri in Fukushima Prefecture as Support Target Areas. Many victims were concerned that these areas were too small and that the standard for designation was unclear. In addition, comprehensive health checkups were limited to people in Fukushima Prefecture, even though the affected areas extended beyond the prefectural border. In September 2013, prior to finalizing the basic policy, there was a two-­week call for public comments, which would be implemented as part of the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act. More than 5,000 comments from municipalities and citizens were submitted. My research collaborators, several of whom contributed public comments, noted that one of the major topics commented on was the Support Target Areas. Commenters wrote that all areas in which an additional 1 mSv of radiation doses per year were detected should be designated as Support Target Areas. They claimed that the actual radiation dosage measured was more relevant to properly designating these areas than their geographical distance from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the footprint of the radioactive plume. This proposal, however, was completely ignored. Such a cavalier attitude on the part of the Abe government was not new. For example, though more than 90% of respondents during a public comment period on the Abe administration’s basic energy policy expressed opposition to nuclear power, the cabinet still approved the energy policy, describing nuclear power generation as an “important base load electricity source” (Asahi Shimbun, May 25, 2014; Cabinet Office 2014).

Civil Society Groups: Key Actors in Mobilizing Victims’ Voices

Civil society groups played a significant role in mobilizing victims’ voices, actively collaborating with Diet members such as Kuniko Tanioka (Democratic Party of Japan),9 Mizuho Fukushima (Social Democrats), and Ryuhei Kawada (Your Party).10 I observed many instances in which members of civil society groups facilitated dialogues among victims, Diet members, and Reconstruction Agency officials. In July 2012, shortly after passage of the act, the Citizens’

86

Chapter Three

Forum for the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act (Genpatsu jiko kodomo hisaisha shienhō shimin kaigi) was established. As of June 2014, sixty-­four civil society groups were participants, including the Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation (Kodomotachi wo hōshanō kara mamoru Fukushima nettowāku), Fukurō no kai (the full name is Fukushima rōkyū genpatsu wo kangaeru kai: roughly “Association for Contemplating Aging Nuclear Power Plants in Fukushima”), Peace Boat, CRMS (Citizens’ Radioactivity Measuring Station; Shimin hoshanō sokuteijo), and Human Rights Now. Among these groups, Save Fukushima Children Lawyers’ Network (SAFLAN; Fukushima no kodomotachi wo mamoru hōritsuka nettowāku) and FoE Japan assumed the secretarial functions. In addition to organizing the forum, each of these civil society groups actively lobbied to bring the victims’ voices to the public. What the victims of the Fukushima disaster wanted was to participate in a transparent decision-­making process and feel confident that raising their voices could directly affect policymaking activities, which is required by Article 5.3 of the act. The victims required the institutionalization of a designated place and time for developing dialogues or holding consultative meetings with the government; the government “has the responsibility to develop comprehensive victim living support measures” (Article 3), so it should be receptive to hearing victims’ voices. One of the most notable actions was taken by the Tokyo-­based NGO Human Rights Now, which submitted a report on Japan’s human rights situation in the aftermath of the March 11 disaster to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in May 2012. The report foregrounded the horrible health conditions of residents of Fukushima and other areas in relation to the nuclear radiation leaks, evacuees’ poor housing conditions, and the safety of food and products (Human Rights Now 2011). Following this report, Anand Grover, special rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), was dispatched to Japan between November 15 and 26, 2012, as an independent investigator to conduct intensive research. Special rapporteurs are independent investigators tasked by the United Nations with investigating human rights issues and can only investigate a country if invited to do so by its government. Grover’s survey was officially presented in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 23, 2013. He made multiple recommendations and requested that the Japanese

The Right to Evacuation

87

government guarantee the right to health by implementing a health survey for all people living in the areas affected by more than 1 mSv of ionizing radiation per year. He also requested that the government not force evacuees to return to their homes until the level of ionizing radiation was reduced to below 1 mSv per year. Most importantly, he urged the government to heed victims’ voices in an effort to enhance transparency and accountability in governance (Grover 2013, 19−20). Prior to this presentation, as he was leaving Japan, Grover had already stressed the need for a collaborative framework: “The affected people in Japan need to be part of the decision-­making process as well as of the implementation, monitoring and accountability procedures” (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 2012). Ensuring affected communities’ participation in decision-­making is indeed one of the government’s core obligations, and the public’s right to information is the foundation of a democratic society. Grover (2013, 21−22) clearly raised his concerns in the UNHRC report, emphasizing the government’s obligation to vulnerable groups and the importance of involving the public in national and community-­level decision-­ making processes. Urging the government to include communities in the health management survey, he highlighted that such involvement “encourages community-­led awareness-­raising and initiatives” and empowers vulnerable groups. Grover further called on the Japanese government to involve individuals and community organizations in current and future nuclear and health policies, including in data collection and radiation monitoring, planning evacuation centers, designing health management surveys, decisions regarding radiation levels and evacuation zones, and setting compensation amounts.11

Using UNSCEAR as a Rationale for Japanese Policymaking

The Japanese government took a negative stance against Grover’s presentation, claiming that it lacked a scientific basis.12 The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR, 2013a) even produced a counterreport denying that any radiation-­related deaths or acute diseases had been observed among individuals exposed to radiation from the accident. The report also asserted that the radiation doses received by the public were very low, and that the higher incidences of detected cancers during the Fukushima Health Management Survey were a result of improved

88

Chapter Three

detection efficiency (11−12). In short, it concluded that there was no immediate health risk. This counterreport led the Japanese government to refuse compensation for those who chose to voluntarily leave Fukushima. Civil society groups in Japan raised strong concerns regarding what UNSCEAR advocated. The rationale was that UNSCEAR was a product of the Cold War—­t he regime justified the existence of nuclear weapons to maintain the balance of power in international politics (Takahashi 2018).13 According to Takahashi (2018, 924), UNSCEAR is “at least not an organization to save hibakusha.” UNSCEAR was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1955, originally with fifteen states,14 a year after the Lucky Dragon incident during the US nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll between 1946 and 1958. From the beginning, the US Atomic Energy Commission was heavily involved with UNSCEAR’s operation, mainly addressing the issue of the global fallout of radioactive materials from weapons and low-­dose radiation from industrial exposure while downplaying the health issues related to Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Takahashi 2018, 927–­29; see also Eisenbud 1991 and Lindee 1994). Furthermore, the assertion that low-­level exposure to radiation represents no human threat is an artifact of Cold War–­era science that was shaped to meet government and industry needs (Johnston 2011). UNSCEAR (2019) says its mandate in the United Nations system is to assess and report the levels and effects of exposure to ionizing radiation; governments and organizations worldwide rely on its estimates to provide a scientific basis for evaluating radiation risk and establishing protective measures.15 The Japanese government conveniently continued to justify its policymaking by referring to UNSCEAR decisions and suggestions. In fact, the Japanese government had been developing radiation protection policies in collaboration with UNSCEAR and ICRP even before the March 11 disaster and discussing how pronuclear groups should broaden the theory of safety regarding low-­dose radiation exposure.16 Japan’s policymaking on radiation exposure heavily depended and continues to depend on UNSCEAR’s decisions. For example, six months after the March 11 disaster, the prime minister’s office (2011e) published the following comment: “UNSCEAR announces the scientific facts upon which international agreements have been reached. It reports that ‘epidemiologically, no radiation effect of 100 mSv or less is recognized.’ Therefore, this is a scientific fact.” This comment was made by Shigenobu Nagataki, professor emeritus at Nagasaki University, who was a member of

The Right to Evacuation

89

the Nuclear Disaster Expert Group appointed by the prime minister’s office in April 2011. The group comprised eight nuclear experts, including Shunichi Yamashita.17 Upon the request of the prime minister’s office and whenever needed, the Nuclear Disaster Expert Group advises on issues concerning the nuclear power plant crisis, providing expertise as external specialists in radiation medicine, radiological protection, and science. Standing on the pro-­state or pronuclear side, the main issues handled by the group include (1) ensuring the safety of people who are forced to take shelter, evacuate, or resettle; (2) long-­term medical care and health management of the affected people; and (3) other general issues related to the health effects of radiation exposure (Prime Minister’s Office 2011f). In February 2014, the Japanese Cabinet Office and nine other ministries and agencies18 jointly published a thirty-­eight-­page booklet titled Hōshasen risuku ni kansuru kisoteki jōhō (Basic Information on Radiation Risk), which claimed: There have been no acute health effects resulting from radiation exposure in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, and there is no possibility that the general public and most of the nuclear power plant workers will experience an increase in health effects as a result of radiation exposure in the future. (Cabinet Office et al. 2014a, 10)

This booklet cited the UNSCEAR (2013a, 11–­1 2) report and was used as a rationale for the Japanese government’s policymaking on radiation exposure. In May 2014, three months after the booklet was published, the Japanese Cabinet Office and other ministries and agencies published a revised second edition (Cabinet Office et al. 2014b). The updated version further elaborated upon the health implications of radiation exposure (Cabinet Office et al. 2014b, 10) by using the latest UNSCEAR report (UNSCEAR 2013b), which examined the radiation dose estimation and health risk assessment. The booklet referred to the experiences and direct observations of health effects in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, and its underlying tone suggested that the radiation exposure levels of the public and nuclear power plant workers following the March 11 disaster were considerably lower than those that had followed Chernobyl. The rationale behind this assessment came from the second UNSCEAR 2013 report:

90

Chapter Three The occurrence of a large number of radiation-­induced thyroid cancers in Fukushima Prefecture—­such as occurred after the Chernobyl accident—­ can be discounted, because absorbed doses to the thyroid after the FDNPS [Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station] accident were substantially lower than those after the Chernobyl accident. (UNSCEAR 2013b, 89)

The Japanese government supported this assessment: Regarding thyroid examination of children in the Fukushima Prefecture Health Survey, it is expected that a relatively large number of thyroid abnormalities (including a large number of cancer cases) would normally be detected without such intensive examination. (Cabinet Office et al. 2014b, 10)

The updated UNSCEAR report conclusively backed the government: The ongoing ultrasonography survey in Fukushima Prefecture is expected to detect relatively large numbers of thyroid abnormalities, including a number of cancer cases, which would not normally have been detected without such intensive screening. . . . Thyroid cancer is frequently detected at autopsy even in subjects free of any clinical disease, and the survey would likely detect some of these cancers. Surveys of thyroid cancer incidence in populations of areas unaffected by the accident would provide useful input to estimates of the impact of such intensive screening. (UNSCEAR 2013b, 79)

In October 2022, as I completed this chapter, the booklet was in its twelfth edition. Its conclusion has never been revised. The Japanese government and UNSCEAR seem to intend to continue playing meaningless catch-­ball to justify their policymaking on radiation exposure. No serious efforts have been made to listen to the victims and their persistent health concerns, and no dialogue between citizens and UNSCEAR scientific experts has happened. The knowledge production on radiation risks is not collaborative with grassroots citizens. As the frustration among victims has grown, instead of the public authorities, it has been antinuclear citizens who have stood up, raising grassroots voices against nuclear power.

Counterresponses from Civil Society

On October 24, 2013, Friends of Earth Japan, on behalf of the Citizens’ Forum for the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act, released a joint statement (see FoE Japan 2013) signed by the sixty-­four groups that called for revisions. One

The Right to Evacuation

91

of the statement’s major concerns was the lack of independent investigation behind the reports, as the UNSCEAR members had never visited Fukushima to investigate the nuclear accident: their estimations were based only on data provided by the Japanese government. The statement read: The Japanese government has not instructed people in areas in which the annual external dose is under 20 mSv to evacuate, and [a] substantial number of people who live there have been exposed to external doses that accumulate to over 10 mSv per year since the accident. Although the Committee has not indicated which evidence they have referred to, it is highly doubtful that this estimate reflects the actual situation. The conversion of air dose to effective dose lacks credibility and has become controversial within Japan because it varies according to the characteristics of the environment being lived in. Additionally, the average number signifies an estimate of the magnitude of effects to the entire group, but the report has concluded that there will be no effects without indicating any estimate of the magnitude of effects. This position excludes the possible effects of high-­r isk factors for people living in an area with a dosage much higher than 10 mSv per year. This approach is hardly scientific. . . . While the United Nations Scientific Committee speculates that the risk [level] for thyroid cancer for infants needs to be increased, it does not expect an increase in risks for other kinds of cancer. This contradicts the results of current epidemiological research that indicates that there are health effects caused by low-­level radiation. (FoE Japan 2013, 2)

The statement concludes by requesting a revision “from a human rights perspective to take a more cautious approach with regards to low-­level radiation exposure to protect the most vulnerable people based on careful and sufficient deliberations” (FoE Japan 2013). On November 6, 2013, Japanese civil society invited Tilman Ruff, an Australian infectious diseases and public health physician, to give his view on the UNSCEAR reports. Ruff was copresident of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985; he was also the founding chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, and the international medical adviser for the Australian Red Cross. The meeting was jointly hosted by Human Rights Now, FoE Japan, and Peace Boat, and was held at the House of Representatives.19 In this meeting, Ruff claimed, “Low

92

Chapter Three

individual doses do not mean small effects across a population. . . . Low exposures to many people can cause significant disease at a population level. . . . If you don’t or can’t look, you won’t find.” He explained how inadequate cancer registries impair surveillance—­the regional cancer registry in Fukushima was only established in April 2010, metropolitan Tokyo lacks a cancer registry, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer reports fewer than ten prefectural cancer registries among the forty-­seven prefectures in Japan (see International Agency for Research on Cancer 2007, 18–­19). Ruff emphasized the need for a comprehensive population register of those who had been significantly exposed, with total exposure estimates, to enable long-­term linkages to health outcomes. For example, the register would include mortality, cancer, birth outcomes, and congenital malformation data as well as data on individuals who had been exposed to radiation and evacuated Fukushima and would track them wherever they moved. Civil society members had persistently raised concerns about UNSCEAR’s appraisal. Another Japanese NPO based in Tokyo, Citizen-­Scientist International Symposium on Radiation Protection (Shimin kagakusha kokusai kaigi), joined the quest to address the risks of exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation. The group was established by concerned, freethinking citizens, committed to minimizing the radiation damage to health and the environment following the March 11 disaster: it aimed to gather the latest scientific findings from across the world on the health effects of ionizing radiation and share them with Japanese citizens. The group also aimed to provide citizen scientists within and outside Japan with a forum where they could discuss these health effects and protective measures, simultaneously contributing to the establishment of an extensive international network for citizens’ radiation protection. Further, it sought to address the apprehension of those in contaminated areas, which was exacerbated by the fact that the health effects of low-­dose radiation exposure were not well understood and by mistrust of the information and radiation protection measures provided by the Japanese government. It claimed that “what is needed now is to minimize the health risks—­not the financial cost of reconstruction—­by taking proactive radiation protection measures based on the precautionary principle.”20 In November 2014, the group invited Keith Baverstock, a former adviser for radiation and public health for the World Health Organization (WHO), to speak about the health and environmental effects of ionizing radiation at an

The Right to Evacuation

93

international symposium. Baverstock had worked in this discipline for over forty years, focusing on theoretical biology with a particular emphasis on how ionizing radiation adversely affects living systems (see Citizen-­Scientist International Symposium on Radiation Protection [2014a] for a short biography of Baverstock). During his visit to Tokyo, on November 20, 2014, Baverstock held a press conference at which he strongly criticized UNSCEAR for downplaying the importance of the accident from a public health perspective.21 He cited a UNSCEAR press release with the headline “Increase in Cancer Unlikely Following Fukushima Exposure, says UN report” (United Nations Environment 2014) on April 2, 2014: In the UNSCEAR report [UNSCEAR 2013b], on page 74, the distribution of worker doses is provided for the one and a half years after the accident. A rough estimate of the total dose in some 10,000 workers with doses above 10 mSv indicates, on the basis of standard risk factors, some 50 excess cancers. UNSCEAR’s estimate for the total Japanese public collective dose for the first year of the accident of 18,000 person-­Sv is between 2,500 and 3,000 excess cancers. On the basis of our best knowledge of the risks from exposure to radiation, these are not “unlikely” cancers but “to be expected” cancers. They may never be identified in specific individuals, but they will occur. It would be inexcusable for a scientific body to misrepresent its own findings in this way. (Citizen-­ Scientist International Symposium on Radiation Protection 2014b)

Baverstock raised strong concerns about UNSCEAR’s primary obligation, because as a United Nations organization, it was not independent of those with vested interests in the outcome of risk assessment and, therefore, its work was “not qualified to be called scientific.” UNSCEAR members are nominated by national governments with nuclear power programs, the same governments that fund UNSCEAR. Baverstock concluded, “the present UNSCEAR committee should be dissolved.” The series of discussions generated at the symposium culminated in an important recommendation report, eventually published in Iwanami’s Kagaku, a prestigious Japanese publication disseminating scientific information among the public (Citizen-­Scientist International Symposium on Radiation Protection 2017). The report used the linear nonthreshold model based on the latest scientific findings and demonstrated the scientific impertinence and lack of political wisdom within the present return policy for evacuees of

94

Chapter Three

areas that measured below 20 mSv per year.22 The declaration concluded that the recommended 20 mSv per year “reference level” as the threshold at which evacuees should return to areas adjacent to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant would result in an increased lifetime risk of cancer, particularly for those exposed as children. It was signed by international scientific experts, including Baverstock, and addressed to the Japanese administrative authorities responsible for risk communication and radiation protection measures.

Right to Evacuation as the Right to Life

The Japanese government did not listen to civil society.23 It continued to speed up the nation’s recovery from the March 11 disaster as if nothing devastating had happened. When members of civil society raised concerns about UNSCEAR, in December 2013, for example, the Japanese government responded by announcing the provision of an additional JPY 900,000 (USD 8,800) in compensation to each evacuee who decided to return home early (Asahi Shimbun, December 20, 2013).24 Meanwhile, civil society groups continued to mobilize victims’ voices and bring them to the policymaking process, primarily to claim the right to evacuation. One of the more successful developments resulting from these efforts was the establishment of hoyō, or recuperation programs, that provided children with temporary group homes so that they could enjoy short-­term recreation opportunities in less contaminated areas and the opportunity to camp in nature. One survey showed that 9,301 children (accompanied by a parent or guardian) participated in 107 recuperation programs implemented from November 2015 to February 2016, and that there were 107 such programs across the country, supported mostly by female volunteers in their forties and fifties (Refresh Support 2016). The programs offered a short (5.3 days on average) stay, and the fee per person was JPY 70,391 (USD 650), 40% of which covered transportation costs. Other operation costs were covered by donations (71%), grants from foundations (15%), participants’ own expenses (4%), government subsidies (1%), and other sources of funding, including fundraising activities. Many of the organizers faced financial difficulties while operating the programs and asked that the government sponsor the activities. Mikami, whom I introduced earlier as someone helping Fukushima evacuees in Hokkaido, played a significant role in developing these recuperation programs. In October 2011, she visited Fukushima at the behest of evacuees that her group cared for. Mikami found that six months after the March 11

The Right to Evacuation

95

disaster, many mothers in Fukushima were wondering if there was any way to reduce their children’s exposure to radiation, even though evacuation was not an easy task. Mikami keenly felt that she needed to create an opportunity for the mothers’ voices to be heard across the country. She organized a national conference in February 2012 in Fukushima City, along with seventy-­t wo Japanese citizens’ groups, to exchange information on recuperation programs for children living in Fukushima. The conference led Mikami and others to agree to continue this kind of work and explore further cooperation at the grassroots level. Consequently, in September 2012, Mikami established the national network 311 Ukeire Net—­ukeire means “accepting,” and net refers to network—­ which offered information and held consultation sessions for those worried about their children’s health. Children could participate in recuperation programs established by volunteers. The network’s consultation meetings for recuperation programs were held twice a year in Fukushima Prefecture before the summer and winter vacations, aiming to match recuperation demands and opportunities. There were a variety of recuperation needs, including parental accompaniment and accommodating children with disabilities or food allergies. The number of groups that were members of this network continuously increased; as of 2014, fifty-­t wo had joined. As a reference point for their actions, many who were engaged in this recuperation mentioned the National Report of the Republic of Belarus titled A Quarter of a Century after the Chernobyl Catastrophe: Outcomes and Prospects for the Mitigation of Consequence (Republic of Belarus 2011; refer to the Japanese version published in 2013). In the Japanese version, Sergei K. Rakhmanov, ambassador of the Republic of Belarus to Japan, addressed the Japanese people who had suffered as a result of the March 11 disaster: The most important thing is the health of the children. All countries pay special attention to children’s health, but Belarus has a rehabilitation system in place. Under this system, there are ten rehabilitation and health promotion centers, and about 60,000 children are rehabilitated annually. The experts in charge of the scheme believe that children living in contaminated areas are required to leave the area they live in for about a month once a year to be in a clean area. By doing so, the body can expel the cesium that has accumulated in the body. (Japanese version of the National Report of the Republic of Belarus 2013, 19)

96

Chapter Three

Get the children out of Fukushima and refresh their bodies and minds, even if it is only for a short time—­I sensed this purpose among the recuperation program organizers. It has been confirmed that the cesium in the children’s urine dropped after they participated in the Japanese recuperation programs (Hikita 2018, 28). Some other varieties of recuperation programs were offered in addition to the short-­stay programs; for example, Fukushima Children’s Home Fund (Matsumoto kodomo ryūgaku) provided places where third-­ to ninth-­g rade children from Fukushima and other areas affected by the March 11 disaster could safely live, play, and study in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture. They lived in a dormitory or homestay and went to school away from their parents and family. In 2016, three junior high school girls lived in the dormitory, and two junior high school boys lived at a homestay; two girls graduated from the school and went on to study at a high school in the city (Fukushima Children’s Home Fund 2016). The NPO said that in a rich natural environment with clean water and air, children are provided with opportunities to exercise freely and without anxiety, leading to a reduction in the effects of radiation exposure as well as mental and physical refreshment. Knowledge about recuperation had been accumulating in Japanese civil society. To support the victims of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Hokkaido resident Mika Noro formed a group of homemakers called Kakehashi (“bridge” in Japanese). Since 1992, Noro’s group had invited 648 children from the Republic of Belarus, which suffered from the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, to Hokkaido to help them recover their health. Although it began as an informal citizens’ group, Kakehashi was registered as an NPO in 1999. After the March 11 disaster, however, the group suspended its activities for the Chernobyl victims, and, beginning in 2012, it began taking in children from Fukushima instead. The group shared knowledge about developing recuperation programs with other Japanese groups. Noro told me that “Fukushima is like an X-­ray room,”25 and that in Belarus, even in contaminated areas where the total exposure to radiation is less than 1 mSv per year, children are sent out to state-­ organized recuperation programs. Like the former Soviet Union, Japan should at least allow its children to recuperate in a safe place and eat safe food. Based on nearly thirty years of experience, Noro emphasized that a month of recuperation with uncontaminated water, food, and a healthy, stress-­f ree routine had been shown to eliminate 30%–­70% of radioactive materials in the body. The government-­sponsored recuperation program in Japan was extremely

The Right to Evacuation

97

limited and marked by much less motivation. In late April 2014, I attended a gathering in Tokyo organized to promote the right to evacuation, where an education ministry official announced that the Japanese government would fund a recuperation program (shiizen taiken jigyō), called a “refresh camp,” for 180,000 kindergarten to junior high school children in Fukushima Prefecture. The Japanese term hoyō implies “to rest the body after something severe”; thus, according to a manager of the Japanese Consumers’ Co-­operative Union, a major recuperation organizer, public officials preferred using the word “refresh” (rifurresh in Japanese) to avoid drawing attention to the fact that something severe had occurred. This program represents a specific example of the “basic policy” implementation under the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act. The program was announced during an exchange meeting arranged by FoE Japan in Tokyo, which introduced Fukushima victims to victims of Chernobyl from Belarus. The meeting’s purpose was to demonstrate the benefits of recuperation to Japanese people by showing them examples that had been implemented in Belarus. As part of the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act, in 2014 the Fukushima Prefecture Board of Education took charge of operating the Japanese recuperation program, with government funding of JPY 7,000 (USD 68) per person per day for accommodation and transportation for up to five nights. The program was open during summer (July–­August) and winter (December–­January), and children could participate through their schools, sports clubs, or neighborhood associations. The host organizations were recruited from civil society groups across Japan that had already accumulated relevant experience. Recuperation programs were an example of success in bringing stakeholder issues to the government’s attention and helping enforce a favorable policy decision; they were a tool for implementing the right to evacuation and a step toward exploring methods of survival in the post-­ Fukushima era. The right to evacuation ultimately represents the right to a self-­determined life. In May 2014, the Fukui District Court ruled that it would not allow the restart of two reactors at Kansai Electric Power Company’s Oi nuclear plant, following their suspension in September 2013. The two reactors had originally resumed operation in August 2012, after all of Japan’s nuclear reactors were shut down amid public concern over nuclear safety in the wake of the March 11 disaster. Judge Hideaki Higuchi pointed out that nuclear power plants are

98

Chapter Three

“merely a tool for generating electricity and, thus, inferior to people’s fundamental rights to life” (Kyodo News, May 21, 2014; see also Isomura and Yamaguchi 2019, 16–­57, for an interview with Judge Higuchi). Furthermore, the Kyoto District Court ordered TEPCO to pay JPY 4.8 million (USD 50,000) for a year in damages to a man who voluntarily evacuated Fukushima Prefecture following the nuclear disaster (Kyodo News, May 26, 2014). These judicial decisions were strongly supported by many of my research collaborators, who are both Fukushima victims and civil society group members. Advocacy for realizing such an important human right progressed gradually in post-­Fukushima Japan, developing from its initial perception as mere criticism of the government. This was observable, for example, in the numerous antinuclear power demonstrations that took place across the country. In my view, antinuclear citizens began as people who presented alternatives and gave the government a chance to change itself. The Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act was ready to provide a comprehensive framework through which Japanese people could independently explore and establish new ways of life in the post-­Fukushima era if bureaucrats would seriously work on implementing its basic policies. Though they were temporary and time-­limited, the recuperation programs were a solid chance to realize Fukushima victims’ right to evacuation. The right to evacuation countered the government-­set radiation exposure standards and presented a definitive step toward developing a self-­determined future. In fact, the right to evacuation is guaranteed as the right to life in the Japanese constitution, and it was clearly time to exercise it. Without any exception, for a self-­determined future, this right to evacuation should be guaranteed to all individuals who left their homes after the March 11 disaster. As Mikami wrote, “Making actions for change is an indication of the civic awareness that each person is willing to think on their own accord. The most important thing in a society that is dealing with the radiation problem is to have a variety of civic activities that recognize each other” (2017, 6). Anxiety, struggles over radiation exposure, and frustration and anger at their government’s incapacity to implement proper measures to protect its people’s lives and health created antinuclear citizens across post-­Fukushima Japan. Those displaced by the March 11 disaster played an outsized role in antinuclear activism. I end this chapter with an appeal that was made at a rally by an evacuee mother:

The Right to Evacuation Today, I stand in front of you on behalf of all the evacuees from the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant caused by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake off the Pacific coast on March 11, 2011. The nuclear accident was a catastrophic experience for me. As a result, my daughter lost her health and had to stay in bed. This was the most devastating of the experiences it brought me. I was living with my daughter in Tokyo at the time of the Fukushima incident. Most people believe that radiation from the accident exerted no harmful effects on people living in Tokyo. However, my experience tells me that this is not true. When my daughter and I moved out of Tokyo, she miraculously regained her health, but her suffering came back every time we moved back to Tokyo. She described her condition like this: “I feel so bad and so weak. My legs and hands hurt.” These symptoms surfaced during our last days in Tokyo. Note: she has not been diagnosed with thyroid cancer or leukemia. We finally settled in Kobe in the western part of Japan based on our doctor’s advice. My daughter has recovered her health completely since we moved to Kobe. Today we often hear people say, “I feel sick.” They lose their ability to think clearly, become extremely exhausted, or become less able to recover from illnesses. These incidents seem to be becoming apparent five years after the accident. Similar phenomena were observed after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and were labeled as “Burabura-­byo” or “Burabura disease” by Dr. Shuntaro Hida. This chronic fatigue syndrome refers to symptoms that appeared among the atomic bomb survivors. It has been found among nuclear plant workers. Now Dr. Shigeru Mita calls this “ability decline disease,” a disease that causes a slow decline of one’s faculties. It can be caused by low-­dose radiation exposure in the brain—­so Dr. Mita thinks. The Japanese government insists and tries to convince people that there are no radiation-­related problems today, employing all available means. At the level of children’s education, the government is providing extra materials to impress the safety of radiation upon minds. A brochure provided by the government says, “Learn the ‘right’ information about radiation, otherwise bullying and discrimination among students may happen.” Just recently, my daughter received such a brochure from school, and its content was full of misinformation. To be free of internal radiation exposure, we must isolate all substances contaminated by radiation in one place so that they do not affect humans. We must shut them away from humans. But this is not happening in Japan because the government insists that radiation causes no harm. The government keeps carrying out decontamination, dilution, volume reduction and processing, the same thing over and over; but none of these efforts lead to solving the problem

99

100

Chapter Three of radiation contamination. The government refuses to allow us to escape from radiation; in fact, it even urges us to stay in contaminated areas. It is true that the nuclear accident was triggered by a natural disaster, but natural disaster has not caused the maltreatment of hibakusha—­v ictims of radiation exposure. This is the result of humans committing violence against other humans. After the nuclear accident in Japan, what do you think the worst outcome of all would be? It would be a country where human beings do not protect other human beings. Why do you think these awful insanities are happening? I think it is because the government won’t acknowledge the severity of the nuclear accident, especially in terms of its health effects. The government is recklessly planning to restart nuclear power plants to achieve its nuclear policy goals. Now, I must ask you: Do you agree with this? Why isn’t there a voice raised in opposition to such an absurd government plan? We are like victims who have been captured and have become submissive to our abductors instead of fighting to escape. The abductors are those who have created nuclear weapons and promoted nuclear power. We are all under the rule of nuclear power, and all of us Japanese people are victims, even those working for the electrical power company and those in the government. We are all exposed to radiation, and we are all concerned parties. If we could simply realize the truth, that we don’t need nuclear power, we would be able to regain precious life. Once the environment is polluted due to nuclear radiation, it is impossible for it to return to its original, clean state. All of us, especially the present and former residents of the northeastern part of Japan, are hibakusha. My daughter and I continue to have blood tests and are still facing problems. I suppose that in this world, we must accept that there are things that we can never entirely recover from. Are we, the Japanese people, facing this tragic reality seriously? We cannot change the past, but we can change our future. Even if we continue to live in this country, I believe we can strive to do everything to retrieve what we once lost and vow to never lose it again. We will be able to do so if we try to learn from the past and double our efforts to work hand in hand to protect our children. I am always eager to share my experiences and knowledge, hoping that my stories will influence others. I have always believed in the potential of every single person. We will surely be able to change the reality of our future if we work together as one. It has been an honor to share my story with all of you today. Thank you for listening.26 Yoko Shimosawa November 2018

F OU R

Community Power

Fukushima as a New Center for Renewable Energy

Takehiro Sasaki is the secretariat of the Fukushima branch of the Japan Family Farmers Movement (better known by its acronym Nouminren), of which 1,400 farming households in Fukushima are members. Originally, Sasaki’s job predominantly entailed supporting and coordinating local farmers’ businesses, for example, organizing delivery orders of their agricultural products to consumers, helping file tax reports, and arranging group purchases of agricultural equipment. However, in the years following the March 11 disaster, in addition to his regular tasks, renewable energy production became one of his major concerns—­a matter that also gained significant interest among the member farmers. I made an appointment with Sasaki when we were introduced by a Fukushima-­based research colleague in early 2017. I wanted to see local people in Fukushima who were engaged in renewable energy generation. When I acquired his contact details, I realized that I already knew his name from the book Enerugī no sekai wo kaeru 22 nin no shigoto (Twenty-­Two People’s Jobs That Are Changing the World of Energy; Morotomi 2015), which featured prominent individuals actively working on renewable energy production across Japan. His name was already on my list of those I wanted to meet in the near future. On April 19, 2017, when snow was still visible on the top of the Azuma Mountains, I walked ten minutes from the tiny local train station to Sasaki’s office. Although it was only one train stop from Fukushima station, the neighborhood consisted entirely of rice and vegetable fields. However, there were no crops growing, perhaps because of the season, or perhaps because radiation had impeded agriculture there.1 Indeed, many farmers in Fukushima had suffered heavily from shipment restrictions and price drops. I found the Nouminren office along a small road, attached to Sanchoku Café, a shop sell101

102

Chapter Four

ing local agricultural products. I dropped by the shop first but could not find any local products actually being sold there: all the fruits and vegetables for sale had been sourced from outside of Fukushima, some from as far south as Kyushu and Shikoku. Sasaki was a cheerful man in his late thirties. We had a frank conversation in a corner of his office. Although I had some prior knowledge about him, I wanted to know firsthand how he envisioned his involvement in renewable energy production. While discussing my plan to visit the solar panel site he was involved with, I asked him about the motivation behind this project. He began, “We have been totally deprived of our ordinary daily lives. We, the people in Fukushima, were forced to host such a troublesome facility as a nuclear power plant. We aim to make our life sustainable.” I asked, “Are you aiming to establish self-­sufficiency?” He responded, “Not really. We have food, and we have energy. But we don’t have resources for care or social services for our people.”2 I realized that Sasaki was discussing the FEC Self-­Sufficiency Sphere (FEC jikyūken) (Uchihashi 2005)—­a term coined by prominent economic critic Katsuto Uchihashi, where “F” stands for Food, “E” for Energy, and “C” for Care. Uchihashi emphasizes self-­sufficient schemes involving food production, renewable energy generation, and care for the elderly, among others. As the Japanese reflected on their way of life following the March 11 disaster, I observed that Uchihashi’s FEC Self-­Sufficiency Sphere concept started gaining substantial support. The term was originally advocated in Japan in the mid-­2000s as a counterconcept to the hazardous effects of neoliberal globalization. Japanese society witnessed the collapse of the lifetime employment previously enjoyed from the early post–­World War II period to the 1990s, as well as increased socioeconomic disparities and the emergence of youth precarity (see Uchihashi 2007; see also chap. 2). Japan had experienced dramatic growth in precarious employment since the 1990s (Osawa, Kim, and Kingston 2013) as a result of the heightened competition associated with neoliberal globalization; Japanese firms adopted cost-­cutting policies, especially in relation to human resource outlays, to remain global competitors. One consequence of this was the “tent village” for jobless people in Tokyo’s central Hibiya Park, opposite the Imperial Palace, in 2008 when the global financial crisis stemming from the collapse of Lehman Brothers hit. More than 300 people, many of whom had lost their contract-­based “dispatch” (haken) jobs in the massive layoffs of late

Community Power

103

2008, came to the tent village from December 31 to January 5 seeking free food and shelter from the cold (Asahi Shimbun, January 3, 2009). Referring to the FEC Self-­Sufficiency Sphere, Sasaki continued, “We don’t have any ‘care’ schemes under consideration at present. The FEC concept would give me a chance to think about how to nurture ‘people,’ although we don’t have any schemes related to education or medicine, either.” He cited the example of Itoshiro, a tiny village in Gifu Prefecture, in central Japan. The Itoshiro locals used money generated from a small hydraulic power plant to rent an abandoned school where they could pass on their knowledge and skills for managing a sustainable livelihood to their children. He added, “Instead of envisioning further economic growth, we are more interested in envisioning how we can use existing resources in more efficient ways. We see renewable energy as a part of this,” continuing, “Who owns the solar panel[s]? Are local citizens involved with the development of power generation? These two things would be a test [of sustainable living].” Though the TEPCO-­owned Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was located in Fukushima, the locals did not buy electricity from TEPCO but from Tohoku Electric Power Company. All the electricity generated in Fukushima was bought by TEPCO and sent to the Tokyo metropolitan area, making the prefecture essentially a colony for the large cities. During our conversation, Sasaki gave me some PowerPoint printouts to explain the workings of the solar energy generation site at the Fukushima Ryozen Citizens’ Joint Power Plant. This plant was established two years after the March 11 disaster in Date City, a forty-­minute drive northeast of Fukushima City. It is a “joint” project as it was planned and built by Nouminren and the People’s Joint Power Generation from Renewable Energy (Shizen enerugī shimin no kai) group, popularly called PARE, an Osaka-­based NPO. The plant generates approximately 50 kW of power from solar energy. Nouminren asked the NPO for expert help because, as a farmers’ group, it had no renewable energy knowledge or skills. The power plant comprises 630 solar panels installed on a gentle, south-­ facing mountain slope. Funds for its construction were raised by Fukushima Nouminren farmers and concerned citizens throughout Japan, who collected a total of JPY 20 million (USD 180,000). This would be managed for twenty years (the typical lifetime of solar panels), and each contributor would receive JPY 225,200 (USD 2,050) as principal recovery and dividends. The generated power would be sold at JPY 42 per kWh (US 38 cents) to the Tohoku Electric

104

Chapter Four

Power Company under the Feed-­in-­Tariff (FIT) scheme for renewable energy power generation; 2% of the annual revenue from electricity sales would be reserved for the reconstruction of Fukushima. Sasaki was one of the main figures in the Ryozen project and mentioned that he intended to build more renewable energy plants, which he believed would significantly stimulate the local economy. According to his calculations, each of the 110,000 households in Fukushima City spends JPY 250,000 (USD 2,300) on fossil fuel-­based electricity annually, resulting in JPY 2.75 million (USD 25,000) leaving the local community. If this money were spent on renewable energy generation in local communities, the money would remain in local circulation. The Ryozen project is just one example of the community-­based renewable energy projects in Fukushima. Indeed, when flying into Fukushima, the large-­scale solar panels of the Fukushima Airport Mega Solar project are visible. This experimental site is part of Fukushima Prefecture’s vision (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2011a), which intends to meet all the prefecture’s power demands with renewably generated electricity by 2040, decommission all ten of its nuclear power plant reactors, and energize the local economy with renewable, energy-­related businesses.

Figure 4.1 Solar panels at the Fukushima Ryozen Citizens’ Joint Power Plant on April 19, 2017. Photo by the author.

Community Power

105

On my visit to the Fukushima Airport Mega Solar project site on July 25, 2016, I was attended to by a young woman who had been casually hired as a guide. This facility opened in April 2014 and received 1,414 visitors in seventy-­ seven groups, mainly primary and secondary school students, between April 2014 and March 2015. I met the guide at the entrance to Solar Park, where four huge sun-­tracking solar power systems, generating 22.5 kW, were in operation. I was told there were thirty types of solar panels there that had been manufactured in different countries, including Japan, Australia, Canada, the United States, China, South Korea, India, Germany, Norway, and Spain, which were set up for experimental purposes. The panel types, which generate a total of 169 kW of energy, were being compared to determine the most efficient in terms of cost and power generation under certain conditions. For example, the panels were installed at different angles—­15°, 20°, and 25°—­to ascertain the most efficient angle for generating solar energy in Fukushima. Further research was planned to investigate (1) the most suitable solar cells for the region, (2) the best mounting system and construction method according to installation requirements, and (3) the appropriate maintenance system for maximizing business income. This experiment was jointly conducted with the Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute (Fukushima saisei kanō enerugī kenkyūjo) of Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (Sangyō gijutsu sōgō kenkyūjo). All data would be available to local residents and businesses who intended to stimulate the economy through renewable energy production. The North Power Plant, generating 500 kW of energy, was adjacent to Solar Park, and comprised 200 solar panels, all donated by Toshiba—­a major Japanese manufacturer of nuclear power plants that made the shift to the renewable energy business when the domestic market for nuclear power no longer seemed promising. Opposite the airport site lay the South Power Plant, which generated 501 kW of energy. I was told that the prefectural government had established the company Fukushima Hatsuden in 2014 as the power producer for the mega solar plant and provided it with JPY 98.5 million (USD 900,000) to operate the project. In addition to the prefectural government, Fukushima Hatsuden was funded by municipalities, financial institutions, and companies in the prefecture. The total projected cost of the Fukushima Airport Mega Solar project was JPY 400 million (USD 3.6 million), of which JPY 100 million (USD 900,000) was invested by prefectural residents. The generated power would be sold at JPY 36

106

Chapter Four

Figure 4.2 Solar panels tilted at different angles at the Fukushima Airport Mega Solar Project on July 25, 2016. Photo by the author.

per kWh (US 33 cents) to the Tohoku Electric Power Company under the FIT scheme. In 2016, for example, the peak periods of May and June produced JPY 5 million (USD 45,000) in profits. Energy gained significant attention following the March 11 disaster, which single-­handedly destabilized energy policymaking and production practices in Japan. Before this disaster, most Japanese citizens, myself included, had never given much thought to energy, and only those who had some reason to be worried about energy issues engaged in discussions about it. If and when the public discussed electricity, it was mostly within the context of global climate change and how to reduce carbon emissions. Unlike coal and natural gas plants, nuclear power does not produce carbon emissions in generating electricity; thus, it reflected the ideal, yet one-­dimensional, pursuit of development and growth that dominated the Japanese lifestyle during the post–­ World War II period. However, the post-­Fukushima landscape reshaped our values and ways of living at the grassroots level. A broader cross-­section of society joined the conversation after the disaster, beginning to learn how electricity is generated and consumed, engaging in more insightful political debates, and considering the risks of nuclear power. After the March 11 disaster, I witnessed the rise of opportunities for creating a new bottom-­up energy production infrastructure, signaling a shift from

Community Power

107

traditional state-­centralized, top-­down policymaking toward a more decentralized, participatory, self-­reliant form of regulation. In particular, I observed that Fukushima became a center for renewable energy production.3 Stimulated by local community efforts, the drive for renewable energy production at the grassroots level dynamically expanded across Japan. New paths to renewable and sustainable energy were being explored, greater local control over green energy production was being attained, and more meaningful public participation in the decision-­making process to create a greener economy, including more extensive participation from local citizens, was being achieved. Individuals began to experiment with renewable and more efficient modes of energy production. Among the many types of renewable energy, solar power was the easiest to install. Solar energy was also considered profitable because of the relatively high purchase prices that were established when the national government first supported it in July 2012 by requiring major electric companies to buy renewable-­derived electricity at set prices. People I met at field sites referred to such renewably generated electricity as “community power” (Iida and ISEP 2014), which is defined as renewable energy installations that are initiated, operated, and controlled by local citizens. It is characterized by the maximization of local ownership and decision-­ making, wide distribution of financial benefits, and matching energy production to local usage. Community power ensures that local communities have democratic control of renewable energy generation in the planning, installation, operation, and distribution stages through community-­owned renewable energy projects. It creates social, economic, and political advantages by strengthening local economies, promoting community resilience and empowerment, and building renewable energy industries that generate employment opportunities. The idea of community power originated in northern Europe, and conscientious Japanese citizens actively learned from these nations. For example, wind power pioneers in Denmark began implementing collective ownership models in the 1970s to establish wind turbine cooperatives after the oil crisis. Backed by the strong Danish tradition of cooperatives and the tangible benefits of wind power, the community-­owned wind turbines were received positively by the Danish public. In the early 2000s, about 150,000 households were co-­owners of local wind turbines; the Renewable Energy Act then enabled the stable growth of collectively owned renewable energy systems, including

108

Chapter Four

wind and solar. The number of Danish solar photovoltaic (PV) cooperatives jumped from four in 2007 to 600 in 2012 (see Furuya 2017). Germany followed a similar pathway, with the combination of FIT and energy cooperatives. Many of the Japanese individuals I encountered in my fieldwork proudly recounted their visits to European renewable energy production sites. One frequently mentioned destination was Schönau in southwestern Germany. The Black Forest town began to plan for a safer future in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster—­instead of nuclear power, the townspeople decided to pursue renewable energy. In 1997, the citizen’s movement culminated in Schönau taking back the electricity grid from big utility companies. The small town became a model for Germany, where many local, renewable-­energy-­based utilities have been established. The 2008 documentary Das Schönauer Gefühl (available on YouTube with Japanese subtitles 4) brought the story of Schönau to Japan; the film followed the Schönau people as they established a hydroelectricity company to become independent from the nuclear power industry. In this chapter, I document the narratives of the grassroots actions to build community power in the post-­Fukushima era through an analysis of current examples of Japanese renewable energy production. Japanese society had already begun establishing a foundation for community power industries in the early 2000s, before the March 11 disaster, following the deregulation of the Japanese electricity market. The March 11 disaster further accelerated the national sentiment in favor of community-­oriented renewable energy production. I observe that social enterprises, an emerging actor in Japanese civil society, play a significant role in the development of renewable energy.

Social Enterprises and Community Power

Social enterprises focused on energy sources are primarily defined as civil society actors; like NPOs, they are initiated by community-­oriented groups of conscientious citizens and supported by capital investors. They benefit the community in creating new social values by stressing the use of energy from alternative, sustainable sources (cf. Defourny, Hulgård, and Pestoff 2014). These enterprises highly value independence and economic risk-­taking related to ongoing socioeconomic activities (see Ridley-­Duff and Bull 2011). Social enterprises, or shakaiteki kigyō in Japanese, have played a vital role in harnessing power from green energy sources at the grassroots level. Environ-

Community Power

109

mentally friendly energy suppliers began to focus on such forms of energy production in their role in building a new social economy in Japan.5 Social enterprises are a relatively new concept and practice. There is no specific legal form of incorporation or fiscal treatment to support them; therefore, the notion of social enterprises was still undefined at the time of the March 11 disaster in Japan, as elsewhere. Nevertheless, I observed that people were starting to use the term more often. Most Japanese social enterprises operated under the 1998 NPO Law, which was institutionalized as a result of impressive efforts by disaster volunteers following the 1995 Hanshin Awaji Earthquake. As the Japanese NPOs were being institutionalized, I witnessed their roles becoming bifurcated. Some NPOs acted as public service providers—­subcontractors to the local government in a top-­down process. The government gave them money, which they used to provide public services, primarily social, lifelong learning, policing, and community safety services (see Ogawa 2009). Meanwhile, other NPOs were becoming more dynamic organizational entities. This chapter focuses on this group of NPOs, some of which I noted were trying to establish themselves as social enterprises (see chap. 6 in Ogawa 2015). A METI (2008) survey supports my observation of the bipolarization of Japanese NPOs, showing that almost half (46.7%) of the organizations that identify as social businesses in Japan have adopted the legal form of NPO under the 1998 NPO Law, while the other half are registered as for-­profit cooperatives, or organizations that operate without any specific legal framework. Globally, many social enterprises demonstrate the influence of mutualism and cooperatives, which present democratic management structures designed to reflect social missions rather than mimetic isomorphism (Michie and Llewellyn 2010). A social enterprise is the vehicle through which social entrepreneurs achieve social innovation by adopting groundbreaking methods to solve problems and create new mechanisms (Laratta, Nakagawa, and Sakurai 2011, 54). Extending Garrow and Hasenfeld’s (2014) perspective, I argue that the above development of social enterprises can be an expression of a neoliberal welfare logic that challenges social rights by emphasizing market solutions to social needs and developing and privatizing social services to local private sectors or social enterprises. Neoliberalism shifts responsibility from the state to the market and from collectivity to individuals, generating a new social space in which civil society actors can be key players. In fact, an institu-

110

Chapter Four

tion deeply connected to such a transformed nature of the state, specifically one in which the role of the state in social welfare is reduced, is a civil society. It is critically argued—­in the institutional logic of business management or new public management, as Hays and Kearney (1997) claim—­t hat the principles of neoliberalism include reducing the government’s size, adopting business models in the government, devolution, restructuring the government to emphasize results over processes, and privatization. In short, neoliberalism pushes devolution and privatization, which are core values of the neoliberal welfare regime. This represents an ideology that claims that “the state and its bureaucracies would be more responsive to its citizens if they were devolved to the local level and subjected to market principles through competition among public agencies” (Garrow and Hasenfeld 2014, 1479). The growth of civil society actors has been an essential feature of the decentralized and privatizing political-­economic landscape associated with neoliberalism (see Ogawa 2009; Ganti 2014). The state has opened spaces that were previously public to nonstate actors, including civil societies such as social enterprises, accelerating its drive for marketization—­a favorable tenet in neoliberalism.

Deregulating Japan’s Electricity Market

Before considering cases of renewable energy production by social enterprises, this chapter reviews the Japanese electricity market. A move toward deregulation under neoliberal ideology is a positive factor for the development of social enterprises specializing in renewable energy: deregulation generates a space in which social enterprises can expand their activities. As of 2017, Japan’s electricity market, which had thus far been dominated by ten vertically integrated, investor-­owned utilities, handled all electricity operations within specified regions, from generation to transmission and distribution. Japan started liberalizing its electricity market in the 1990s as it paved the way for neoliberal politics that allowed more competition among energy suppliers for large-­lot factories and corporate customers. This action was in line with the worldwide trend toward deregulation and aimed at correcting Japan’s high-­cost structures and prices relative to those of other countries (TEPCO 2014a). However, the market for households and other small-­lot consumers continued to be monopolized by regional utilities. Meanwhile, the renewable energy market was being provided more opportunities. In 2003, the Japanese government enacted a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) scheme,

Community Power

111

which required electricity retailers to supply a certain amount of renewable electricity to grid consumers. Under the RPS scheme, an estimated capacity of approximately 7.8 GW has been installed for ten years, of which some 5 GW come from solar PV (Ohbayashi 2014). During the ten years from fiscal 2001, however, renewable energies made only a slight increase in the share of total power generation, growing from 0.7% to 1.1% (Agency for Natural Resources and Energy 2014). After the March 11 disaster, Japan’s electricity market was radically reviewed. One major effort to deregulate the electricity market involved the introduction of a FIT scheme as the country sought to diversify its energy mix, moving away from nuclear power and bolstering its capacity for renewable energy, particularly solar energy. This political sentiment was buoyed by a new policy announced in September 2012 by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan to eliminate nuclear power from Japan’s energy mix by the late 2030s, while increasing power supply targets from renewable sources to about 35%.6 However, the September 2012 announcement was reversed just three months later on December 16, when the Liberal Democratic Party won the lower house election and Abe returned as prime minister. A FIT scheme mandates power companies to buy electricity generated by renewable sources at government-­set fixed prices, on the assumption that the prospect of stable revenue will facilitate investment in renewable power generation. While liberalizing the electricity market, Japan had already enacted a FIT scheme in November 2009, wherein utilities were required to purchase excess solar power sent to the grid by homes and businesses. Meanwhile, the Strategic Energy Plan (Cabinet Office 2010a) announced by the Democratic Party of Japan in 2010, before the March 11 disaster, emphasized nuclear power as the mainstay of Japan’s energy supply and offered little guidance regarding renewable energy. In 2010, nuclear power accounted for 28.6% of Japan’s total power generation, while renewable energy accounted for only 1.1% (Agency for Natural Resources and Energy 2014), as noted above. The new FIT scheme was introduced by the Democratic Party government in July 2012 with a rate of JPY 42 (US 38 cents) per kWh (excluding taxes) for solar power over twenty years. The rate was extremely generous and triggered a surge in solar investment: the tariffs were among the highest in the world. Since then, the number of renewable energy businesses, mainly PV power producers, has grown countrywide.7 In 2013, Japan replaced Germany as the larg-

112

Chapter Four

est solar PV market in the world (Bloomberg News, June 4, 2013) as a result of investments in response to government incentives to encourage green energy following the Fukushima nuclear crisis. Following the tariff announcement, there were almost daily declarations that renewable industry players were planning to begin operation. These players included many solar power plants that could be built relatively easily and quickly, from small residential rooftop projects with a capacity of up to 10 kW to mega solar PV power plants with an output of several megawatts. Solar output during the peak-­demand summer period of 2014 reached 6.33 million kW—­t he equivalent of six nuclear reactors (Japan Times, October 31, 2015). In April 2013, Abe’s cabinet announced a Policy for Electricity System Reform comprising three main steps to secure a stable national power grid by breaking the ten regional electric power companies’ monopoly: (1) expanding the operation of wide-­area electrical grids by 2015, (2) liberalizing the retail market and power generation by 2016, and (3) enacting legal structural separation, including the unbundling of the generation and transmission of electricity into operations run by separate companies by 2020. As part of the reform process, 3,283 power corporations were newly established in 2014, a significant increase of 1.8 times that of the previous year, and about fifty times that of 2011 (sixty-­six companies) (Tokyo Shoko Research 2015).8 The process commenced in 2015 by establishing an independent regulator: the Organization for Cross-­Regional Coordination of Transmission Operators (Denryoku kōikiteki un’ei suishin kikan). This organization was created to counter public concern that an electricity generator would still be able to own distribution through a holding company structure. By April 2016, Japan’s electricity market was fully deregulated as the remainder of the retail electricity market was opened up, including to residential and small business consumers. As the number of new renewable-­energy-­generating market players increased, Japan prepared to end the long-­standing monopoly of the ten regional electric power companies, which would likely lose market share to newcomers. Furthermore, in 2020, the national government separated the power transmission and power production businesses, which created further space for newcomers, despite the unfavorable development of big electric companies creating sister companies to run the grid. Electricity, thus, continued to be controlled by the same big companies and to be difficult for other producers to use. Big electric companies protected the stability of the

Community Power

113

grid, so newcomers could only connect a maximum voltage of 50 kW onto the network (as of July 15, 2018). However, surviving among such vested interests along with other renewable energy generators, “community power” entities continued to gain momentum. In the next section, I discuss the formulation of renewable energy production processes in Japan by documenting the present impact of social enterprises specializing in green energy.

Stories from Fukushima

Before the March 11 disaster, Iitate in Fukushima Prefecture was a quiet, traditional village where people enjoyed rural life. Three or four generations of the same family lived together under one roof, working in agriculture and dairy farming. Indeed, Iitate is a well-­k nown wagyu cattle farming region in Fukushima. The region has been inhabited for thousands of years; historically, the people of Iitate lived in harmony with nature, surrounded by thick forests. Life was simple and quiet, and residents believed that it would continue that way forever. The village philosophy was based upon a spirit of madei, which refers to fulfilling your duties with a pure, sincere heart, or carefully and deliberately—­a complete contrast to our materialistic contemporary society. This idyllic life was destroyed by the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, forty kilometers southeast of the village. Iitate residents were informed that they were safe as their homes were outside the twenty-­ kilometer evacuation zone designated by the national government on March 12, so they stayed. The March 11 earthquake itself did not significantly affect village life. However, twenty days later, on March 30, the IAEA (2011a) announced that the Iitate area had exceeded the operational criteria for evacuation in terms of radiation exposure, primarily due to wind patterns since Iitate was in the path of a radiation plume. Precipitation had deposited massive amounts of radioactive particles in Iitate on the night of March 15. But because the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information results had not been released promptly, all 6,000 Iitate residents were exposed for some time in what became a highly contaminated area. A reading outside the Iitate Village office on the evening of March 15 measured an extraordinarily high 44.7 µSv per hour (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2011b). To give this level some context, the Japanese government-­set target for decontamination is 0.23 µSv per hour. Following the IAEA’s announcement, the Japanese national government ordered the evacuation of all Iitate resi-

114

Chapter Four

dents by April 11. Iitate residents were then forced to evacuate, leaving everything behind. Many families were split up, with different generations living in different locations. Iitate was the first local authority in Fukushima Prefecture to set a date for ending the evacuation in 2012, when Mayor Norio Kanno promised to reboot the village within five years. I visited the Iitate Village office on August 11, 2015 as part of a group of researchers organized by a local journalist. I observed the presence of administration and assumed that they were already preparing for the residents’ return, although the evacuation order would not be lifted until March 31, 2017. Two months before my visit, decontamination work had been completed in the village’s residential areas. A report by researchers at Kyoto University suggested that the work had reduced the average air radiation level to within the 0.3 to 0.8 µSv per hour range (Iitate-­mura Society for Radioecology 2016). On the day I visited, my radiation survey meter outside read 0.46 µSv per hour. The internationally accepted level for radiation absorption is 1 mSv or less per year, although the IAEA and others suggest that, in the case of Fukushima, anything up to 20 mSv or less per year (the standard global limit for nuclear plant workers) poses no immediate danger to human health. Shortly after emerging from the car, I tasted metal in my mouth, a common experience for people with no prior radiation exposure. Driving through the village, I saw many black plastic bags containing irradiated soil, leaves, and debris from the decontamination operation. Meanwhile, I saw many solar panels installed at unused farmland sites. I was told that people in Iitate were trying to expand the solar power industry on farmland because, even if agricultural products were grown, it was unlikely that people would purchase them, given public concern about radiation. At that time, I was informed that the solar panels I saw in a place called Itamizawa had been installed by the Iitate Electric Power Company (Iitate denryoku), a community-­oriented renewable energy firm. I later scheduled a follow-­up interview with Norimichi Chiba, managing director of the Iitate Electric Power Company, at the company’s Fukushima City office.9 The company’s headquarters are in Iitate Village; however, due to the evacuation, its office had temporarily moved to Fukushima City center. Chiba, a retiree in his early sixties, told me that the company was established in September 2014 by Minoru Kobayashi, who was born and raised in Iitate; his family ran a farm there, planting rice and breeding prized Japanese black

Community Power

115

wagyu, Iitate Gyu. Soon after the March 11 disaster, Kobayashi evacuated his cattle to a friend’s ranch in Zaō in the neighboring Miyagi Prefecture and continued breeding them. Since then, he had been commuting to Zaō from his evacuation home in Kitakata in the Aizu region, northwest Fukushima, to care for his cattle. During the conversation, I asked Chiba about his motivations for starting the renewable energy company. Chiba mentioned that he and Kobayashi had been heavily influenced by Yauemon Sato, a name I already knew because it had been mentioned by many people involved in renewable energy, of which he was an influential advocate. Chiba had no background in electricity production but used his previous business experience of getting small breweries into markets dominated by larger manufacturers to establish the Aizu Electric Power Company (Aizu denryoku) in Kitakata City in 2013 with the help of local friends, municipalities, and business associates. With JPY 38 million (USD 350,000) in capital, the company built forty-­eight solar power plants. As of July 2016, it had produced a total of 3,877 kW (Aizu Electric Power Company 2016) and sold the electricity to Tohoku Electric Power Company. All the company’s solar plants were relatively small-­scale as it intended to create sustainable employment in local communities. These plants also dispersed risk within electricity generation. Sato’s renewable energy business expanded to include hydraulic and biomass energy by raising a further JPY 100 million (USD 900,000) through charging consumers in the Tokyo metropolitan area JPY 200,000 (USD 1,800) per unit to support Fukushima residents (Sato 2017, 44). In a feature article in the Asahi Shimbun (April 18, 2015), Sato remarked: When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant exploded, I thought that my two-­hundred-­year-­old business would be over. . . . Nothing would be gained by blaming the state and TEPCO. What caught my attention were the many power plants in Aizu where plenty of water was available. Water, food, and energy are the staples of survival. We have plenty of water, food, and energy in Aizu. The electricity generated by hydraulic power plants in Aizu is ten times more than the amount required by the entire Fukushima Prefecture. There is enormous potential for renewable energy in Fukushima.

One important corporate mission for the Aizu Electric Power Company, “Community Independence with an Energy Revolution,” reminds me of what

116

Chapter Four

Sasaki of Nouminren told me: “TEPCO deprived us of the capability to produce electricity in Fukushima. Fukushima was like a domestic colony of the Tokyo metropolitan area and sent electricity to the capital without consuming it locally at all.” I attended a national symposium on renewable energy in November 2017 at which Sato was a speaker. He explained his company’s mission to an audience of mostly conscientious citizens interested in establishing renewable energy businesses: If a big company comes from outside of Fukushima, the money it earns does not benefit Fukushima. This is the structure adopted by TEPCO. We need to change this structure and circulate money within the local economy. . . . However, rather than just complaining, we must realize our responsibility in terms of the nuclear power plants. Instead of bringing energy sources from outside, we should take advantage of renewable sources in the region, including solar, hydro, biomass, geothermal, and wind. . . . Through these actions, our children will understand that “we can change our society by ourselves.” I want to create a community I am proud to hand over to the next generation.10

Using local money and resources, Aizu Electric Power Company envisions a sustainable society. Ultimately, Sato intends to buy back water rights for electricity generation in Lake Inawashiro, Japan’s fourth-­largest lake, which TEPCO and Tohoku Electric Power Company now monopolize (Asahi Shimbun, April 18, 2015). The Aizu Basin is the breadbasket of Fukushima Prefecture: it is laden with both many historical and cultural treasures and plentiful natural resources. Its people should be able to enjoy a self-­sufficient life and produce and consume locally. Influenced by Sato, Kobayashi decided to create a renewable energy company. Both Kobayashi and Chiba were well connected within Sato’s renewable energy network. Kobayashi raised over JPY 10 million (USD 90,000) for renewable energy production from local people and businesses. Chiba provided technical expertise; he was an engineer and had already gained experience in the renewable energy industry at a geothermal energy power site in Tsuchiyu, an onsen (hot spring) town in Fukushima that suffered a sharp decrease in tourists after the March 11 disaster. People there incorporated renewable energy business practices into their reconstruction plans, which combined community revitalization with job creation. They worked on binary geother-

Community Power

117

mal power with good-­quality, high-­temperature, strong water pressure. Chiba was a key figure in this geothermal project. He told me, “Renewable energy should be something citizens can have control over.” In fact, Iitate Electric Power Company is supported by villagers’ investments and donations; it also asked for villagers’ permission to install solar panels on their farmland. When I interviewed Chiba in July 2016, I was told that thirty-­f ive villagers had installed thirty solar panels that produced 50 kW each. The firm then sold the electricity generated at JPY 27 per kWh (US 25 cents) to the Tohoku Electric Power Company and would be able to continue doing so under the FIT scheme for the next twenty years. Some of the earnings were used to pay investors or pay villagers rent for using their land. Iitate Electric Power Company chose the form of a for-­profit corporation. When asked why, Chiba told me that it was convenient for decision-­making. I also asked him, “Do you identify your firm as part of a social enterprise?” He responded, “Yes, of course. I would say we are a ‘public-­oriented’ for-­profit corporation [‘kōkyōteki’ kabushiki gaisha].”11 Aizu Electric Power Company is also a for-­profit corporation. Sato (2017, 44) reflected that he originally wanted to establish a cooperative or a joint ownership firm; however, he chose the for-­profit option since this organizational form clearly delineates who takes responsibility and enabled local banks that invest money to understand his actions. Working with local banks and municipalities, both companies are examples of community-­oriented social enterprises led by individuals that function as dynamic agents for change within a community. This type of social enterprise began to expand beyond Fukushima.

Kodaira Solar

Kodaira Solar is one of the leading social enterprises enabling ordinary citizens to generate renewable energy and was the first to use a FIT scheme in Tokyo. Located in western Tokyo, Kodaira is a city with a population of approximately 180,000. Kodaira Solar was established in February 2013 as an NPO under the 1998 NPO Law. As of August 2015, forty-­t hree people, mostly in their fifties and sixties, were regular members of this NPO. Among the twelve board members, nine were women and had experience in politics. Some were from the Seikatsusha Network of Tokyo, a local political party, and the Seikatsu Club or Japanese Consumers’ Cooperative Union, both of which explore a consumer-­based, environmentally friendly sustainable society as a

118

Chapter Four

key policy vision. A local environmental NPO, Kodaira Net, also sent members to Kodaira Solar. Since Kodaira hosts Hitotsubashi University and Tsuda University, I also saw several graduate students participating in the discussion.12 In its mission statement, Kodaira Solar describes the following goals: We aim to locally produce and locally consume renewable energy. Our joint effort by citizens to promote renewable energy is primarily to prevent global warming. Through sharing the value of renewable energy among citizens, we aim to contribute to making a sustainable society. (Kodaira Solar Articles of Incorporation, Article 3)

During an interview with Kodaira Solar members, I came to understand that the March 11 disaster was becoming a trigger for taking action to explore a sustainable way of life. The disaster was a pivotal moment, prompting people to reflect upon their everyday lives. Etsuko Baba, one of Kodaira Solar’s founders, told me passionately, “After seeing the Fukushima disaster, we began to think of generating local energy by ourselves. It was our motivation to start generating power.” In practice, they continued to build citizen-­f unded solar power plants in their local community. When I visited Kodaira in August 2015, I saw one of the enterprise’s first plants, which generated about 12 kW of power from sixty solar panels—­t he equivalent of three households’ power use (the average daily electricity consumption per household in Japan—­for two people during the daytime, when no air conditioning is needed—­is 7.7 kWh).13 The plant started to generate power in February 2013, a day before Kodaira Solar secured legal nonprofit status under the NPO Law. The solar panels were installed on an apartment building owned by a ninety-­year-­old man involved in a recycling business; Kodaira Solar paid him JPY 12,000 (USD 110) annually in rent. JPY 5 million (USD 45,000) was donated by locals for the construction of this first plant. Kimiko Tokou, another of Kodaira Solar’s founding members, noted that the major challenges of making new solar plants were finding locations and securing money. To acquire locations, Tokou highlighted that it was important to inform locals about the enterprise’s mission and activities. Thus, a series of study sessions was implemented to teach local people about renewable energy and energy-­saving techniques. To raise money, the NPO issued a private placement bond (shibosai), with distribution limited to institutions and banks. The bonds were sold in JPY 50,000 (USD 450) or JPY 100,000 (USD

Community Power

119

Figure 4.3 Solar panels installed by Kodaira Solar on August 9, 2015. Photo by the author.

900) issues, with maturities of five and ten years, respectively, primarily to local friends and acquaintances of Kodaira Solar members. Ultimately, the NPO collected JPY 4.6 million (USD 42,000) from forty-­nine donors. Kodaira Solar had a total of four solar plants when I visited. The second plant was nicknamed Yamabiko (“echoes”) and produced 10.3 kWh of power from solar panels on the roof of a house, which was used by the owner. In times of emergency, the generated power would be shared with his neighbors. The third plant, Mirai (“future”), produced 13.4 kWh of power from solar panels on the roof of a local facility for individuals with disabilities. The fourth, Meguru (“go around”), produced 27.0 kWh of power from solar panels on the roof of a plastic recycling factory. In addition to Baba and Tokou, other members were also active in expanding the number of solar power plants. As of August 2015, all the power generated by the four plants was sold to TEPCO under the FIT scheme for renewable energy power generation. The rates were JPY 37.8 (US 34 cents) per kWh in the fiscal year 2013 and JPY 32 (US 29 cents) per kWh in the fiscal year 2014. The power was guaranteed to be purchased for twenty years if more than 10 kWh were generated by solar. Kodaira Solar plays a significant role in leading renewable energy production in western Tokyo. Historically, Kodaira has a unique culture of partici-

120

Chapter Four

pative democracy as a result of productive interaction between native locals and newcomers who moved there in the early post–­World War II period (see Robertson 1994). In this context, social capital theory (Putnam 2000), which refers to connections among individuals, social networks, and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them, provides us with further insight into this social enterprise. For example, Kusano and Takiguchi (2009) showed that the city of Kodaira had achieved a high level of social capital through its rich history of social movements. The authors argued that Kodaira was particularly successful in “bridging social capital,” which refers to “the building of connections between heterogeneous groups; these are likely to be more fragile, but more likely also to foster social inclusion.” This is more valuable than another type of social capital, “bonding social capital,” which refers to “the links between like-­minded people, or the reinforcement of homogeneity” (Schuller, Baron, and Field 2000, 10). The accumulation of local social capital is indeed an important condition for the generation and support of social enterprises. Local citizens had been involved in several policymaking processes, particularly in community development. In 2009 (before the March 11 disaster), as Japanese society was moving to deregulate the electricity market, the Kodaira municipal government developed an environmentally friendly city, building a low-­carbon society by actively introducing renewable energy. Kodaira City announced a vision to promote local energy generation and consumption (Kodaira City 2009), which shed light on the use of solar energy. Kodaira has many hours of sunlight per day; thus, the municipal vision statement mentioned that the city aimed to achieve the highest level of introduction of solar energy generation in Japan. Baba and Tokou were both involved in writing this vision statement and told me that this experience became a key motivation for establishing Kodaira Solar. The city office continued to actively support efforts to promote renewable energy at the grassroots level. Kodaira Solar has become locally embedded, aiming to increase its number of solar plants in the community, while reflecting upon the daily lives of individuals following the March 11 disaster.

REPT in Takarazuka

REPT (Shin enerugī wo susumeru Takaradzuka no kai, or Citizens for Renewable Energy Promotion in Takarazuka) is another community-­oriented social enterprise in Takarazuka City, Hyogo Prefecture, western Japan. I visited the

Community Power

121

city in late June 2018 because many of my renewable energy research contacts often referred to REPT’s activities and to Takarazuka as one of the most innovative places for renewable energy production. I made an appointment with REPT via its webpage (http:​/​​/​rept​.or​.jp​/​) and met representatives Keiko Nakagawa and Akiko Tanaka in Takarazuka. I was surprised to learn that Keiko Nakagawa was the spouse of the late Yasuo Nakagawa, a Kobe University professor and the author of an important book on radiation, Hōshasen hibaku no rekishi (A History of Radiation Exposure; Nakagawa 2011 [1991]). Professor Nakagawa wrote this book just before his death, and it was published posthumously in 1991. In November 2011, shortly after the March 11 disaster, an augmented version was published, and many people I met during my fieldwork mentioned it. A key message of the book is that radiation exposure protection standards have been dressed up in scientific garb to convince those compelled to live with radiation from nuclear power generation that radiation exposure is unavoidable and must be tolerated. Nakagawa claimed that this is an administrative means of politically and economically supporting the promotion of nuclear power generation (Nakagawa 2011 [1991], 225–­ 26). Although it was originally published almost thirty years ago, this book reminded many antinuclear citizens of the March 11 disaster because, despite several previous incidents, the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident was still considered “unprecedented.” In 1981, the Nakagawas started a community-­based study circle to foster thought about the dangers of nuclear power as a direct response to the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States. At our meeting, Keiko Nakagawa told me that they had simply been exploring options for a safe, nuclear-­ free society. The Fukushima disaster further triggered the study circle to look to renewable energy as a realistic choice. They started clearly focusing on renewable promotion and generation. Tanaka added, “We aim to change people’s consciousness so that they are focused on the development of a renewable-­energy based society.”14 As of July 2018, the group had established six solar energy plants in the city; the first community-­owned solar plant was built in December 2012, a year and nine months after the March 11 disaster. The first plant generated 11.16 kW of power and was entirely financed by a private placement bond. When asked about the uniqueness of the group’s activities, Nakagawa mentioned solar sharing, a new way of producing energy without compromis-

122

Chapter Four

ing food production in which solar panels are installed about three meters above the ground. Rows of panels are widely spaced such that about one-­t hird of the sunlight hits the panels and two-­t hirds reaches the ground, allowing the same area to be used for both agriculture and power generation. The logic behind solar sharing is that though plants require sunlight for photosynthesis, most do not need all the sunshine they receive in an open field. Nothing beyond the saturation point increases photosynthesis and can even be harmful, causing more evaporation and a lack of moisture. In solar sharing, solar panels use the excess sunlight for power generation while crops continue to be cultivated below. Vegetables grown under the solar panel are healthy and tasty and are sold at local supermarkets. In 2016, Nakagawa’s group built its fourth solar sharing plant, which generated about 46.8 kW of power, in a community garden originally owned by the municipality, where young people wishing to become farmers and local students majoring in nutrition cultivated produce. Nakagawa explained that this was part of the group’s major effort at youth inclusion, aimed at making its activities sustainable by passing them on to the next generation. Nakagawa also emphasized the importance of building relationships with the local prefectural and municipal governments. For example, the Hyogo Prefectural Government contributed JPY 10 million (USD 90,000) with no in-

Figure 4.4 Solar sharing set up by REPT on May 14, 2016. Courtesy of Keiko ­Nakagawa of REPT.

Community Power

123

terest for twenty years to cover the initial cost of the solar sharing plant. The third solar energy plant was built on city land in 2014. In June 2011, shortly after the March 11 disaster, Nakagawa’s group submitted a request to Takarazuka’s mayor and the city council that the municipality actively use as much renewable energy as possible in its city planning. Consequently, the Takarazuka municipal government created a new division promoting renewable energy in April 2012. Since then, the municipality has drafted the Takarazuka Energy 2050 Vision, following a series of discussions with citizens, energy specialists, and municipal officials, which were facilitated by a Tokyo-­based think tank, the Institute of Sustainable Energy Policy. This innovative proposal envisions 100% renewable energy sources for electricity and heat and also includes energy-­saving objectives (Takarazuka City 2015). For example, the municipality aimed to reduce its energy consumption for electricity and heat from 770 GWh and 3,488 TJ in 2011 to 462 GWh and 2,093 TJ by 2050, respectively. It also aimed to produce approximately one-­t hird of the energy used in electricity from renewable sources and purchase the remaining energy from regional producers of renewables, equivalent to 69% and 74% for heat and electricity consumption, respectively. Organizationally, Nakagawa’s group comprises two entities. The first is the NPO REPT, which grew out of the original informal study group in 2012. The following year, the group also incorporated another entity, Takarazuka Sumire Electric Power (Takarazuka Sumire Hatsuden), choosing the form of a conventional for-­profit corporation (kabushiki gaisha). Nakagawa explained that REPT takes responsibility for strategy planning, while electricity generation operations are performed by Takarazuka Sumire Electric Power. The organizations are separated since REPT faced difficulties receiving funding from local banks to establish its power plants when it was organized under an NPO framework. The group received more help from donors by establishing a for-­profit entity; however, it maintained a nonprofit approach. Thus, Takarazuka Sumire Electric Power’s articles of incorporation state that no profits will be distributed among the members but will be used to promote and raise awareness of renewable energy. Nagakawa told me, “[We are] absolutely against nuclear power. But that is not the sum of our aims. We want to galvanize our local community.” Toward the end of our interview, she emphasized her new plan: in addition to solar sharing, the group was expanding to biogas. The city had 230,000 inhabitants

124

Chapter Four

in residential areas, which comprised only one-­t hird of its area. The remaining area was inhabited by only 2,500 people and was used for agriculture and livestock, although its population was decreasing by around a hundred people per year. Collaborating with dairy farmers, REPT planned to develop a compost-­based biogas business, using JPY 1.5 million (USD 13,000) in funding provided by the Hyogo Prefecture. Nakagawa and Tanaka appeared to be pleased about all their business developments. After our interview, they went out to distribute flyers in the rain. It seemed to be their regular routine. The flyers read, “Nuclear power plants are a form of technology that human beings cannot control. If our indifference continues, the danger continues. Let’s choose a power company that does not use nuclear power plants at all.”

Alliance for Community Power

Post-­Fukushima Japan provides an active window into the political processes in which multiple actors are working to consolidate a new rationale for postnuclear power and to connect renewable energy production activities. Many Japanese movements promoting renewable energy at the grassroots level have been established in the wake of the March 11 disaster. One is the Japan Community Power Association (Zenkoku gotōchi enerugī kyōgikai), a network of energy-­focused social enterprises and concerned individuals who promote and produce renewable energy. The chairman of its board is Yauemon Sato, founder of the Aizu Electric Power Company. The network’s model is based on creating an anonymous citizen investment fund centered in communities and implemented by renewable energy businesses. By January 2019, fifty-­one citizen-­based, community-­oriented, renewable-­energy-­related businesses and their nationwide supporters had organized an alliance for renewable energy generation, including Aizu Electric Power Company, Iitate Electric Power Company, and Takarazuka Sumire Electric Power. This emerging network presents both the classical Tocquevillian attitude, focusing on advocacy through representative democracy, and a design for public services in accordance with the values of concerned citizens. It also provides valuable guidance for agencies concerned with developing and nurturing green energy social enterprises. Further, the network played a significant role in establishing the Fukushima Renewable Future Fund (Fukushima saisei kikin) in February 2016 to support and accelerate social innovation in Fukushima through

Community Power

125

power generation. The initial funds came from Elektrizitätswerke Schönau in Germany, in commemoration of the Stromrebellen Award given to Sato in 2014. The World Community Power Conference (WCPC) held on November 3 and 4, 2016, in Fukushima City added a more global nature to the Japanese community power movement.15 The conference aimed to bring leading community power proponents from Japan and the world together to discuss the role of community power in the global shift toward renewable energy.16 It took place on the same day that 196 world states agreed to switch the global energy supply to greenhouse gas neutrality or renewable energy by 2050 in the Paris climate accords. The conference was cosponsored by the Japan Community Power Association and the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policy, and, as a result of global networking in renewable energy, the Bonn-­based World Wind Energy Association was listed as a sponsor. Kaoru Kobayashi, mayor of Fukushima City, invited more than 600 people from over thirty countries, including Germany, Denmark, the United States, Australia, and China. The attendees comprised 200 mayors and officials from local municipalities across Japan and other participants from civil society, academia, and business. The large attendance at the conference reflected remarks made by Sato, one of its organizers, emphasizing the importance of local commitment: Recently, the attention given to community power has been continuously increasing. . . . In the past, Japanese people have relied almost entirely on the national government; however, we would like to make this conference a turning point, one in which our mindset is changed. This means that we will produce our own energy to achieve local independence and change the economic rules.

The two-­day conference featured nine panels wherein the most up-­to-­date knowledge and skills on renewable energy were discussed, in addition to other topics, from energy democracy and regional cooperation to the value of community power. During one panel, seven mayors from Japan and Germany discussed their efforts to promote renewable energy in local communities. One of the key messages I perceived was that local governments were important partners in promoting a 100% renewable energy policy in collaboration with civil society, including the renewable energy-­focused social enterprises discussed earlier. Local government’s role as a public entity was to provide start-­up funding and logistical support for setting up equipment to produce

126

Chapter Four

renewable energy. In doing so, it could help facilitate the transition from the current fossil-­fuel-­based economy to an environmentally friendly energy-­ based economy. Another panel focused on energy democracy in community power planning and development. Both participation and local ownership are key for community power. Yasuko Inoue, head of Takarazuka Sumire Electric Power, explained how it conducted business in the local community and collaborated with municipal and prefectural governments. Inoue encouraged the audience to consider why we should be committed to renewable energy production—­in other words, for what and for whom. She presented a detailed explanation of the flow of renewable energy from nature, agriculture, and dairy to food, explaining that a consistent agenda for renewable energy and a commitment to it would protect sustainable life. I gathered that Inoue’s idea was in line with “energy democracy” (Burke and Stephens 2017)—­an emergent social movement advancing renewable energy transitions by resisting the fossil-­f uel-­dominant energy agenda while reclaiming and democratically restructuring energy regimes. One German panelist pointed out that the growing importance of renewable energy would lead to a more decentralized structure involving technical, economic, and political decentralization, all of which would allow local citizens to participate in energy governance and control. Local communities would become “implementers, organizers, and trendsetters.” Furthermore, a panelist from Denmark asserted that renewable energy or community power is linked to energy democracy, local development, and local acceptance. Citing the wind power case of Hanstholm, a small Danish town facing the North Sea, she emphasized the distribution of benefits, or common goods, throughout the community, stating that local development is the key to local acceptance. Community ownership is focused on the objective of using the income generated by renewable energy projects to benefit local community residents; the main goal is not private profits but achieving the common good, which leads to more participation and acceptance by local people. Claiming to think globally and act locally, the conference discussion culminated in the Fukushima Community Power Declaration, declaring a desire to change our history from that day:

Community Power

127

We, all the participants of the First World Community Power Conference in Fukushima WCPC 2016, . . . agreed to and decided to issue this Declaration. We agreed on the following: Sustainable energy supply and use are essential to ensuring the maintenance or enhancement of a society’s quality of life, as well as sustainable development for all people in the world. Climate change has been causing unprecedented situations for the current generation and will become a further threat for future generations. The Fukushima nuclear disaster teaches us a lesson, forcing us to take the catastrophic risks of nuclear energy into account. As we stand on a tipping point of a global surge in renewable energy, such as wind power and solar PV, which are inherently clean, eternal, inexhaustible, and available everywhere in the world, we have a chance to achieve a future that operates entirely on efficient renewable energy. Such a future would avoid the climate risk, nuclear risk, security of supply risk, air pollution, and many other hazards resulting from the use of fossil or nuclear energies. To achieve this future, the implementation of sustainable renewable energy must respect local and regional needs and priorities, as well as existing societal, cultural, and environmental conditions.17 (WCPC 2016b)

This statement was read by Kaoru Kobayashi, mayor of Fukushima City. The Fukushima Community Power Declaration is not legally binding; however, it is important because it sheds light on vital intersections between civil society and policymakers vis-­à-­v is nuclear power and climate change. Furthermore, it may facilitate more democratic governance structures through energy decentralization, thus giving local citizens control over local resources. Hosting this type of international conference made it clear that Fukushima, where people had suffered most from the nuclear disaster, was a symbolic location that was fast becoming a new business center for community power. This would be achieved by active local collaboration with municipal-­level governments and conscientious citizens as well as by domestic and global alliances aimed at exploring the potential of renewable energy.

Ways of Living Sustainably

Energy is central to most major challenges and opportunities the world faces today. Be it for jobs, security, climate change, food production, or increasing incomes, access to energy is essential for all. Sustainable energy is an opportu-

128

Chapter Four

nity—­it transforms lives, economies, and the planet. In 2015, two important international agreements were developed to support the “community power” movements I have described thus far: the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations Sustainable Development 2015) and the Paris Agreement on climate change (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 2015). These policy developments helped buoy the positive sentiment toward global renewable energy production. The SDGs form the core of the United Nations’ 2030 agenda for sustainable development. These SDGs helped to balance the economic, social, and ecological dimensions of sustainable development and placed sustainable development and the fight against poverty on the same agenda for the first time. One of the SDGs posits that access to energy is an essential prerequisite for achieving many sustainable development goals. In particular, it aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030; more specifically, Goal 7 aims for a substantial increase in the share of renewables in the global energy mix and a doubling in the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency. Another target of the SDGs is promoting research in renewable energy and energy efficiency as well as investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technologies. Furthermore, the Paris Agreement on climate change addressed the need to limit rising global temperatures. This historic agreement aimed to combat climate change and unleash actions and investment for a low-­carbon, resilient, and sustainable future. Its main objective is to maintain the global temperature rise in this century well below 2 °C and drive efforts to limit this increase even further to 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels. Renewable energy is an essential part of the solution to climate change. These global policy developments were supported by a comment by Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA): “We are witnessing a transformation of global power markets led by renewables” (BBC 2016). The comment was made in October 2016, when the IEA (2016a) reported that renewables had surpassed coal to become the largest source of installed power capacity in the world; in 2015, renewables accounted for more than half of the increase in global power capacity, and about half a million solar panels were installed around the world daily. In fact, 2015 marked a turning point for renewable energy: it reached a record 153 GW, 15% more than the previous year. Most of these gains were driven by record-­level wind and solar PV addi-

Community Power

129

tions of 66 GW and 49 GW respectively. There are many factors behind this remarkable achievement: more competition, enhanced policy support in key markets, and technological improvements (IEA 2016b). While climate change mitigation is a powerful driver for renewables, it is not the only one. In many countries, combating deadly air pollution and diversifying energy supplies to improve energy security play an equally strong role in growing low-­carbon energy sources, especially in Asia. Civil society, governments, and businesses have been mobilizing collaborative efforts to achieve the United Nations’ SDGs and the aims of the Paris climate accord. In contemporary Japan, the ongoing deregulation of electricity production and distribution is a political agenda; deregulation increases the choice of power companies for ordinary citizens, under the assumption that competition between electrical service providers will result in better services and more innovation in response to consumer needs. In July 2018, the Japanese government announced a revised Strategic Energy Plan—­a national guideline for energy policy (Cabinet Office 2018)—­ that envisions a shift toward renewable energy and cuts dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power. The basic energy plan, which is updated every three to four years, showed that the government aims for renewables to account for 22%–­24%, fossil fuels for 56%, and nuclear power for 20%–­22% of the country’s electricity generation by 2030, despite criticism from civil society. Greenpeace Japan (2018) claims that the energy plan “lacks urgent and ambitious renewable energy targets, while maintaining dangerously high coal targets, and unrealistic targets for the troubled nuclear sector.” However, I surmise that even movements toward such minor targets will be incremental. Data from 2016 show that the shares of renewable energy, thermal power, and nuclear power were 14.5%, 83.8%, and 1.7%, respectively (Agency for Natural Resources and Energy 2016). Japan’s share of renewable energy was almost the same as that of France (16.3%) and the United States (13.6%) (IEA 2017). The increased focus on renewables as a result of the SDGs and Paris climate accord has reinforced the challenges Japan faces in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the years ahead. In recent years, active citizens, innovative entrepreneurs, and governments have been forming a platform for community power. They are developing and accumulating ecological knowledge and technology to create a sustainable, greener economy by practicing “natural capitalism,” that is, industrial capi-

130

Chapter Four

talism reformed to incorporate the value of “natural capital” (life-­supporting systems and resources) in their daily lives (Hawken, Lovens, and Lovens 1999). Expanding renewable, sustainable energy, or what I have called “community power” in this chapter, could contribute to natural capitalism and, more importantly, could further the development of local participative democracy when various approaches to the concept succeed in simultaneously realizing a substantial increase in citizen involvement and more efficient governance. Community power is indeed changing the existing partnership between state authorities and citizens, empowering citizens to contribute more of their own resources. Citizens are regarded as coproducers of public services instead of as simple consumers, as argued in the new public management scholarship (Bovaird 2007). Globally, the green energy industry has reached a new stage in its development, and Fukushima and Japan have assumed a central position within global energy discourses in the post-­Fukushima era.18 Some renewable technologies have become more affordable, particularly in developed markets, making them cost-­competitive with fossil fuels. The focus is now on the future challenges in promoting these renewable technologies in the face of opposition as well as in identifying the institutional frameworks, such as FIT systems, required to make green energy more attractive. Today, an awakened global consciousness is heralding the shift from conventional energy practices toward the use of green energy worldwide.19 Community power innovation has become mainstream in post-­Fukushima Japan. Documented above are some of the long-­term effects of these new values, practices, relationships, and institutions as they relate to the construction of a green economy and increased alternative energy consumption.

FIVE

Unethical Politics

Japan’s Nuclear Export

On April 18, 2014, a plenary session of Japan’s House of Councillors ratified the nuclear accords that Japan had signed earlier with Turkey (Nikkei, April 18, 2014). Most of the supporting votes came from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the Komeito Party, and the Democratic Party of Japan. The accords took effect in the summer of 2014, allowing Japan to export materials and equipment for nuclear power generation to Turkey. Enabled by the accords, an international consortium of corporations (led by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and French nuclear giant Areva) formulated detailed agreements with the Turkish government, valued at JPY 2.5 trillion (approximately USD 22 billion), to construct four nuclear reactors in the ancient Greek city of Sinop on the Turkish coast of the Black Sea. The power plant was planned to be fully operational by 2023. This was Japan’s first successful bid for an overseas nuclear project after the March 11 disaster. Between December 2012, when Prime Minister Abe came to power, and September 2014, when I started documenting Japan’s nuclear export policy, Abe visited forty-­nine foreign countries and regions. By July 2018, when I was writing this chapter, this number had grown to seventy-­six, the highest ever for a Japanese prime minister. Several of these countries—­including Turkey, India, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates—­were the same destinations with which Japan had been negotiating the sale of its nuclear power generation technology. Abe also regularly undertook visits expressly aimed at encouraging nuclear power technology sales and the building of nuclear power plants. As of July 2018, Japan had concluded bilateral nuclear accords—­an international precondition for the exportation of nuclear-­related technologies between two countries—­w ith fourteen countries and the European Atomic Energy Community (Ministry of 131

132

Chapter Five

Foreign Affairs 2018).1 Furthermore, in early August 2014, Abe visited Brazil to discuss the possibility of cooperating on the development of multiple nuclear technology projects. Around the same time, Japan and India began active negotiations to establish a bilateral nuclear accord: The Japan-­India agreement was signed in November 2016 and enacted the following year. In the aftermath of the March 11 disaster, the Japanese domestic market for nuclear power technology had imploded. In fact, Japanese nuclear technology companies—­Hitachi, Toshiba, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries—­received no new contracts or proposals for the construction of nuclear reactors in Japan after 2011, leading them to seek new markets overseas, which were also necessary for these manufacturers to maintain a certain level of knowledge and skills in nuclear technology. Abe was a dedicated salesperson of Japan’s nuclear power technology, having developed many initiatives aimed at increasing its exportation and claiming that “[Japan] can provide the world’s safest nuclear technology” (Asahi Shimbun Asia & Japan Watch, May 3, 2014). This type of statement was characteristic of Abe’s nuclear sales pitch. Such statements have been effective in earthquake-­prone nations, such as Turkey, which had high expectations for Japan’s earthquake-­resistant, cutting-­edge nuclear power generation technology. Simultaneously, several emerging economies began to look toward Japan’s technology in the hopes of stabilizing and securing their own energy sectors, which became key to sustaining Japan’s nuclear industry. To further legitimize the industry, the Japanese government claimed that the various nuclear accords would contribute to the peaceful use of nuclear power. However, voices of protest and dissent have risen against such nuclear policies and politics. Many argue that Japan’s efforts to export its nuclear technologies are “unethical” (hi rinriteki); for example, Greenpeace Japan (2014) argued that “the Fukushima disaster is not over yet; many victims still suffer from its aftereffects. . . . Given this ongoing situation in Japan, it is unethical to export nuclear power plants—­sources of suffering and problems—­to other countries” (emphasis added). Meanwhile, similar concerns were raised outside Japan, particularly in countries to which it aimed to export its nuclear technology—­ including Turkey. Antinuclear protests became prominent across Japan in the wake of the March 11 disaster, as documented in chapter 2. While each protest or action may have had different goals, it can (and should) be considered unethical for

Unethical Politics

133

Japan to export such technologies (let alone position these exports as fundamental to its economic growth strategy) because the disaster has not been completely reversed. The solutions that had been offered have not been effective; in fact, the destroyed nuclear reactors and water-­cooling tanks continue to leak contaminated water ten years later. Plans for water disposal include vapor release and discharge to the sea, and the IAEA supported this option as technically feasible (IAEA 2020). On April 13, 2021, the Japanese government officially decided to release the contaminated water into the sea (Prime Minister’s Office 2021). With these concerns in mind, this chapter examines narratives on how national and subnational civil societies transcend borders through transnational action. It examines the ways in which civil society action has influenced nuclear power policymaking in Japan and abroad, shaped regional and global norms, and fostered a new transnational alliance of mutual support. This “transnational” alliance refers to interactions that transcend nation-­state borders and involve at least one state actor (Risse-­Kappen 1995). First, this chapter presents an overview of Japanese efforts to export its nuclear technology in the first two decades of the twenty-­f irst century, when the country entered international nuclear power generation politics, focusing specifically on Turkey and its state-­level bilateral relationship with Japan. Second, the chapter presents one social movement strategy that formal, municipal-­ level political institutions, such as the offices of local mayors, have used to express antinuclear sentiment through their connection with civil society and to jointly envision a nuclear-­power-­f ree, sustainable world.2 This action was an attempt made by the transnational antinuclear movement to directly infuse public, grassroots voices into energy policymaking processes. Lastly, this chapter documents how the transnational antinuclear voices shared in and enhanced active communication at a thematic session on nuclear technology at the World Social Forum, led by the No Nukes Asia Forum (NNAF), a transnational civil society platform that aims to create a nuclear-­f ree Asia. The NNAF has been quite effective, having successfully withdrawn, suspended, or postponed several nuclear power plant projects in the Philippines, Vietnam, Turkey, and Taiwan. The developments are an example of what della Porta and Tarrow (2005, 20–­23) call “transnational collective action,” in which coordinated international campaigns form networks as a result of the collective actions of numerous activists against international actors, other states,

134

Chapter Five

or international institutions. The contemporary social movement paradigm strategically uses transnational coalitions to effect change by framing nuclear power as a common problem of transnational scope.

Nuclear Technology Exports as a Growth Strategy

Prime Minister Abe was not the first Japanese politician to vigorously pursue the exportation of nuclear technology. The Japanese government has actively supported nuclear technology exports since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made a cabinet decision to promote nuclear power plants under the Framework for Nuclear Energy Policy (Genshiryoku seisaku taikō) in 2005.3 Under this framework, the opposition party—­the Democratic Party of Japan—­began promoting the export of nuclear technology when in power between 2009 and 2012, considering it a key pillar of the new national economic growth strategy (confirmed by the Cabinet in June 2010) to revitalize the economy (Cabinet Office 2010b). Constructing a nuclear power plant is said to cost hundreds of billions of yen, and the strategy was positioned as a major aspect of the country’s infrastructure export goals, along with high-­ speed “bullet train” railroads and technology. In February 2006, Toshiba purchased British Nuclear Fuels Limited, a nuclear power and fuel company previously owned by the UK government, and American Westinghouse, one of the world’s leading suppliers of nuclear technology. Later in 2006, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries started to explore collaborations with the French group Areva. In June 2007, Hitachi and GE established GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. These companies are all part of a global alliance to promote nuclear power, and each became a stepping-­stone toward supporting the Japanese government’s efforts, with METI choreographing their moves. Under the Democratic Party of Japan’s administration, Prime Minister Hatoyama tried to sell Japanese nuclear technology to the United Arab Emirates. However, the bid—­worth USD 20 billion—­went to a group from South Korea in December 2009. Hatoyama continued to play a prominent role in the sale of Japan’s nuclear technology, once attempting to solicit an agreement for a USD 11 billion nuclear power plant project from Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Tan Dung. However, the collective Japanese bid effort, which included Hitachi, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Toshiba, lost to Russia. Subsequently, Hatoyama told the National Diet that he would strive to work harder to promote technology from Japan, the world’s third-­largest generator

Unethical Politics

135

of nuclear power (Bloomberg News, March 8, 2010). Japanese firms had just lost a sequence of bids in Abu Dhabi and Hanoi and this statement was aimed at winning an order through a public-­private or state-­business collaboration that would be represented by a single body in the future, as Team Japan. Hatoyama’s successor, Naoto Kan, initially followed suit, though he became a leading antinuclear advocate after the March 11 disaster. Kan was, ironically, heavily involved in efforts to export nuclear power generation technology to Vietnam, India, and Turkey. In October 2010, Kan visited Vietnam and conducted successful negotiations. Vietnam decided to purchase Japanese technology and that Japan would help build the country’s second nuclear power plant, which would begin operation in 2021. Japan would strive to meet Vietnam’s various conditions, such as assisting in conducting feasibility studies for the project, supplying low-­interest and preferential loans, the use of advanced technology with the highest safety standards, extended technology transfers and human resources training, cooperative treatment of waste, and guaranteeing the stable supply of materials for the project’s entire length (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2010b). Kan’s successor, Yoshihiko Noda, also pursued nuclear technology exports. In his first policy address to the National Diet in September 2011, Noda declared that Japan aimed to reduce its domestic dependency on nuclear power generation technology (Prime Minister’s Office 2011g). Ten days later, Noda addressed the United Nations Meeting on Nuclear Safety and Security, where he argued that Japan was ready to continue exporting its technology and expertise to emerging economies (Kyodo News, September 22, 2011). The following month, Noda agreed to advance the plan Kan had established for exporting Japanese nuclear technology to Vietnam (News 24, October 31, 2011). This formal endorsement came just two days after the Japanese foreign minister and his Indian counterpart, S. M. Krishna, agreed to pursue a bilateral nuclear accord aimed at generating a civilian nuclear power agreement (Asahi Shimbun, October 29, 2011). This intergovernmental negotiation began under Kan’s supervision, and the agreement with Vietnam was seen as a prerequisite for enabling Japan to export nuclear technology to India. After the March 11 disaster, these developments were internationally heralded as a sign that Japan would resume its international efforts to export nuclear technology. In December 2011, Noda made a further three-­day visit to India, during which Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh revealed that he understood Japan’s

136

Chapter Five

sensitivity and concerns about civil nuclear cooperation, especially after the March 11 disaster (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2011). The two prime ministers decided to advance negotiations, aiming to draw up a mutually satisfactory Agreement for Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy.

Abe’s “Infrastructure Exports” Strategy

In December 2012, Abe returned as prime minister following the Liberal Democratic Party’s victory in the House of Representatives election. Japan’s nuclear technology export policy was strengthened under the second Abe administration. In a speech to the National Diet on January 24, 2014, Abe clearly mentioned “infrastructure exports” (Prime Minister’s Office 2014): the strategy aimed for Japan (and Japanese companies) to receive infrastructural and technological orders amounting to approximately JPY 30 trillion (USD 31 billion) by 2020, tripling the JPY 10 trillion being made from infrastructure sales in 2014. The Abe administration treated the export of nuclear technologies and equipment as an integral element of this infrastructure export policy. Moreover, the policy was incorporated within the collection of growth strategies that formed the third “arrow” in Abenomics, expressly aimed at reviving the world’s third-­largest economy.4 Abe was aggressive in encouraging Japanese infrastructure exports. He also strategically chose the destinations of his first overseas trip, visiting Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia just three weeks into his tenure. It must be remembered that Kan and Noda had previously made nuclear technology agreements with Vietnam. Moreover, both Abe and Dung shared a commitment to further increase cooperation through “trade, investment, infrastructure development and other fields” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013a; emphasis added). Vietnamese media also reported that both countries were delighted to witness increased economic, trade, and investment linkages and vowed to closely cooperate to realize their many agreements, especially “large-­scale infrastructure projects” (Vietnam Breaking News, January 17, 2013; emphasis added). Abe’s state visits were well-­timed, coinciding with the opening of markets to which Japan hoped to export nuclear technology. Abe also visited Mongolia in March 2013. This visit was extremely controversial, especially among Japanese antinuclear citizens, primarily because the Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun (May 9, 2011) had discovered that Japan and the United States were planning to develop a nuclear waste storage facility in

Unethical Politics

137

the country. According to the paper, Japan and the United States wanted to develop the facility to serve customers to whom they exported nuclear technology, thus pushing ahead with nuclear-­related plans despite the prolonged Fukushima crisis. Furthermore, Mongolia is known for its large uranium deposits, which are essential for the generation of nuclear power. A bilateral cooperation scheme between Japan and Mongolia, titled the ERCH Initiative, mentioned the specific measures by which Japan would secure uranium (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013b). “Erch” is the Mongolian word for vitality, and its usage here was representative of the two governments’ commitment to the initiative’s success. For example, the agreement included a clause that guaranteed the “acceleration of the necessary procedures by Mongolia toward establishing a Japanese Bank of International Cooperation export credit line for Mongolian companies’ purchase of equipment (such as construction machinery for the development of mineral resources) and services from Japan” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013b, emphasis added). In April 2013, Abe visited Russia and several Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. In Abe’s policy speech in Saudi Arabia, he emphasized the importance of a stable oil supply from the country to Japan and claimed that “Japan stands ready to transfer technologies for renewable and nuclear power generation, which rank among the safest in the world” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013c). Saudi Arabia was planning to develop sixteen new nuclear reactors (Agency for Natural Resources and Energy 2013), though Japanese media raised concerns that Saudi Arabia was interested in nuclear energy as a route to nuclear weapons (Tokyo Shimbun, June 20, 2013). During his visit to the United Arab Emirates, Abe and General Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (the crown prince of Abu Dhabi) signed a nuclear cooperation agreement that would ultimately create multiple opportunities for Japan to provide nuclear power plant technology to the United Arab Emirates (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013d). The agreement also aimed to bolster bilateral ties between the countries, especially in the areas of energy and national security. This was the first bilateral nuclear agreement signed by Japan after the March 11 disaster, preceding the Turkish agreement. All the above developments were congruent with Abe’s growth strategy, increasing Japan’s infrastructure exports to developing economies. Before returning to Japan, Abe also visited Turkey, primarily to personally exchange a set of documents entitled the “Agreement for Co-­Operation in the

138

Chapter Five

Use of Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Purposes and Agreement on Co-­Operation for Development of Nuclear Power Plants and the Nuclear Power Industry in Turkey” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013e). Abe and his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed a USD 22 billion (JPY 2.5 trillion) nuclear deal on May 3, 2013, in Sinop. During Abe’s visit, Erdoğan expressed his government’s intention to grant Japan exclusive rights to the construction of Turkey’s second nuclear power plant in Sinop (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013e). A Turkish-­ Japanese-­French consortium, comprising the state-­owned Turkish Electricity Generation Company, the Japanese companies Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Itochu Corporation (a major trading house), and the French company ENGIE (known as GDF Suez prior to April 2015), was to conduct the Sinop project (OECD 2018). Mitsubishi Heavy, Itochu, and the French electric utility ENGIE would own 51% of the consortium. Other entities, including the Turkish Electricity Generation Company, would own 49%. The consortium would cover 30% of the project’s cost, and loans from the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation and other lenders would cover the other 70%. In a joint press conference, Erdoğan said, “This is a very important deal. With this second nuclear plant, we have also taken the first step toward a third one, which  .  .  . [means] a lot to us.” Erdoğan also emphasized Japan’s safety record and experience with earthquakes. In response, Abe stated, “We will share our experiences and lessons from the [2011] disaster at the nuclear plant [run by TEPCO in Fukushima] with the rest of the world and will strive to contribute to enhancing the safety of nuclear power generation at the top level” (Anatolia Agency, May 3, 2013). Abe’s visit was followed by another on October 30, 2013, when a corporate alliance led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries reached a formal agreement with the Turkish government. While welcoming this agreement, Abe and Erdoğan also signed the “Joint Declaration by the Government of Japan and the Government of the Republic of Turkey on Cooperation in the Field of Nuclear Energy and Science and Technology” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013f). Consequently, Erdoğan paid an official visit to Japan in January 2014 to review and confirm the countries’ bilateral agreements. These political efforts helped ratify the nuclear accord between Japan and Turkey, signed on April 18, 2014. The Japanese government originally sought parliamentary approval for the pact during an extraordinary session of the National Diet in the fall of 2013. However, the National Diet failed to reach a decision at the time and carried

Unethical Politics

139

the deliberations over to a regular session in January 2014. In the meantime, antinuclear movements in Japanese society were developing: Japanese antinuclear citizens were discouraging Japan’s export of nuclear power generation technology to Turkey and networking with their Turkish counterparts to develop antinuclear sentiment and strategies.

Turkey’s Desire for Nuclear Power

Turkey envisaged the development of a third nuclear plant in İğneada (signed with China in 2016), after Akkuyu (with Russia in 2010) and Sinop (with Japan in 2013), primarily because it wanted to reduce its dependence on gas and oil from Russia and Iran. Meanwhile, the Global Citizen Reaction to the Fukushima Nuclear Plant Disaster survey found that 80% of Turkish people did not support the country’s acquisition of nuclear power (Ipsos MORI 2011). These sentiments had developed historically through the strong growth of social movements in Turkey. The plans for the proposed nuclear power plants in Akkuyu, Sinop, and İğneada had all been met with fierce opposition from local residents. Turkey has a long history with nuclear power (see Udum 2010), which has been termed the “development key of the country” (Demircan 2017).5 Turkey was the first country to sign an agreement with the Eisenhower administration in the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program to develop peaceful nuclear technology in 1955. However, its plans to establish nuclear power plants did not materialize. In 1956, the Turkish government established an Atomic Energy Commission to work directly under the prime minister on nuclear power and radiation safety. The commission was transformed into the current nuclear regulator and licensing authority—­the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK). In 1956, the government also allocated 760,000 Turkish lira (equivalent to USD 270,000) to establish a research reactor for experimental nuclear science purposes; the Çekmece Nuclear Research and Training Center was opened near Lake Küçükçekmece in İstanbul, first reaching criticality in 1962. The center was affiliated with the General Secretariat of the Atomic Energy Commission and its purpose was nuclear research, development, application, and training activities (it closed in 1977). In 1965, studies on the construction of nuclear power plants began. The Department of Atomic Energy was established in 1972 and decided to build the first nuclear power plant in Akkuyu in 1974. A French-­Swiss consortium won the construc-

140

Chapter Five

tion contract, although the project never materialized. In the 1980s, Canadian and American firms revisited the plans, but the project came to a halt again after Turkish aspirations for nuclear weapons ruined negotiations.6 In the late 1990s, a collective of Japanese, Canadian, and American companies secured the contract to build the plant; however, the Turkish government decided against continuing the project in 2000. These failures were the result of a strong antinuclear movement, which was key to developing antinuclear sentiment in Turkey. This movement started in the 1970s with protests by fishermen and citizens in Mersin, where the first nuclear power plant project at Akkuyu was to be located. Later, NGOs, unions, civil rights movements, national environmental institutions, and local citizens, threatened by the new nuclear plants, continued to discuss the seismic aspect. Mass protest rallies, hoping to protect the fundamental right to live in a clean and safe environment, were organized. Although the international license needed to develop the Akkuyu site on the Turkish Mediterranean coast was obtained in 1976, all four national tender attempts made under Turkish domestic law from 1977 to 2009 failed. In 2010, Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement with Russia to establish a nuclear power plant. This agreement would allow the Russian company Rosatom to establish the four-­reactor Akkuyu nuclear power plant under the build-­own-­operate model, the first such example realized worldwide. Under this model, a country buys a Russian reactor that is operated by Russians in their country, with a preset price for the electricity generated. The estimated cost of the Akkuyu project was USD 22 billion, and the electricity produced by Akkuyu would be bought at a guaranteed price of USD 12.35 per kWh for fifteen years. Meanwhile, Turkish NGOs legally contested the government’s initial nuclear bill, designed for the Akkuyu site, primarily because it did not mandate public participation or the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) that is enshrined in Turkish law. Domestic attempts were not politically expedient. Consequently, Erdoğan brought the planning concerns to an intergovernmental meeting, resulting in the agreement between Turkey and Russia (AP News, March 10, 2010). Pinar Demircan, a Turkish activist in the antinuclear movement Nükleersiz, pointed out that as an international agreement, this deal was made outside the public eye and cannot be evaluated within the constitutional rules (see Demircan 2017). The agreement raised serious concerns that the Turkish

Unethical Politics

141

government seemed to be attempting to reduce civil society participation in nuclear power plant decisions. The government declared nuclear power plant projects to be strategic megaprojects, and, thus, all decision-­making, including environmental decision-­making, was to fall to the prime minister and president. This point is in line with what I observed in June 2013 at a public informational meeting in Tokyo organized by Greenpeace Japan. During this meeting, Turkish Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner Aslihan Tumer claimed that Erdoğan’s actions “bypassed Turkish laws” and were not in the interest of Turkish citizens but rather served to further undermine the rule of national courts of justice.7 Indeed, the Japanese agreement concerning the Sinop site was swiftly approved without discussion at a late Turkish parliamentary session on January 9, 2014, being pushed through by a majority vote from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Turkey and Japan share similar characteristics regarding their nuclear power politics—­t he nondisclosure of information, little accountability, and no transparency in terms of their respective leaders’ decision-­making processes. Take, for example, Japan’s nuclear village, the institutional and individual pronuclear advocates who collectively make up Japanese utility agencies, nuclear vendors, bureaucratic infrastructure, financial sector, media, and academia. As mentioned in chapter 1, Kingston (2012a) maintained that this was a village without boundaries or residence cards, an imagined collective bound by a solidarity focused on promoting nuclear power, whose residents have strictly monopolized all the information related to nuclear power concerns in Japanese society according to their interests. Kingston (2014) further argued that the reinstatement of nuclear power technology exportation as integral to the Japanese national energy policy (in April 2014) marked a victory for the nuclear village. He claimed that it was “a remarkable example of institutional resilience in the face of extremely adverse developments since the massive earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011 that precipitated three reactor meltdowns in Fukushima” (Kingston 2014, 461). Meanwhile, Japanese civil society groups were developing numerous transnational networks with international nuclear protest groups to further their own aims. As Turkish activist Demircan noted, “Where nuclear power for more than 40 years was a strongly visible element of environmental debates in society, the civil society movement now turns to international solidarity to help save at least a bare minimum of transparency and public participation” (2017).

142

Chapter Five

Transnational Actions to Connect Locals

In January 2014, the Turkish Antinuclear Alliance, which was organized by about a hundred citizens’ groups, started a campaign to dissolve Turkey’s nuclear agreement with Japan. Twenty members of the alliance protested against the Sinop project in front of the Consulate General of Japan in Istanbul (Haber Monitor, January 22, 2014). The Turkish Antinuclear Alliance wrote a letter opposing the Sinop project to a member of the Japanese National Diet, calling for Diet members to scrap the intergovernmental nuclear agreement with Turkey before it was brought for deliberation. Directly addressing the members of the Diet, the letter began by highlighting the negative implications of the Sinop nuclear power plant project: As Turkey moves toward these serious and potentially hazardous projects in a hurry, it fails to factor in the social, geological, and environmental implications and seems unaware of [the] potential lethal risk for millions of people living in the region as well as the vulnerable ecological communities in case something goes wrong, just as it did in Fukushima recently and Chernobyl earlier. Turkey’s active fault lines, coupled with its inefficiencies in the areas of technology, regulations, infrastructure, and a shortage of qualified personnel, pose a big threat to the efficient and safe execution of any such project.8

The letter also pointed out that Turkey’s existing technological infrastructure was not fit for establishing safe nuclear power practices: . . . the technological infrastructure of Turkey is also unfit for acquiring nuclear power. The projects’ prospects for success are significantly undercut by Turkey’s inadequate regulatory authority, which lacks an operating history paradigm. . . . These projects need construction and operating licenses from the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority. The authority will also be responsible for monitoring and verifying long-­term regulatory compliance of the operational plants.

Another part of the letter, touching on the Turkish experience during Chernobyl, comes to mind: TAEK [Turkish Atomic Energy Agency] is notorious among [Turkish] citizens for its lack of efficiency in acting to save the public health during the Chernobyl disaster. . . . The agency darkened and veiled the truth about the radiation threat in 1986 and continues to do so. . . . TAEK has not produced a single map of Turkey’s radiation hot spots caused by the Chernobyl blast plume.

Unethical Politics

143

To deliver the letter, the Turkish Antinuclear Alliance (which had no substantive connection with the Japanese antinuclear movement) contacted the Japanese branch of FoE, which has similar concerns and conducts similar missions. Indeed, FoE Japan is one of the most active NGOs in terms of supporting antinuclear sentiments and providing aid for Fukushima victims. The organization functions as a secretariat for the E-­shift group (http:​/​​/​e​-shift​.org​/), a new network of organizations and individuals established in the wake of the March 11 disaster. E-­shift aims to facilitate a new energy policy discussion platform by phasing out nuclear power and promoting renewable energy policies and practices, with a goal to make Japanese economic development and society more ecologically sustainable. FoE Japan faxed the Turkish Antinuclear Alliance’s letter to the National Diet on the Committee of Foreign Affairs and Security. On March 29, 2014, I received an email notice from E-­shift (e-­shift: #10637), calling for online signatures (http:​/​​/​goo​.gl​/​715INO) to support Turkish efforts to dissolve the bilateral cooperation agreements on the Sinop nuclear power plant. FoE Japan collected 1,922 signatures and submitted them on March 31, 2014, to the Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition party. However, the submission did not attract any major media attention: only one media outlet, owned by an independent journalist, Ryusaku Tanaka, reported on the letter, providing a full translation in Japanese (Tanaka Ryusaku Journal, April 7, 2014). Although we did not see any direct response to the Turkish letter from the National Diet, the letter stimulated local-­level interactions between Japan and Turkey. In August 2014, the secretary-­general of the Mayors for a Nuclear Power–­Free Japan (Datsugenpatsu wo mezasu shuchō no kai) network, Kimiko Uehara (former mayor of Kunitachi City, western Tokyo), and the vice secretary-­general, Kazuo Sato (former mayor of Koganei City, western Tokyo), wrote to the mayor of the city of Sinop, Baki Ergül, who had been elected in April 2014 and had steadfastly committed himself to preventing the construction of a nuclear power plant in his municipality, and to other mayors in Sinop Province. The Mayors for a Nuclear Power–­Free Japan network was established in April 2012, a year after the March 11 disaster. During its inaugural meeting in Tokyo, the mayors’ network adopted a resolution urging the Japanese national government to incorporate the goal of eliminating nuclear power exportation as an economic strategy and to promote renewable energy usage instead. The

144

Chapter Five

network was initiated by several local mayors attending the Global Conference for a Nuclear Power–­Free World, held in Yokohama, Japan, in January 2012. By September 2014, when they sent their letter to Turkey, a hundred current and retired Japanese mayors had become members. The former governor of the Fukushima Prefecture, Eisaku Sato, was an advisor to the network. A major advocate of antinuclear policies, he had frequently criticized the country’s traditional nuclear power policy while publicly accusing the government of promoting atomic energy regardless of the safety risks (see Sato 2011). In this way, local municipalities became a major force in supporting antinuclear sentiments and energy choices. On January 19, 2014, the Asahi Shimbun reported that 455 local assemblies (nearly 30% of assemblies nationwide) had approved written statements calling for the abolition of nuclear power production. The statements were submitted to the national Lower House speaker, Upper House president, and prime minister, among others. The letter from Uehara and Sato to their Turkish counterparts was translated into English and Turkish and uploaded to the mayors’ network’s website (August 19, 2014, http:​/​​/m ​ ayors​.npfree​.jp​/​?p​=​3100). The letter begins with a mission statement that has come to be shared by the heads of many local governments: As mayors who are responsible for overseeing the local government and its citizens, it is imperative to note that our first and foremost concern should be to protect the livelihoods of our residents . . . our duties maintain that economic or political gains should under no circumstance be prioritized over the health and well-­being of our citizens. . . . Our responsibility as heads of local governments dictates that we do not become silent bystanders amid the current state of affairs regarding nuclear power, but [instead] rise to the occasion to strive for a “nuclear free society.” As Japanese citizens, we share a deep sense of despair and regret over the recent Nuclear Cooperation Agreement between Japan and Turkey, and the exportation of nuclear power by Japanese enterprises to Turkey. . . . This decision to export Japanese nuclear technology has been taken despite the fact that the results of investigations along Turkey’s active fault lines have not been published. However, there is insufficient evaluation of the economic viability and, above all, the decision has been taken despite the fact that disagreement by local government and citizens has resulted in a lack of consensus on this issue. We find this deeply disturbing.

Unethical Politics

145

This letter was delivered by Akiko Yoshida of FoE Japan to the Turkish mayors of Sinop Province in August 2014.9 According to Yoshida, her group was not able to meet with Ergül, the mayor of Sinop, during their visit; however, they expressly requested that municipal officials give him the letter. Nevertheless, they did meet with the mayors of Gerze and Erfelek, municipalities neighboring Sinop, and delivered the letters in person. The mayor of Erfelek, Muzaffer Şimşek, told Yoshida that many people in Turkey had suffered from multiple forms of cancer as a result of Chernobyl. For the sake of future generations and to preserve the beautiful environment surrounding his town, he stood against the construction of a nuclear power plant. He further argued that Turkey needed to purposefully shift to renewable energy, referring to German experiences. Meanwhile, Osman Belovacıklı, the mayor of Gerze, told Yoshida that his wife was suffering from cancer and that he was resolutely against the nuclear power plant. Belovacıklı planned to install solar panels on the roof of his municipal office as the Turkish government had started providing subsidies to promote renewable energy. He said, “As a mayor, I want to do something to pull out of nuclear power. I will call other mayors to network on this matter.” Yoshida’s experiences in Turkey highlight the importance of civil society’s actions to connect locals at the grassroots level, beyond national borders. Her case shows that civil society groups can take action through formal channels to jointly envision a nuclear-­power-­f ree, sustainable society, and mayors’ personal projects can influence national energy policymaking, one of the most controversial issues in the post-­Fukushima era. Energy policy has traditionally been a state-­determined issue. However, energy policy decisions directly affect the daily life of local citizens, and it is natural for both local mayors and assembly members to undertake energy policy initiatives. In fact, after the March 11 disaster, local governments and judicial branches (see chap. 3 for examples of antinuclear verdicts in Fukui and Kyoto) became more influential in the nuclear energy policymaking process and its implementation (see Kikuchi 2021). This influence was linked to a new rule coming into effect that required a plant operator to obtain consent from all local neighboring municipalities to restart a nuclear plant (Nikkei, March 30, 2018). Japan’s energy governance became more “participatory [and] multi-­level” (Newig and Fritsch 2009), and antinuclear citizens began focusing their lobbying efforts on the local level. These citizens can become agents for change by connecting locals and sharing and enhancing grassroots antinuclear voices.

146

Chapter Five

Outcry from Asia: Don’t Export Reactors!

While observing the development of bilateral interactions between Japan and Turkey, the antinuclear sentiment was shared by many conscientious citizens who were interested in nuclear issues generally, not just the Japan-­ Turkey issue. I observed a panel titled “Outcry from Asia: Don’t Export Reactors!,” which was part of the Thematic World Social Forum on Nuclears in March 2016 in Tokyo. The forum’s weeklong schedule included a field trip to Fukushima, a rally in central Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park, and seven thematic sessions on nuclear issues at the Korean YMCA building in Kanda, Tokyo. These events were followed on the final day by an international strategy meeting, an assembly at the Upper House Members’ Office, and an international solidarity symposium on seeking rights for exposed workers. Nearly seventy people participated in this forum: forty from Japan, many from Fukushima, and thirty from outside Japan, including from India, the Philippines, Turkey, South Korea, and Taiwan.10 The World Social Forum (WSF) is a social movement that began in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, dedicated to helping developing countries and regions. It works against the dominant politico-­economic ideology of neoliberal globalization, in which developed countries take the initiative, and aims to establish a new society to replace the current world system that creates poverty and disparities. The WSF is a counter to the World Economic Forum that is regularly held in Davos, Switzerland. To draw attention to WSF’s thematic forum on nuclear power in Japan, a “Call for Endorsement and Participation” was posted on several social-­ movement websites, including Labornet (http:​/​​/​w ww​.labornetjp​.org​/​, November 30, 2015), which listed supporters from twenty-­f ive civil society groups and thirty-­six individuals across Japan. The call raised an important consideration: Our question is: Since Japan has faced  .  .  . nuclear-­related difficulties several times, why does it continue to promote the nuclear program? This tough question is one that people all over the world are asking Japanese people. The proposed forum intends to link Japanese antinuclear movements with global antinuclear movements, and it will be the first step toward achieving “another world” that is nuclear free.11

The original idea for the thematic session on nuclear technology arose during the previous WSF meeting in Tunis in 2013, during which antinuclear

Unethical Politics

147

groups from Brazil organized a session to discuss antinuclear issues with participants from Japan. In October 2014, Francisco “Chico” Whitaker Ferreira, one of the founding members of the WSF, visited Fukushima to attend a study tour organized by Green Cross International, an international environmental NGO founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union. This NGO aims “to respond to the combined challenges of security, poverty and environmental degradation to ensure a sustainable and secure future” (Green Cross International 2018). For this book, Chico Whitaker allowed me to share a proposal letter that suggested that, given Japan’s experiences of nuclear disasters, the country should hold a WSF thematic forum on nuclear power.12 Proposal: Toward the Realization of a Thematic World Social Forum on Nuclears During a study tour to Fukushima in October 2014, a Brazilian participant and Japanese antinuclear militants discussed the need for a better link between them as well as with antinuclear movements in other countries, to deepen and enlarge their action while facing interests that have an international dimension. In these discussions was born the idea of organizing, inside the process of planning the World Social Forum, a global meeting on nuclear energy in Japan, the country most affected today by a nuclear accident and the first victim of atomic bombs. In many countries, there are social movements and organizations that are struggling to phase out nuclear plants and to destroy the atomic bomb arsenals, to avoid radioactive contamination of the entire Earth and a nuclear apocalypse. A Thematic World Social Forum on Nuclears of these movements and organizations, following the World Social Forum methodology and principles—­t hat is to say, people proposing freely what they want to discuss—­ would reinforce their struggles and make it possible to design new world campaigns and initiatives. This global meeting could be realized on the fifth anniversary of Fukushima’s disaster, in March 2016. Interested organizations would have two occasions to meet to define more precisely when, how, and where the world meeting could take place: during the World Social Forum in Tunis, in March 2015, and during the activities that will be organized in Hiroshima in August 2015, on the seventieth anniversary of the explosion of the atomic bombs. The two organizations who sign this proposal, one from Brazil and the other from Japan, invite interested organizations to meet in Tunis (from March 24 to 28, 2015) to build a Facilitation Committee for the Thematic World Social Forum

148

Chapter Five on Nuclears, and to establish the first guidelines for the event and the support it will need. Those who cannot come but want to participate in this project are invited to write to us indicating their interest.13 Coalition for a Brazil Free of Nuclear Plants October 2014

As Whitaker proposed, a workshop to explore the possibility of organizing a thematic nuclear forum in Japan was arranged for March 2015 in Tunis. Toshimaru Ogura, an economist and retired professor from the University of Toyama who attended the workshop, shared his experiences with me.14 A major observation he made was that people from developing countries thought that the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident was over because of the sparse media coverage. However, through the workshop, they learned that the effects of the disaster may never end, thus realizing the dangers of nuclear power. The workshop garnered much attention; participants were interested in broad issues regarding nuclear technology. Aside from the problem of exporting nuclear power plants, for example, issues such as nuclear waste from developed countries being exported to developing countries, the rights of workers exposed to radiation at uranium mines, and weapons such as depleted uranium ammunition were addressed. Following the workshop, a group of Japanese participants, including Ogura, organized a series of study sessions in Tokyo in preparation for the Thematic World Social Forum on Nuclears in March 2016 in Tokyo. The panel “Outcry from Asia: Don’t Export Reactors!” invited activists from Turkey, India, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan. In fact, I realized that the panel was mainly led by the NNAF, which was established in 1993 in Tokyo with the main objective of creating a nuclear-­f ree Asia. A year before the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Kim Wong-­Shik, a South Korean antinuclear activist, proposed an antinuclear forum in Asia, saying, “There are no national boundaries for nuclear disaster; to survive, we need citizens’ solidarity” (NNAF 2015, 5–­6). In compliance with Kim’s remark, Daisuke Sato, the current NNAF secretary, led an initiative to organize the conference and procured consent from 1,354 individuals and 177 groups from various countries including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, the Philippines, and Indonesia (NNAF 2015, 6). In 1993, the first conference was held in Tokyo, including a series of on-­site meetings at nuclear power plants countrywide, with thirty

Unethical Politics

149

overseas participants, primarily from Asian countries including South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, India, and Turkey, in addition to Australia, the Netherlands, and France. While building a strong network for sharing information at the grassroots level and for joint research on nuclear power issues, the NNAF has held meetings every year across Asia to provide support for local campaigns in the different countries involved. The organization is a concrete face of the opposition to nuclear power proliferation in the region and the world, envisioning a nuclear-­f ree society. As Hayes and Moon (2017, 217) described, the NNAF “not only disseminates alternative information to transnationally counter pronuclear government propaganda, but it also organizes ‘counter-­conferences’ to pronuclear gatherings. Japanese government officials and companies have taken the lead in promoting nuclear plants in neighboring countries by organizing various conferences and inviting engineers from Asian countries to study the Japanese experience.” Sato told me that NNAF’s development was, in fact, a movement against the International Conference for Nuclear Cooperation in Asia, which has since changed its name to the Forum for Nuclear Cooperation in Asia (FNCA).15 Japan’s MEXT leads this cooperative framework for the peaceful use of nuclear technology in Asia, aiming to promote “cooperation in the field of nuclear power with neighboring Asian countries more efficiently” (FNCA 2018). This cooperation organizes annual meetings that have been held since 1990 as well as conducting project activities for participating countries, which include Australia, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. NNAF activists originally raised serious concerns about this pronuclear group’s practice of inviting engineers from Asian countries to Japan to study nuclear technology. One example of a counterconference sponsored by the NNAF was the International Counter Forum to the Nuclear Security Summit on March 22, 2012, held close to the first anniversary of the March 11 disaster. This counterconference to the Nuclear Security Summit took place on March 26 and 27 in Seoul, South Korea, and was attended by delegates from fifty-­t hree countries and international organizations, including the European Union, the IAEA, Interpol, and the United Nations. The summit mainly discussed three issues: cooperative measures to combat the threat of nuclear terrorism, the protection of nuclear materials and related facilities, and the prevention of the illicit

150

Chapter Five

trafficking of nuclear materials (Nuclear Security Summit 2012). This Nuclear Security Summit was originally proposed by US President Obama in his Prague speech in April 2009, when he advocated for a “world without nuclear weapons” (White House 2009). South Korean civil society groups, including People’s Action against the Seoul 2012 Nuclear Security Summit, jointly hosted the NNAF counterconference. They showcased the grassroots voices of people suffering because of nuclear power plants, inviting victims of the March 11 disaster and antinuclear citizens from Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. The groups analyzed the nuclear policies that impeded moving toward a nuclear-­ free world, using this analysis as a basis to critique the logic of nuclear security. Hayes and Moon (2017, 218) claimed that such counterconferences play a role in helping the “NNAF raise public awareness and influence political discourse” as they usually conclude by issuing action plans and joint statements. The NNAF also connects antinuclear citizens from Asian countries so they can coordinate campaigns against existing and planned nuclear power plant sites; for example, the social movements of one nation participate in meetings in other countries and seek to learn from or copy their movements, considering themselves members of transnational antinuclear communities (cf. Bourne 2017). In so doing, the NNAF aims to promote the value of solidarity and emphasize it as a key factor in the process of resource-­sharing among antinuclear citizens. The “Outcry from Asia: Don’t Export Reactors!” panel I observed as part of the Thematic World Social Forum on Nuclears was an example of the NNAF’s role in nurturing solidarity. The panel created a platform for sharing narratives opposed to nuclear power. Conscientious Japanese antinuclear citizens interested in nuclear export issues had an opportunity to hear the real voices of people from Turkey and other countries. Turkey’s Pinar Demircan spoke powerfully at the panel and even addressed listeners in Japanese. She showed a map of the Turkish region where Sinop is located and overlaid it with an earthquake map. Sinop is just 110 kilometers away from the earthquake fault line, prompting Demircan to ask why the Turkish government was trying to import nuclear power plants. At the time, there were no nuclear power plants in Turkey, but two were planned. Turkey is rich in natural resources; in particular, coal remains an abundant natural resource. Turkey’s import of natural gas from Russia accounted for nearly 50% of all its electricity generation at

Unethical Politics

151

the end of 2014. The country also has great potential for renewable energy, including hydro, wind, geothermal, solar, and biogas. Why, then, did Turkey sign a nuclear accord with Japan? Furthermore, Demircan raised another concern: “In Japan, the cost for the nuclear plant in Sinop was 22 billion dollars, but in Turkey, it was reported that the cost was 16 billion dollars. There is uncertainty regarding where the 6 billion dollars went.” She pointed out that information transparency around this deal was already an issue that was accelerating anxieties. Demircan was followed by Metin Gürbüz, a Sinop resident and leader of the Sinop Anti-­Nuclear Platform. Demircan translated Gürbüz’s Turkish for the Japanese audience. Showing a composite photograph of the site of a planned nuclear plant, Gürbüz first discussed his estimate that electricity prices would increase 53%, from the current price of 7.75 cent/kW to 10.83 cent/kW, if the nuclear plant were built. He also said that 80,000 people in the area would be affected if a nuclear accident occurred, and he raised environmental concerns, presenting pictures of a beautiful forest in the region, part of a UNESCO Natural World Heritage site. Gürbüz also mentioned that 200 types of fish have been identified in the Black Sea basin. Fishing is an important industry for the region, and 4,200 fishermen live in Sinop. Gürbüz noted that constructing a nuclear power plant would cause the fishing industry to collapse as nuclear power plants discharge hot water, which would dramatically alter the natural environment. In addition, 70% of the population in Sinop relies on agriculture for their livelihoods. He said, “As soon as Japan ratified a nuclear accord with Turkey, 225,000 trees were cut at the planned site to prepare for the construction of the nuclear power plant.” He concluded by saying, “People in Sinop do not want a nuclear power plant. It would be best not to have nuclear power plants anywhere in the world. I strongly believe so. . . . The issue is now moving from simply a domestic issue to an international, bilateral issue between Turkey and Japan. We need to collaborate more on this issue.” His talk was a powerful instance of narratives against nuclear power being shared to increase transnational solidarity. The NNAF is an important example of a civil society group that plays a role in “reinventing regions” (Fioramonti 2014, 29). Led by members of civil society, and not by the state, the NNAF is a grassroots center for the building of transnational regionalism that aims for a nuclear-­free Asia. Through the NNAF, Asia is constructing a new regionalism, the key concept of which

152

Chapter Five

is “region building,” not “regional integration” (Acharya 2012, 12). Unlike old European regionalism, in terms of the municipality of actors and informality under the institutionalization of organizations, its social construction is made and remade through interactions and the interplay between domestic and transnational actors. In fact, the current growth in the number of civil society groups in Asia (see Ogawa 2017) has been promoting a process for building solidarity that Avenell (2017) calls “grassroots regionalization,” involving transnational interconnectivity and activism that contributes to the creation of regional civil societies and public spheres within and across Asia (see also Avenell and Ogawa 2021). Cross-­regional initiatives among civil society actors currently serve as pathways for the transformation of domestic civil societies and provide alternative spaces for citizens to reimagine and reconstruct a region from the grassroots up. Through the provision of specialist support, material resources, and general know-­how, the initiatives of these actors can address major socioeconomic challenges faced by national and subnational communities, including humanitarianism, gender issues, historical reconciliation, environmental protection, human rights, minority empowerment, and migration. Civil society is the main driver of this emerging force, and the NNAF is a leading example of a group that is organizing region-­building efforts to create an antinuclear future. Local domestic actors can use the NNAF as a platform to jointly build “infrastructure” (Larkin 2013) across imaginative spaces for a nuclear-­f ree Asia, thus enhancing the connectivity or solidarity of pan-­A sian and transnational activism among antinuclear citizens.

Unethical Politics: Japan’s Export Actions

Japanese nuclear power politics are “unethical.” Taking a closer look at Turkey can provide us with two primary reasons why. First, Japan was trying to export its nuclear technology to one of the most earthquake-­prone countries in the world. The Turkish letter that was submitted to the Japanese National Diet explained: Turkey, just like Japan, exists upon seismically active geography, yet unlike Japan, it is quite unprepared for the risks of major earthquakes. . . . This alone massively amplifies the risks of operating nuclear power plants in Turkey. If the Turkish prime minister’s endeavors are taken seriously by his Japanese coun-

Unethical Politics

153

terparts, eliminating the future nuclear risks on earthquake-­prone Turkish soil will be a task for not just the immediate generations but also countless innocent generations to come, and Japan will share the blame. (Turkish Antinuclear Alliance, January 2014)

Given that the crisis caused by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident was far from resolved, Japan should have reconsidered promoting the export of such problematic technology to a seismically active terrain. Moreover, the ratification of the bilateral agreements needed for the export of nuclear power technology came at a time when antinuclear sentiment persisted among the Japanese public. Ever the salesman, Abe called Japan’s nuclear power technology “the world’s safest.” However, the Mainichi Shimbun (October 15, 2013) reported that at least 40% of the nuclear power equipment and components exported from Japan in the previous decade to eighteen countries and areas (including Taiwan, Brazil, and Sweden) had not passed its own safety certification process. Japan’s nuclear power generation technology, it must be remembered, has been far from perfect. The transnational network between Japan and Turkey stressed the need for a strict safety regime; however, despite appearances, Japan has no independent organization to shoulder the responsibility for checking and approving the safety of exported nuclear power infrastructure, equipment, and technology. Previously, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Genshiryoku anzen hoan in), a METI subsidiary, was responsible for handling the necessary safety checks. There was a conflict of interest, however, as METI was also responsible for promoting nuclear power. After the March 11 disaster, in 2012, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was dissolved and replaced by the Nuclear Regulation Authority, founded as part of the Ministry of the Environment. This organization appeared to be more independent and transparent, and its regular Wednesday meetings at its Roppongi headquarters were open to the public. However, I observed that public safety police always watched the attendees. Further, the chair and four members of the Nuclear Regulation Authority are primarily selected from the Japanese nuclear village, and concerns surrounding safety checks linger. What is worse, these five members have the power to make all decisions on Japan’s nuclear policy. Previously, an elected minister had the power to make such

154

Chapter Five

decisions, and we citizens had the power to remove the minister via elections. Currently, the prime minister appoints these five members. Thus, concerns over the independence and neutrality of this regulation authority persist (see Shindo 2017). Another major reason that Japan’s export actions are considered unethical is that it has attempted to export technology to countries deemed undemocratic, such as Turkey. Indeed, many Turkish people expected the Japanese to seriously reconsider their unethical decision, realizing their moral responsibility to prevent the export of nuclear technology to Turkey. The above-­mentioned letter from the Turkish Antinuclear Alliance highlighted “un-­democratic practice[s]” as a primary reason for sentiments against the nuclear reactors: Turkey is deviating from the practices of a modern democracy, becoming more and more authoritarian under the current government; the people’s will on vital issues is dismissed. Evading ecologically sustainable energy options, the government has imposed obscure nuclear plans on the nation without any due debate either within its party program or in parliament. The method of promoting these nuclear agreements is very much in line with the rest of the undemocratic practices of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). (Turkish Antinuclear Alliance, January 2014)

Several symbolic indicators for assessing democracy, including freedom of the press and the freedoms of expression and assembly, have become strictly limited in Turkey. Government restrictions on YouTube and Twitter have hinted at the Turkish government’s troubles and concerns (see Reuters, March 21, 2014), and corruption claims against Erdoğan have become increasingly prominent. In 2013, Turkey ranked fifty-­t hird out of 177 countries and regions on Transparency International’s corruption perception index. This ranking has likely further deteriorated since, as the list was published months before Turkish corruption and bribery scandals flooded international news in December 2013. Furthermore, the Turkish Antinuclear Alliance’s letter noted that the Turkish-­Japanese nuclear agreement, which was signed by Erdoğan in May 2013, had been signed by four Turkish ministers who were subsequently forced to leave their posts because of corruption charges. Under these circumstances, in January 2014, Erdoğan visited Japan to review the bilateral nuclear agreement with Abe. However, the Turkish people were not informed of the

Unethical Politics

155

visit: the Turkish media were not provided with details of the official meeting, and only a select few journalists were allowed to accompany Erdoğan. Ultimately, the biggest concern was related to nuclear proliferation under such a government. Indeed, Japan’s exportation of these technologies could become a major trigger point with the potential to cause further destabilization of the power balance in the Middle East. The agreement also contained clauses that enabled Turkey to provide weapons-­g rade plutonium to other parties in the Middle East, which was already (and continues to be) a geopolitically unstable region. In September 2019, Erdoğan suggested the possibility of future nuclear weapon possession: “Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads, not one or two. But (they tell us) we can’t have them” (Reuters, September 5, 2019). In a statement following the Japanese National Diet’s ratification of the bilateral agreement, FoE Japan (2014) pointed out that the enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear materials was normally prohibited. However, the Japan-­Turkey agreement stated that the enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear materials would be permitted in Turkey, provided there was written consent from both contracting countries. This provision for uranium enrichment and plutonium extraction, products of which could then be transformed into nuclear weapons, runs counter to international nuclear nonproliferation mandates. This clause also causes further concern that the accord could lead to the development of nuclear warheads. Japan’s foreign minister at the time, Fumio Kishida, officially denied that Japan would give consent to Turkey’s enrichment and reprocessing of such nuclear substances (Nikkei, April 4, 2014). Yet the security balance in the Middle East could dramatically change in the future, and Japan could, thus, be positioned to play a significant role in changing the region’s security dynamics. The countries to which Japan intended to export nuclear technology—­ Turkey, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, and so on—­a ll needed to further develop mandates of democratic transparency and accountability in their societies and politics. Unfortunately, and perhaps obviously, they needed to take these directives seriously, especially while the residents of Japan’s nuclear village were intentionally targeting these countries to sell their products. At the least, access to nuclear technology exports would need to be restricted to vibrant, transparent democracies. Moreover, the increasing civil society interactions transcending national borders would hopefully facilitate

156

Chapter Five

the continued strengthening of common democratic values. Many of these interactions were aimed at furthering the antinuclear movement worldwide. Roland Simbulan of the University of the Philippines claimed in the keynote speech for the NNAF’s twenty-­f ifth anniversary meeting in Manila in November 2018 that “open, transparent and democratic societies allow people to have space for dialogue and debate in deciding energy policy. Such [a] democratic atmosphere and political environment will not allow nuclear power.” Simbulan has been a supporter of the local antinuclear movement against the operation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP)—­t he first nuclear power plant built in Southeast Asia, in 1984.16 He further asserted that such a democratic atmosphere and political environment “will inevitably promote a sustainable energy policy that encourages conservation, enhances energy efficiency, and taps renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, ocean, micro-­ hydraulic, biomass, geothermal, among others.”17 In aiming to “transform  .  .  . the dominant processes of policymaking” (Kothari 2002, 232) and the “structures [of] corporate capitalism” (238) that dominate the mentality of the nuclear village (in, but not limited to, Japan), civil society groups must collaborate more. Simbulan also suggested that to promote antinuclear, renewable energy, “the peace forces, environmental groups and anti-­nuclear organizations, together with their allies in the Asian peoples’ movements such as in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, India, etc., are confronted with challenges, as NNAF enters the next quarter of the century.”18 Conscientious antinuclear citizens should carefully formulate a cohesive strategy and continue to build solid relationships with other transnational protest or global justice movements. The ongoing action against nuclear technology exports could generate a new transnational activism against nuclear power; ultimately, these developments could enhance the political legitimacy of protests against rigid, undemocratic states. In this case, Japan’s unethical practices united citizens to demand ethical political action.

The Quiet Flow of Time

On December 4, 2018, Nikkei reported that a Japanese-­led public-­private consortium was set to abandon the Sinop nuclear power project that had been touted as a model of Tokyo’s infrastructure export. The report attributed the project’s abandonment to its JPY 5 trillion cost (USD 44 billion), nearly double the original estimate, which made it difficult for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries,

Unethical Politics

157

the lead builder, and its partners to continue. Nikkei also reported that another reason to abandon the plan was the heightened safety requirements introduced in the wake of the March 11 disaster. Additionally, the cost increase and deteriorating profitability of the project had been further exacerbated by the more than 30% fall of the Turkish lira over the previous year. When I heard this news, I reached out to Demircan, who told me that Nikkei’s inside scoop was a welcome surprise. However, since no official announcement had been made by the Turkish or Japanese governments about abandoning the plan, people remained cautious. There was silence—­the governments of Turkey and Japan neither confirmed nor denied this report. Earlier in 2018, Nikkei (April 24, 2018) had reported that Itochu was backing away from a nuclear power plant project in Turkey because of a surge in safety-­related costs. Itochu was part of the consortium led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and was responsible for the Japan-­Turkey project. At the end of March 2018, Itochu withdrew from a consortium that had been conducting a feasibility study for a 4,500 MW plant in Sinop. In fact, Nikkei (March 15, 2018) had already reported that these feasibility studies showed that the construction cost of a proposed nuclear power plant in Sinop had ballooned to nearly double the original estimate. Two weeks after Nikkei’s scoop, Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez said that the trees in the region had not been cut down for a nuclear power plant project but for “industrial use” (Hürriyet Daily News, December 17, 2018). I understood that these were the 650,000 trees that had been cut down in preparation for the construction of the Sinop nuclear power plant, having heard the story from Demircan when I met her in Manila during the NNAF’s twenty-­f ifth anniversary meeting in November 2018. In 2016, during the “Outcry from Asia Panel” at the WSF thematic forum on nuclear power, I learned that 225,000 trees had been cut down to clear land for the planned nuclear power plant over just a couple years. One month after the original Nikkei scoop, the Mainichi Shimbun reported on January 4, 2019, that the Japanese government was expected to effectively withdraw its plans to build a nuclear power plant in Turkey, citing Japanese sources who were familiar with the bilateral decision. According to the article, Japan had asked Ankara to invest a significantly larger amount of funds into the project amid ballooning safety costs, but this demand was likely to be rejected. Before visiting Japan for a G-­20 meeting in Osaka six months later,

158

Chapter Five

Erdoğan gave an exclusive interview to the Nikkei Asian Review (June 27, 2019), in which he acknowledged that the 2013 agreement between Japan and Turkey to build a nuclear power plant in Sinop was dead. The article reported that the estimate provided by the Japanese, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, was, according to Erdoğan, “not compatible with our initial agreement in terms of both cost and project calendar.” In fact, Erdoğan also responded to Turkish media (BIANET, June 27, 2019), saying, “The feasibility study report and cost analysis, which was prepared by the Japanese side, was examined by our relevant institutions in detail. We met a picture that is not compatible with our initial agreement in terms of both cost and project calendar.” The Nikkei Asian Review (June 27, 2019) article further claimed that Erdoğan stressed cooperation in other areas, such as “clean coal, renewable energy, R&D work, developing human resources and transportation projects.” Meanwhile, the Japanese government did not issue an official announcement or follow up on the project’s abandonment after Erdoğan’s comments. My concerns increased when I read a Turkish news article that reported that Erdoğan had ordered the acceleration of a nuclear power plant project (Turkish Minute, August 16, 2019) and had mentioned measures that should be taken regarding nuclear power plants. He stressed that the work carried out by the relevant public institutions should be finalized immediately in order to complete the projects without delay and that all types of support needed for nuclear power plant projects would be provided. This confusing information drove me to visit Turkey in September 2019. I arrived in Istanbul late, spent the night there, and took an early morning flight to Sinop, the northernmost point of Anatolia, nearly 700 kilometers east of Istanbul. Flying into Sinop airport, I saw blue sea lit by the sun and a picturesque rural landscape with a vast forest rolling beneath me. There was a splendid harmony of green and blue tones. As I exited the plane, the Black Sea town welcomed me with beautiful, end-­of-­summer Mediterranean weather. Demircan was waiting for me in arrivals with Bülent, an activist from a local antinuclear group. Shortly after lunchtime, I asked my hosts to take me to Cape Inceburun—­ the planned site for the Japan-­made nuclear plant where 650,000 trees had been cut, approximately an hour’s drive from the city. On the way, we visited Sami, a concerned resident whose home was just fourteen kilometers from the planned nuclear power plant site. Sami and his wife enjoyed a quiet, peace-

Unethical Politics

159

ful life, which I would say approached self-­sufficiency. Vegetables and fruits were available in their garden, and Sami’s wife prepared a dessert made with autumn berries for me. When asked about the proposed nuclear power plant, Sami told us that he initially believed it would bring him money: he thought he would be able to sell his land. However, after reflection, he came to realize that it would be troublesome—­t hey would not have anything to eat nor be able to swim in the Black Sea. When asked about reports that Japanese manufacturers had abandoned the nuclear plant plan, Sami said, “I’ve heard that news. But I don’t believe that the plan will completely fall through.” He believed that China or Russia might come to build a nuclear power plant. The land was already prepared for it. Acres had been deforested. There was also a rumor that a waste treatment facility might be built. As soon as he began touching upon national security issues, his facial expression tightened: “It would take only twenty minutes for nuclear weapons to reach Cape Inceburun from Russia. The proposed nuclear power plant would be an easy target for an attack from Russia.”19 Cape Inceburun is located directly across the Black Sea from the city of Sevastopol in Ukraine. Sami’s story reminded me of Turkey’s military position in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization); it is one of NATO’s biggest and strongest military powers. On the drive to Cape Inceburun, I enjoyed the richness of nature on display—­forests, rivers, birds, turtles, and fruits. We even stopped the car to pick and eat wild figs (I later learned that Turkey is the world’s top fig producer). At first, I felt as if I was visiting a remote, untouched island, yet the landscape gradually changed. Green gave way to the brown of soil and rugged stones as we drove along the coast and reached the planned site for the nuclear power plant. Originally, there had been a forest on the site, which was all gone. The trees had probably been cut a couple of years earlier, and tough shrubs had already begun to grow on the brown rock. There were no words to describe the desolate scene: the rich nature I had encountered on my way to the site contrasted starkly with the deserted land in front of me. The following day, I visited the municipal office to meet A. Hakan Sönmez, the deputy mayor of Sinop. He started our conversation by saying, “We continue to make serious efforts to not let the nuclear power plant be built in Sinop. The Turkish [national] government will never give up and we will work with antinuclear groups.” I saw that he took a cautious attitude toward Ankara. He told me that the planned land site was currently directly managed

160

Chapter Five

Figure 5.1 Site of planned nuclear power plant, Cape Inceburun, Sinop, on September 15, 2019. Photo by the author.

by the national government, or the Energy Ministry, and not the municipal government. He continued, “As trees have already been cut down, they will need to construct something on this land anyway. A waste treatment facility might come, although the facility would not be limited to nuclear waste.”20 People in Sinop have continued to elect antinuclear mayors over the decades. The previous mayor of Sinop, Baki Ergül, spoke strongly against the national government’s nuclear policy. Deputy Mayor Sönmez was influenced by Ali Karagülle, who served as mayor of Sinop from 1989 to 1999. The first proposal to construct a nuclear power plant had arisen in 1992. Karagülle was strongly against the proposal, claiming, “The nuclear power plant will never be realized here in Sinop. Otherwise, it will be over my dead body” (comments gained through the interview with Deputy Mayor Sönmez). More than 60% of Sinop’s population, and 80% of residents in Sinop’s central areas, were against the nuclear power plant’s construction. Others supported it, mainly because it would bring new jobs. As a possible point of cooperation between antinuclear and pronuclear factions, the municipal administration promoted renewable energy production. Deputy Mayor Sönmez showed me a funding application they were making to the European Union; with the money awarded, they

Unethical Politics

161

would make all electricity used in the municipal office renewable, creating new jobs in the production of environmentally friendly and sustainable energy. During my visit to Sinop, I was reunited with Metin Gürbüz, head of the Sinop Anti-­Nuclear Platform. Gürbüz reminded me of how meaningful it had been for him to visit Japan and to meet antinuclear citizens there and in other countries. When asked to consider the most important element of his activism, Gürbüz responded, “We are fighting not as individuals but as a group of ‘antinuclear citizens.’ The goal is to ban nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons around the world. Whether the planned location is home to a desert or a rich landscape, nuclear power plants should not be built.” Further, when questioned how their actions had impacted Japan’s withdrawal from the Sinop project, he said, “As our continuing actions against the nuclear power plants are here in Sinop, they can’t go as smoothly as originally planned. We are just here to prevent the government from building the nuclear power plant. . . . However, our fight is far from over. We have not heard any official statement of abandonment from our government. We will keep fighting until we do.”21 Gürbüz’s continuing actions reminded me of an argument by Rebecca Johnson, a British peace activist who claimed that the objective of civil society groups is “not to replace governments or usurp their decision-­making authority but to inform and persuade governments and businesses to adopt or abandon certain policies or positions” (Johnson 1999, 71, emphasis added). As antinuclear citizens persistently enhance their actions, Sinop is not the only site where a nuclear power plant has failed to materialize. Nuclear power is no longer sustainable or profitable due to higher safety requirements following the March 11 disaster. In 2012, a national referendum in Lithuania voted down a project to build a nuclear power plant led by Japanese manufacturer Hitachi (Nikkei, October 15, 2012). In 2016, the former Lithuanian energy minister said that the Visaginas nuclear power plant (VAE) project, in which Hitachi was involved, was “dead” and acknowledged that the VAE would not be economically beneficial at that time (Baltic Course, April 13, 2016). In 2016, Vietnam also abandoned its nuclear power plant plans with Japan, primarily due to “fears of rising public debts” as “the project’s cost had ballooned to VND 400 trillion (USD 19 billion), nearly double the initial figure, affecting its feasibility” (Dan Tri News, November 10, 2016; see also Ito and Yoshii 2015; Yoshii 2018).22 Thereafter, in 2019, Hitachi (2019) also decided to freeze a British nu-

162

Chapter Five

clear project due to swelling costs. Hitachi’s subsidiary, Horizon, was planning to build new nuclear reactors at Wylfa Newydd (Welsh for New Wylfa) on Anglesey Island in northern Wales. This was to be a new nuclear station on a site adjacent to the old nuclear plant at Wylfa, which was built in the 1960s and began operation in 1971. This global trend was then followed by Taiwan, when a majority of its voters rejected a referendum proposal to unseal and restart construction of the Longmen Nuclear Power Plant, also known as the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, in December 2021 (Taipei Times, December 28, 2021).23 Antinuclear sentiment has been developing in civil society around the world. Grassroots antinuclear voices have risen from this civil society, and their sentiments have affected policymaking and business strategies. Before Hitachi made its decision on the Wylfa Newydd power plant, I attended a meeting in Tokyo in May 2018, to which Japanese NGOs had invited people fighting against its construction. One of the Welsh participants shared her experience with the Japanese audience. She noted that during the Cold War, nuclear power generation had been justified as a stable electricity source; however, she had gradually realized that this was a lie and that its primary purpose was to produce plutonium (which can be used for nuclear weapons). Further, the Welsh nuclear power plant was supposed to create new jobs but did not: fifty years later, the area remained one of the United Kingdom’s poorest. Nuclear power plants have the greatest negative consequences for the poor in every country in which they are constructed. All the people I met as I chased transnational antinuclear networks reminded me of what Nancy Fraser (1990, 67) called “subaltern counter publics”—­parallel discursive entities that go against pronuclear governance. These people, or what I have been calling antinuclear citizens, were mostly nonelite, voiceless locals, including farmers, fishermen, factory workers, the elderly, and women, who had connected and formed grassroots solidarity in response to their exclusion from the dominant publics, with the view that their existence better promotes the ideal of inclusivity and “participatory parity” (Fraser 1990, 63). Solidarity shaped by transnational connections enhances grassroots antinuclear voices through information sharing and activist strategies against the pronuclear camp. In doing so, the people I met empowered themselves to dispute the contradictory claims that their governments made. They were active participants or agents who were able to react to and reshape nuclear power discourse on both a local and global scale. They

Unethical Politics

163

Figure 5.2 Sunset over the Black Sea at Cape Inceburun, Sinop, on September 15, 2019. Photo by the author.

refused to be victims of the nuclear disasters that were sure to follow Chernobyl and Fukushima. The local and global are mutually constitutive, and the actions of all antinuclear citizens aim to protect what they value most: a quiet, ordinary life. During my Sinop visit, I accompanied Demircan, Bülent, and some locals on a Black Sea fishing trip. We hung fishing lines from the boat, with a view of the beautiful landscape. I felt as if there was a quiet flow of time that would continue forever there. We only took the fish we needed, which we asked a restaurant on shore to cook. We went out on the boat again at sunset and ate the fish with a local vegetable salad. We did not talk about the proposed nuclear power plant. It felt as if no words were needed. I understood that what I had experienced that day was what people in Sinop had been doing for thousands of years: their lives were irreplaceably tied to the Black Sea. The sun set over the water. All was peaceful. It was hard to remember the nuclear power plant. Nobody can destroy this quiet flow of time, I thought.

SI X

State of Exception

“Creative Reconstruction” Again

As of March 11, 2021—­t he tenth anniversary of the March 11 disaster—­Japan remained in a state of nuclear emergency. Under the state of nuclear emergency, the Japanese government envisioned that society would become more resilient as a result of the annual 20 mSv radiation exposure threshold for residents in Fukushima Prefecture, otherwise referred to as what Agamben calls a “state of exception” (2005). This vision provided the government with a strong rationale for dynamic interventions for reconstruction, or fukkō, after the March 11 disaster. Such efforts were even supported by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–­2030, an international agreement that recognizes that while reducing disaster risk is primarily the state’s responsibility, this responsibility should be shared with other stakeholders, including local government and the private sector (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015). The Sendai Framework was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly following the 2015 Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and is a fifteen-­year, voluntary, nonbinding agreement. Prior to its finalization, calls were made for the development of practical guidance to support its implementation, ensure the engagement and ownership of action of all stakeholders, and strengthen their accountability in disaster risk reduction. This policy effort is reminiscent of those following the Great Hanshin-­ Awaji Earthquake of 1995. At that time, the Japanese government developed a national campaign for reconstruction, coining the term sozōteki fukkō or “creative reconstruction.” The term was first used in Japan by Toshitami Kaihara, governor of Hyogo Prefecture, to describe the reconstruction policy implemented in the wake of the Hanshin-­Awaji Earthquake of January 17, 1995: 164

State of Exception

165

Considering the role that Japan should play in the twenty-­f irst century, having a new urban function will lead to a true reconstruction [of Kobe, a city in Hyogo Prefecture]. What new features should the city possess? They are not to be found in the development of hard forms of power, such as the military and economic power that has been sought by previous civilizations. Rather, these features require the development of soft forms of power such as “peace technology.” . . . In this reconstruction, I wanted to focus on urban development to create an environment where people could live in peace. I wanted to shed light on the importance of considering the fields of health, medical care, welfare, art, the environment, disaster prevention, and economic management, with their foundations in business ethics, in urban reconstruction. I called this effort creative reconstruction. (Kaihara 2009, 123, emphasis added)

Kaihara’s term “creative reconstruction” suggests the idea of rebuilding something better than it was before. In other words, creative reconstruction involves the redevelopment of local regions that were already in decline in response to changes in their political and economic situations, undertaking improvements that were necessary prior to the disaster, rather than merely restoring them to their previous state. On April 11, 2011, one month after the March 11 disaster, “creative reconstruction” was used again by the Reconstruction Design Council in response to the Great East Japan Earthquake (Higashi nihon daishinsai fukkō kōsō kaigi). This government-­established advisory panel of intellectual figures met weekly until June 2011 and was upgraded to the Reconstruction Agency in October 2012. The panel’s opening statement declared: For Japan to reconstruct itself successfully in the wake of the unprecedented devastation brought by the Great East Japan Earthquake, it is essential that all citizens living in this nation—­not just the disaster’s survivors and the residents of affected regions—­play their own roles in the recovery efforts, guided by a spirit of mutual support and solidarity.  .  .  . It is also vital that the process of recovery not be limited to simply picking up the pieces, but instead be geared toward creative reconstruction that looks ahead to the future. (Reconstruction Design Council 2011a, emphasis added)

Thus, creative reconstruction is an innovative, proactive, and even entrepreneurial form of reconstruction. The concept was repeatedly used by the Japanese government after the Great East Japan Earthquake while promoting the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, which were scheduled for 2020

166

Chapter Six

and postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-­19 pandemic. In fact, the Japanese government emphasized its desire to use the Olympics in its reconstruction efforts after the March 11 disaster. Prime Minister Abe touched on the subject of Fukushima in Tokyo’s final presentation for the Olympics and Paralympics bid in Buenos Aires in September 2013, claiming that the government would never put Tokyo in harm’s way: “Some may have concerns about Fukushima. Let me assure you, the situation is under control. It has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo” (Prime Minister’s Office, 2013, emphasis added). Furthermore, in a policy speech made at the National Diet on January 20, 2020, Abe renamed the Olympic Games the “Reconstruction Olympics” or fukkō gorin (Prime Minister’s Office 2020), marking a pivotal moment in the Japanese-­state-­led reconstruction after the March 11 disaster. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics were used as a rationale for promoting an expedited post-­Fukushima reconstruction. This has been a creative reconstruction, signifying not only the redevelopment of the disaster-­affected community but also implying the dynamic reorganization of Japanese society as a whole. In the following sections, I examine the major challenges in the redevelopment of the industrial infrastructure in the Hamadōri area in the name of the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework—­a reconstruction policy announced in June 2014. The reconstruction process following the March 11 disaster has not merely focused on restoring the disaster-­stricken area to its original condition: it has been a dynamic engineering effort that aimed to contribute to the national economy by establishing a research base for new technology that is sustainable enough to withstand the new 20 mSv per year threshold.

Hamadōri

I visited Hamadōri three times during this research. While I often visited Fukushima City in Nakadōri to see my research collaborators, I limited my visits to the Hamadōri area primarily due to concerns about radiation exposure. I was extremely careful to limit my exposure to the radiation during each of these visits. My first visit to the Hamadōri area was on August 11, 2015, as part of a trip made by a group of researchers and graduate students (documented in chap. 4). It took four years after the March 11 disaster for me to feel comfortable enough to go there for even an hour. Our destination was Iitate Village in northern Hamadōri, a ninety-­minute drive from Fukushima City.

State of Exception

167

On the way, I saw many construction vehicles crossing the road. There were abandoned houses, shops, and schools—­evidence that human beings once lived here. As we arrived in Iitate Village, on its border with Kawamata Town, I saw prefabricated buildings over the fence, which were used as a primary school operated by the Iitate municipal government for the young children of evacuees from Iitate who had settled in Kawamata. It was explained to me that some parts of Kawamata Town had not been included in the evacuation areas; as one of the most mountainous areas in Fukushima Prefecture, where the wind direction frequently changes due to high altitude, radiation plumes did not hit Kawamata as they did Iitate on March 15, 2011. We were hosted by Hachiro Sato, a member of the Iitate Village council. I thought it impressive when he told us, “If you see something unusual happening to the hardwood or garden trees, there is no reason to believe that something similar isn’t happening to human beings.” Sato continued, “The area [of Iitate Village] is 230 square kilometers, and only 15% [of it] has been decontaminated. However, the Abe cabinet has decided that we should return to the area in twenty months.” He added, “This is a battle over the right to life.”1 Later, I found out that few former Iitate residents had returned to the area after the evacuation order was lifted. As of May 1, 2017, only 303 people had returned, and 5,701 people remained evacuated (Iitate Village Office 2017). Among the evacuees, 5,351 people had evacuated to other municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture, 325 people had evacuated to areas outside the prefecture, and the whereabouts of twenty-­f ive evacuees were unknown. On my way back to Fukushima City, I observed the peaceful, rural landscape. It was as if nothing had occurred, as nuclear radiation is neither visible nor has a smell; however, there were no cows in the barns nor workers at the granite-­cutting sites—­a major local industry. The thought crossed my mind that Iitate, a beautiful village with a spirit of madei, would never be restored to what it had been—­nor be rebuilt better. My second visit to the area was on October 1, 2018, with Hiroko Aihara, a Fukushima-­ based independent journalist. On the drive south from Fukushima City, we traversed the difficult-­to-­return zone that stretched for nearly fifteen kilometers, from Namie to Futaba to Okuma and Tomioka.2 As we approached northern Namie, where the difficult-­to-­return zone began, all the traffic lights at the intersections were blinking yellow. We drove at the fifty kilometers per hour speed limit and were not allowed to stop the car;

168

Chapter Six

the windows had to be kept closed, and the air conditioner had to be set to in-­vehicle circulation. Cyclists and pedestrians were not allowed in the zone. Even in the car, we wore face masks. I was told that such restrictions would not be lifted until the yearly radiation dose fell below 20 mSv per year. I saw rows of houses behind barricades marked with “no entry” signs and abandoned shops and gas stations, all overgrown with weeds. As we passed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the dosimeter I held was pointing at 2.767 µSv per hour. I felt anxious. I also saw several construction workers in full radiation protective clothing—­I could not determine their age or gender. They looked as if they stood there all day in all kinds of weather, dust flying about them. Most of the oncoming cars were construction vehicles, although a few were buses carrying nuclear plant workers. I worried about their hazardous working conditions. One of the cars in the parking lot had the number plate of my hometown, Gifu, which is located more than 600 kilometers away from Fukushima.3 Heading further south, we entered Tomioka, where most of the houses had been wiped out by the tsunami and new ones were being built as the evacuation order for this area had been partially lifted. JR Tomioka station had

Figure 6.1 An abandoned gas station on National Route 6 on October 1, 2018. Photo by the author.

State of Exception

169

Figure 6.2 Blockade at Namie Town in the difficult-to-return zone on October 1, 2018. Photo by the author.

resumed operation, but no northbound trains were running yet (they began running as of March 14, 2020), and only southbound trains to destinations such as Iwaki and Mito were available. Nobody was inside the station. Outside, a couple of taxi drivers were waiting for the rare passenger—­most likely government officials or researchers visiting to conduct decommissioning work in one of the national facilities. My third visit was on June 24, 2019. I extended my trip up to the north, traveling from Iwaki to Hirono, Naraha, Tomioka, Okuma, Namie, and Minamisoma in the Hamadōri area. My main aim was to observe the state of the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework. I decided to go to Hamadōri after hearing about the Japanese government’s decision to partially lift the mandatory evacuation order for 40% of Okuma Town’s total land on April 10, 2019. The lifting of the evacuation order was the first of its kind for a host town of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Meanwhile, Futaba, a neighboring town that straddles the nuclear power plant along with Okuma, remained a no-­go zone. Some 10,000 Okuma residents could return to their homes for the first time in eight years. However, 59.3% of the original Okuma population decided not to return, and only 12.5% expressed an interest in returning or

170

Chapter Six

were hopeful of doing so (Reconstruction Agency 2018, 10). Only 9.3% of the younger generation (teenagers and individuals in their twenties) were interested in returning; they were reluctant to move back to their original homes as they experienced a lingering fear of exposure to radiation, and, of course, some had already established bases for work and school elsewhere. Four days after the evacuation order was lifted in Okuma, Prime Minister Abe visited the defunct Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It was his first visit in five and a half years. Abe wore a business suit on a tour of the plant, a noticeable contrast to five years prior when he had worn a special head-­to-­toe protective suit and face mask. His apparel gave the impression that the decontamination process had progressed significantly. His visit was part of the government’s effort to highlight Japan’s revival and safety as the country prepared to host the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. Abe said, “I want to showcase the ‘Reconstruction Olympics’ to the world with the people in Fukushima. I want to show the world the progress we have made in reconstructing Fukushima” (Asahi Shimbun, April 15, 2019). He also visited the J-­Village national soccer training center in Naraha, which was temporarily used in 2011 as an operational base for the nuclear crisis where TEPCO employees and other workers changed into their protective clothing before heading to the defunct plant. The Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games announced in March 2019 that the Japanese leg of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic torch relay would start at the J-­Village soccer facility on March 26, 2020, although it was later postponed to March 25, 2021, due to the COVID-­19 pandemic. The J-­Village was fully reopened for the first time in eight years on April 20, 2019, with a new indoor soccer field where people did not need to worry about radiation exposure. When I visited, the radiation survey meter located in the J-­Village parking lot read 0.120 µSv per hour, less than the Japanese government’s official 0.23 µSv per hour decontamination threshold. However, in December 2019, Greenpeace Japan (2019) revealed that the radiation levels around J-­Village Stadium were as high as 71 µSv per hour at surface level, 1,775 times higher than the 0.04 µSv per hour measurement prior to the March 11 disaster. Greenpeace Japan sent a letter to Japan’s environmental minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, demanding immediate decontamination measures and assurance that the public would not be exposed to radiation hot spots during the Olympic and Paralympic events at J-­Village.

State of Exception

171

Simultaneously, IPPNW Germany (2019) issued a statement on the radiation risk, arguing that the Olympic Games should not be exploited to distract from the fate of the people affected by the reactor meltdown but that the needs, worries, and demands of these people should be properly addressed. The organization tried to do just that with its campaign “Tokyo 2020—­The Radioactive Olympics,” stating, “We are concerned about the health consequences of radioactive contamination, especially for people with an increased vulnerability to radiation, such as pregnant women and children” (IPPNW European Affiliates 2019). In sum, the premature reopening of J-­Village and the disregard for visitors’ safety is another example of the Japanese government’s failure to put the health of its citizens (as well as that of Olympic athletes and spectators) first in the face of the Fukushima crisis.

The Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework

Minamisoma City, a coastal area in Fukushima Prefecture, was overwhelmed by tsunami debris in March 2011. The city is now being transformed into a research hub for the high technology industry under the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework—­a national policy designed to revitalize industrial bases in the Hamadōri area, including Minamisoma. In fact, since 2018, Minamisoma has hosted the Fukushima Robot Test Field, which is “the world’s first test base for drone operation and controlling long-­distance flights” (METI 2018). Both domestic and foreign entities can use the extensive site—­approximately thirteen square kilometers or fifty hectares stretching between Minamisoma City and Namie Town—­as a “wide-­area flight zone” for drone demonstration experiments. On an area of flat ground created by the tsunami stands a communication tower: a multifunctional facility that enables flight control, in-­ flight monitoring, long-­range and interdrone communication, and weather monitoring to ensure safe drone flights across the flight zone. Fukushima Prefecture has invested about JPY 71.3 billion (USD 662 million) into this test site (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2018). According to the wire service Jiji Press (December 21, 2018), Japan Post Company and convenience store operator Lawson jointly tested a wagon-­t ype delivery robot in Minamisoma in a bid to counter labor shortages in the transport sector due to the rise of online shopping. The robot transported postal items and products by moving between tents that represented a post office, a convenience store, and a customer’s house. Jiji concluded that the artificial

172

Chapter Six

intelligence–­equipped robot can travel at a maximum speed of six kilometers per hour and carry up to 100 kilograms. Furthermore, Nikkei (April 11, 2019) reported that the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO; Shin enerugī sangyō gijutsu sōgō kaihatsu kikō) and Minamisoma City had signed a cooperation agreement to promote human resource development related to robots and drones using the Fukushima Robot Test Field. According to the robot industry promotion manager in charge of the developments in Minamisoma City, more than a hundred companies had conducted demonstration tests at the Fukushima Robot Test Field by that point, and the increased number of visitors had positively affected the area’s economy. The Innovation Coast Framework spans the length of National Route 6, which passes through the municipalities that host major nuclear facilities: Tokaimura Village, Japan’s national center for nuclear research; Okuma and Namie, where the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located; and finally, Naraha, the location of the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant. This policy framework was initiated in 2017 and has been generating new opportunities for the area, such as the growth of new industrial clusters and human resources development. More specifically, it prioritizes five projects: (1) the construction of hubs for research and development, (2) the education and promotion of industrial clusters, (3) the promotion of development within living environments, (4) the increase of the nonresident population and of visitors to the region, and (5) the enhancement of cooperation among various regional entities. In undertaking these projects, the framework supports technological development in the fields of robotics, energy, agriculture, forestry and fishery management, and nuclear power plant decommissioning (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2018). Originally, the idea for the Innovative Coast Framework appeared in the Vision for Revitalization in Fukushima Prefecture (Fukushimaken fukkō bijon), which was compiled in August 2011, shortly after the March 11 disaster (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2011a). “Building a safe, secure, and sustainable society free from nuclear power” in the prefecture was one of the key concepts this policy document promoted, along with “revitalization that brings together everyone who loves and cares about Fukushima” and the desire to create “a homeland we can all be proud of once again.” These concepts became the major basis for policymaking. The vision document reads:

State of Exception

173

Fukushima Prefecture will harness the potential of its abundant natural environment and high-­tech enterprises, striving to take the lead in demonstrating a model of energy independence that combines diverse and distributed energy sources. By combining such efforts with endeavors to accumulate industries that will drive forward the new era—­industries such as renewable energy and the health and welfare industries—­as well as promoting R&D in these areas, Fukushima can be a leading model for the world as a society which is both economically vibrant and in harmony with the environment. We would also strive to foster the human resources needed to support these industries. (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2011a, 5)

The development of renewable energy was the first visible achievement in this direction, as discussed in chapter 4. Fukushima Prefecture became a pioneering center for renewable, sustainable energy production in Japan. The prefecture aims to ensure that all energy consumed there will be renewable by 2040 (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2012). Hiroko Aihara, the local journalist who accompanied me on my second visit to Hamadōri, attributed this aim to the drive of ordinary people: locals continuously complained to the prefectural government, which had once promoted hosting nuclear power plants (Aihara 2018). Alongside the promotion of renewable energy, “creating leading industries for a new era” was another crucial measure taken for “the future of Fukushima” (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2011a, 9). On April 25, 2018, at the Ministerial Council for the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework, Prime Minister Abe said: There will be no revitalization of Japan without the reconstruction of Fukushima. The Abe administration has exerted every effort with that conviction. Reconstruction cannot simply mean restoration. Rather, it must pursue new possibilities and look toward the future. In this sense, the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework, which promotes the creation of new industries, is precisely the tool needed for the successful materialization of Fukushima’s reconstruction. (Prime Minister’s Office 2018)

The Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework materialized the visions expressed in the “Toward Reconstruction—­Hope beyond the Disaster” report, which was submitted to Prime Minister Kan on June 25, 2011, three months after the March 11 disaster. In the report, the Reconstruction Design Council

174

Chapter Six

defined seven principles for the reconstruction framework, the third of which is particularly relevant to the discussion in this chapter:4 In order to revive disaster-­a fflicted Tohoku, we shall pursue forms of recovery and reconstruction that tap into the region’s latent strengths and lead to technological innovation. We shall strive to develop this region’s socioeconomic potential to lead Japan in the future. (Reconstruction Design Council 2011b, 2, emphasis added)

The policy text continues: .  .  . it is expected that new industries and employment, which can in turn become a core for growth, will be created through technological innovation, which can be realized by promoting research and development; that local industry will be revived; and that a region with a concentration of industries and technologies will be created in Tohoku. (Reconstruction Design Council 2011b, 27–­28, emphasis added)

The reconstruction currently underway in Fukushima, as defined by the Reconstruction Design Council, focuses on the development of state-­of-­t he-­art technology so that Fukushima can be rebuilt better than before. I observed that this government-­intended technological innovation led to the decommissioning research discussed below.

Decommissioning Research

The successful decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is the most challenging mission the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework has faced. The retrieval of melted nuclear fuel debris at Units 1, 2, and 3 is a major hurdle and a key process in decommissioning. If TEPCO fails to remove all the debris from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant reactors, the very premise for dismantling the facility will be undermined. If it is ultimately unable to remove the debris, it will be forced to consider building a sarcophagus like the one built at Chernobyl. TEPCO presented a roadmap for restoration following the Fukushima nuclear accident on April 17, 2011 (TEPCO 2011a), and its “first step” was completed in mid-­July 2011: the stable cooling of the reactors and the spent fuel pools, and the securing of facilities to hold the (accumulated) water contaminated by radioactive substances. Nine months after the March 11 disaster,

State of Exception

175

on December 16, 2011, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had been brought to a state of “cold shutdown”—­a significant step toward resolving the crisis that was completed a month ahead of schedule (Cabinet Office 2011b). According to the IAEA (2011b), a “cold shutdown” occurs when three conditions have been established: the reactor pressure vessel’s temperature is less than 100 degrees Celsius, the release of radioactive materials from the primary containment vessel is under control, and public radiation exposure through additional release is significantly contained. Noda also reported that this marked the achievement of the “second step” on the roadmap for restoration (Cabinet Office 2011b). TEPCO announced a more detailed roadmap for decommissioning Reactor Units 1 to 4 (TEPCO 2011b) on December 21, 2011, as a follow-­up to Noda’s announcement that decommissioning work would be the next focus of the reconstruction framework. TEPCO estimated that it would take no more than ten years to begin removing fuel debris and that decommissioning the nuclear power plants would take at least thirty years to complete. On April 4, 2014, TEPCO formed the Fukushima Daiichi Decontamination & Decommissioning Engineering Company (Fukushima daiichi hairo suishin kanpanī), in partnership with the Japanese government and key contractors, to implement the decommissioning project (TEPCO 2014b). In March 2015, TEPCO finally confirmed that the nuclear fuel in the Unit 1 reactor had almost completely melted off. This marked the first time that fuel melting had been confirmed following the March 11 disaster (Kyodo News, March 15, 2015). In terms of time and capital, the state-­r un NHK reported that the Japanese government estimated it would cost JPY 6,700 trillion and take forty years to fully decommission and demolish the facility (NHK 2019). Further, in 2019, the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation (NDCDFC; Genshiyoku songai baishō hairo tō shien kikō), a government organization supporting TEPCO’s decommissioning works, released a technical strategic decommissioning plan (NDCDFC 2019). This plan recommended that the extraction of nuclear fuel debris begin in 2021 with the Unit 2 nuclear reactor, which would enable it “to safely and reliably extract the debris, and . . . to obtain the necessary information and experience for the subsequent expansion of work,” according to expert opinion (Mainichi Shimbun, August 9, 2019). This is because while Unit 2 was in operation when the nuclear crisis began, the reactor building housing it was the only one that did not suffer a hy-

176

Chapter Six

drogen explosion. In late 2020, however, the Japanese government announced that the process to remove melted fuel from Unit 2 would be delayed by at least a year due to the COVID-­19 pandemic (Kyodo News, December 23, 2020). As of March 11, 2021, Japan had not yet completed the decommissioning of any Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant reactors, and the exact location of the debris in the reactors and ways to remove it have yet to be determined. Nuclear decommissioning is the process whereby a nuclear facility is dismantled to the point that it no longer requires radiation protection measures. Decommissioning research generates technological innovations, which are precisely what Japan needs as it enters a stage of massive nuclear plant decommissioning. A total of twenty-­four nuclear reactors across the country (roughly 40% of Japan’s total), mostly aging units and the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi and Daini, are designated to be decommissioned (Japan Atomic Energy Commission 2019, 6). Developing the technology for decommissioning is of the highest priority in the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency Sector of Fukushima Research and Development, the country’s only comprehensive research and development institute in the field of nuclear power and the government-­f unded research center supporting the decommissioning, is preparing research bases where technological development that is essential to decommissioning research is conducted. Such research includes the extraction of fuel debris from nuclear reactors and the disposal of radioactive waste produced by decommissioning. The Hamadōri area hosts four major national research facilities for carrying out the decommissioning process that were established by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency Sector of Fukushima Research and Development, including Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science (CLADS) (Hairo kokusai kyōdō kenkyū sentā), the Naraha Center for Remote Control Technology Development (Naraha enkaku gijutsu kaihatsu sentā), the Okuma Analysis and Research Center (Okuma bunseki kenkyū sentā), and the Fukushima Environmental Safety Center (Fukushima kankyō anzen sentā). Below I document my visits to CLADS and the Fukushima Environmental Safety Center.

State of Exception

Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science (CLADS)

177

Among these four research facilities, CLADS is leading the decommissioning research. CLADS officially opened in Tomioka Town in April 2017, although it had originally been established in April 2015 in Tokaimura Village, where the Japan Atomic Energy Agency headquarters is located. Toru Ogawa (no relation), a professor at Nagaoka University of Technology in Niigata Prefecture, was its first director. During the opening ceremony, he said, “The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident is a crisis we human beings have never before experienced. Decommissioning is a very difficult task, but our goal is to gather Japan’s advanced knowledge and skills in science and technology to promote decommissioning” (NHK 2015). I visited this facility on June 24, 2019, as part of my third trip to the Hamadōri area. I was greatly interested in how the decommissioning research was being conducted in the context of the Innovation Coast policy. I wanted to know how this research laboratory, along with other research facilities, had been developed and how it had been presented to the public. The facility welcomed visitors, although it was necessary to make an appointment by telephone, not e-­mail, with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency Iwaki office. I was then required to complete an application (providing my name, age, affiliation, purpose, and passport number if non-­Japanese) before I received approval by e-­mail. The visit had to be arranged one week before it took place. This process was mainly for security reasons, as CLADS deals with nuclear power. When I arrived, a public relations official, who appeared to be in his early sixties, was waiting for me. He escorted me during the entire visit. I was taken through the facility to a room on the second floor, where a projector displaying a PowerPoint presentation was already set up. Many desks and chairs were lined up, but I seemed to be the only visitor that day. I was instructed to sit at a desk. The PR official introduced himself and welcomed me. He confirmed the purpose of my visit—­to better understand the CLADS’ role in the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework—­and in doing so, he seemed to just be reading out what I had written in my application to visit. He then spoke about the research facility’s background. He explained that when the facility moved to its current location, the radiation dose in the area ranged from 3.8 to 9.5 μSv per hour—­a level at which people could visit the area but could not stay. As a result of massive decontamination efforts, the radiation level had been re-

178

Chapter Six

duced to 0.17 μSv per hour, less than the official government decontamination threshold of 0.23 μSv per hour. A year earlier, in 2018, approximately 1,000 people had visited the facility, including officials from local municipalities, TEPCO, and national governments, researchers and students, Tomioka Town locals, and visitors and researchers from international institutions such as the IAEA. He continued by speaking about CLADS’ main ongoing efforts: (1) the establishment of a platform to gather expert wisdom from around the world; (2) the enhancement of research on decommissioning both in Japan and elsewhere; (3) the enhancement of human resource development in the mid and long term, and (4) the establishment of an information dissemination function (CLADS 2019, 1). The PR official emphasized the fact that this national facility was a center for decommissioning research as well as human resource development. He explained that the center invited foreign researchers, collaborated with overseas research institutions, and had formed a working group including external experts using the cross-­appointment system, adding that more than 300 researchers from over thirty countries had previously visited. Further, he noted that CLADS functions as a research platform and takes what he called a “bazaar” approach, in which a research team defines the purpose of the platform, creates a basic research roadmap based on the strategic plan, and updates it in a timely manner. In this approach, multiple players are competing for the goal, bringing together their expertise, technologies, and ideas through collaboration between industry and academia. Following this introduction, I was given a guided tour of the facility. The three-­story building housed six laboratories with state-­of-­t he-­art equipment, all of which produced world-­class research. The process of fuel debris characterization piqued my interest. CLADS researchers predicted the characteristics of the fuel debris in the reactors by using simulated fuel debris and established methods for the handling and analysis of actual debris as well as the storage of fuel debris in the decommissioning work. The main theme of this research was estimating the characteristics of the material in the reactors, taking the idiosyncratic reactions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the latest information on the situation into consideration. Within this project, researchers were also trying to establish technologies and transportation methods to develop a system for the analysis of early fuel debris. Another research area that interested me was accident progression

State of Exception

179

evaluation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The major objective of this research was to contribute to decommissioning the plant by providing information about the condition of the post-­accident reactor using model simulation and experiments that determine the accident progression. This information was then compared with plant data and inspections. In addition, there was an ongoing experimental study that focused on core melting using a boiling water reactor (BWR) design, simulating accident conditions with high-­temperature plasma-­heating technology. To respond to a crisis that has never before been experienced, CLADS gathers knowledge from all over the world to address issues such as debris retrieval. It is a center at the forefront of research and development for decommissioning, and it is the national command center in the Fukushima Innovative Coast Framework. The research team was also conducting nuclear accident analysis and evaluation that reflected upon these experiments and up-­to-­date nuclear plant data and inspections. This meant that BWR-­specific accident progression and the resultant reactor conditions could be clarified, thus contributing to the decommissioning and safety research. The removal of melted fuel or debris is the most difficult task in the decommissioning process. The CLADS facility has been developing techniques for analyzing the constituents of debris; however, it is difficult to accurately predict what the condition of the debris in a reactor will be, and a method for doing so has not yet been determined. At the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, meanwhile, the debris is believed to have penetrated even the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel and reached the containment vessel. As Director Ogawa noted, “It is not so difficult to put a camera in the reactor. The problem is that the camera will be damaged by a high radiation dose” (Nikkei, February 14, 2016).5

Fukushima Environmental Safety Center

The Fukushima Environmental Safety Center (FESC) was established in July 2016. While I was visiting Hamadōri in June 2019, I took a detour to visit the center in Miharu Town in central Fukushima, or Nakadōri, a hilly region of the Abukuma Highlands. Miharu is home to the famous waterfall cherry blossom tree or Takizakura, which is over 1,000 years old. This center aims to “carry out the necessary research and development and support activities to ensure the environmental restoration of Fukushima and to support its residents’ early

180

Chapter Six

return. It functions as an activity base in cooperation with Fukushima Prefecture and the National Institute for Environmental Studies at the Fukushima Prefectural Center for Environment Creation” (FESC 2018).6 It has three major tasks (FESC 2019): (1) evaluating the radiation dose present in non-­ decontaminated forests, rivers, estuaries, and living spheres; (2) evaluating environmental dynamics based on an investigation that seeks to understand the dominant factors determining the behavior of radioactive cesium; and (3) developing methods to predict future radiation exposure based on residents’ lifestyles. The center plays a significant role in radiation monitoring in Fukushima Prefecture. The map on its website (https:​/​​/w ​ ww​.fukushima​-kankyosozo​.jp) includes data collected by the Fukushima Environmental Safety Center, including air dose rates, which are regularly updated for each municipality. It provides statistics not only for the air dose rate of radiation but also for the atmospheric environment (for example, photochemical smog), the cesium concentration in agricultural products, the radionuclide concentration measurement results in the bodies of wild birds and animals, and so on.7 Many of my research collaborators who live in Fukushima mentioned this center to me, mainly because of the controversial facility that is attached to it, known as Commutan Fukushima. I had heard that elementary and junior high school students in Fukushima Prefecture were required to visit Commutan Fukushima to learn about the environment and, more specifically, about radiation. Ruiko Muto, a Miharu Town resident and active antinuclear advocate whom I saw many times at rally sites and antinuclear gatherings, including the one in September 2011 (documented in chap. 2), claimed that “the aim of the facility does not seem to be to educate children on how to acknowledge and protect themselves from the dangers of the radioactive substances that still surround us” (Muto 2018). This statement stimulated my curiosity. I wondered how radiation was explained to the children and what kind of knowledge was being presented as vital. In other words, I wanted to know what they were not telling them.8 A guidebook titled Fukushima no mirai wo egaku (Presenting the Future of Fukushima) was available at the Commutan’s entrance. It was a fourteen-­ page cartoon booklet featuring a family that visited Commutan Fukushima as a sightseeing destination. In fact, I would not describe the Commutan as an information center—­it might be more accurately described as a radiation

State of Exception

181

museum. There was no entrance fee. The woman at the entrance informed me that there had been around 100,000 visitors since the center opened. I was given a one-­page leaflet that read: Commutan Fukushima is a facility where you can learn about the state of Fukushima, its radiation, and its environment. . . . We hope that our materials will answer your questions, soothe your anxieties, deepen your understanding of environmental recovery and restoration, [and] enable you to envision the future of Fukushima.

I began my walk-­t hrough. The first exhibition was a diorama of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it looked after the explosion. This was the starting point for the first section, titled “Fukushima since March 11, 2011.” On the wall, there were panels of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident in chronological order. Newspaper articles that had been published in Fukushima since that date were also presented. Ahead of me, I could see the “Fukushima Clock”—­a clock with hands perennially at 2:46, the time at which the Great East Japan Earthquake hit. This clock led to the second section, titled “Environment of Fukushima Now,” which focused on Fukushima Prefecture’s recovery. This section captured my attention. What was impressed upon me here was that Fukushima’s environment was not simply recovering but was in a process of “creation” (sōzō): it was not only restoring itself following the nuclear disaster but also building for the future. In fact, “environmental creation” (kankyō sōzō) was a key word at this center, an echo of the “creative reconstruction” discussed earlier in this chapter. However, I was reminded of the fact that this “creation” was not just any environmental reconstruction: it was a reconstruction for an environment that coexists under the annual 20 mSv radiation dose benchmark. To my right, there was a passage that led to the third section, titled Hōshasen rabo or “Radiation Lab.” At the Radiation Lab entrance, I saw a message: A lot of information regarding invisible radiation has been disseminated following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Please rely on us for information on radiation—­we have prepared five laboratories for you. Inform yourself so that you can make the right decision for yourself. (Emphasis added)

This message implied that the center was a source of reliable information. It reminded me of the “harmful rumors” or misinformation surrounding radi-

182

Chapter Six

ation, or so-­called fūhyō higai, which both the national and Fukushima Prefectural Government claimed had no basis in verifiable facts. These rumors had worsened people’s fears of returning to their homes and increased their unwillingness to consume Fukushima’s agricultural products, which had caused financial and other damage to the prefecture. The stories of nosebleeds in chapter 3 are one example of such so-­called harmful rumors. The government thought that such rumors had spread in response to the lack of reliable knowledge about radiation. I was thinking that this fact echoes the claim by Joseph Masco, who studied the Los Alamos nuclear facilities in the United States, that “radiation becomes a means of explaining all manner of illness and misfortune—­its very invisibility allowing its proliferation in the realm of the imagination” (Masco 2006, 32). In the Commutan’s “Radiation Lab,” I traversed five interactive “laboratories,” or exhibitions, each with its own agenda. The first was called “Learning Lab—­Let’s start by knowing.” As I entered, I saw some children spreading their arms out and moving them up and down a wall screen. I asked a guide what they were doing. The guide told me, “They are playing with radiation. They can learn about different kinds of radiation by playing this game.” Although radiation is invisible, the game visualized three kinds—­a lpha, beta, and gamma rays—­expecting children to make gestures to prevent “transmission” depending on the type of radiation and to understand how different kinds of radiation respond to different materials. For example, an alpha ray cannot penetrate paper while beta and gamma rays can, and a beta ray cannot penetrate plastics and aluminum while gamma rays can; however, gamma rays cannot penetrate iron and lead. These characteristics were made into a game of rock-­paper-­scissors: The children’s postures were projected on the screen, and if an alpha ray was coming, they blocked it by holding up their hand as “paper.” If a beta ray came, they held up a “rock”; if a gamma ray came, they held up “scissors.” By learning the characteristics of radiation, the children playing this game were being taught ways it could be prevented. However, I thought that teaching children how to avoid invisible radiation would be more pertinent. In this exhibition, radiation was visualized; thus, the children could not grasp how difficult it is to prevent invisible radiation exposure. The children I saw playing with this simulated radiation were naive, and it is unlikely they understood the severe reality they faced. Furthermore, near the ceiling, a phrase

State of Exception

183

Figure 6.3 Children playing with “radiation” at Commutan Fukushima on June 23, 2019. Photo by the author.

was written in large letters, like a slogan: “Radiation emissions weaken as time goes by.” This is true. The radioactive isotope cesium-­137 has a half-­life of about thirty years, for example. However, thirty years is a long time for the region to be contaminated; it will be dangerous to humans and animals for a generation or more. The next exhibition was called “Measuring Lab—­What numeric data tell us.” It promoted a key message: Measuring the radiation dose is the first step in protecting oneself. In the lab, there was a map of the air doses in Fukushima Prefecture. Using the map, one could search for and see air doses in real time, comparing the current air dose with past air doses and those of other parts of Japan and overseas. This lab also taught people the units for measuring radiation: the becquerel (Bq), which indicates radiation intensity; the gray (Gy), which indicates the amount of radiation energy absorbed by a substance; and the sievert (Sv), which indicates the degree of the effect of radiation on the human body. These units were compared to a boxing game: The becquerel is like the number of punches, the gray is the power of the punch, and the sievert is the physical damage inflicted by punching. As I headed toward an illustration of the Fukushima Prefecture cityscape that was drawn on the wall, I saw a sign for the next division: “Care Lab—­ Protect Yourself.” A guide told me that information on the current status of

184

Chapter Six

environmental recovery, or more specifically, on how much radiation remained in an area, would appear if I held a tablet terminal over the cityscape. This exhibit was called the “Radiation Material Search Viewer”—­it enabled visitors to identify places where radioactive material could easily accumulate and understand the changes that would occur to this accumulation over time. There was also a hands-­on exhibit that taught the three principles for reducing exposure to external radiation: time, distance, and shielding. However, though I was in an exhibition called “Care Lab—­Protect Yourself,” I could not find any information on how to prevent internal radiation exposure or, more precisely, any information about potassium iodide. According to the World Health Organization (published on March 29, 2011—­three weeks after the March 11 disaster), “taking potassium iodide before or at the beginning of exposure to radioactive iodine blocks the uptake of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland, thus reducing exposure of the thyroid to internal radiation.” The radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents can accumulate in the thyroid gland, increasing the risk of thyroid cancer, particularly among children. Thus, information on the effect of potassium iodide is crucial to help individuals protect themselves in the case of a nuclear emergency. At the time of the March 11 disaster, it was difficult to distribute tablets of stable iodine, administered as potassium iodide. Stable iodine tablets were, in fact, stored by many municipalities but were not distributed. The national government and Fukushima Prefecture did not release any statement as to whether they would support people in taking stable iodine tablets.9 When the evacuation order was issued to people within a twenty-­k ilometer radius of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 12, 2011, the Fukushima Prefectural Government secured 1.36 million tablets in addition to those already stored (Fukushima Minpō, March 5, 2012). From March 15, it began distributing iodine tablets among twenty-­six municipalities, excluding Katsurao Village, which was already entirely evacuated, out of the twenty-­seven municipalities located within a fifty-­k ilometer radius of the plant. However, these iodine tablets did not reach people promptly, and most people waited for the government’s official instructions. In fact, my research collaborator told me that Futaba Town failed to distribute iodine tablets even though it had held an evacuation drill on March 10, the day before the March 11 disaster. Meanwhile, NHK (2012) documented the way in which Miharu Town, located fifty kilome-

State of Exception

185

ters west of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, distributed iodine tablets to about 7,300 residents under forty years old on March 15, 2011. The decision to distribute the tablets was made by the mayor under time pressure with the consultation of staff members, including a public health nurse. On March 15, Miharu Town expected easterly winds to blow from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and the mayor distributed iodine tablets that day. The optimal timing for intake is between twenty-­four hours prior to and up to two hours after the expected onset of exposure, but it is reasonably effective up to eight hours later (WHO 2017).10 The “Care Lab” exhibition I walked through at the Commutan Center did not include any reflections on the government’s policy failure in terms of stable iodine tablet distribution, which resulted in an increased risk of thyroid cancer in Fukushima. The most recent data at the time of finalizing this book in March 2021 confirmed a total of 252 cases of thyroid cancer among children in the prefecture (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2021). Furthermore, the Minamisoma Municipal General Hospital, located in the radiation-­ affected area that was host to the Fukushima Robot Test Field, reported in 2018 that the number of patients suffering from thyroid cancer had jumped drastically from one in 2010 to twenty-­nine in 2017. The hospital disclosed the number of people suffering from the disease as part of its accounting report but did not mention the causal link between radiation exposure and thyroid cancer (Minamisoma Municipal General Hospital 2018). I moved on to the next exhibition, “Decontamination Lab—­Remove and Recover,” which aimed to inform visitors about the flow of decontamination work being carried out to reduce the amount of radiation in Fukushima Prefecture using moving images and illustrations. Decontamination efforts have been made in various places using the most suitable methods for each place, and this lab mentioned some of the specific measures being used to get rid of radiation. Very practical methods were in use. Places where radiation can collect are called “micro hot spots”—­hollows, under and near trees, gutters, puddles, rainwater basins, and so on. For example, one way to decontaminate rain gutters is to remove accumulated fallen leaves and soil, which can be scooped using a shovel. To decontaminate concrete and asphalt in parking lots and residential premises, one can remove leaves, moss, grass, mud, and soil from the surface by hand before brushing the asphalt seams and cracks

186

Chapter Six

with a deck brush. Walking through the exhibitions, I realized that there was an emphasis on how radiation exists in nature. Radiation was presented as a natural substance, as if there was no need to be afraid of it. This exhibition claimed that the natural radiation dose that Japanese people receive annually is 2.1 mSv, a figure made available by the Nuclear Safety Research Association (NSRA).11 In fact, the total average annual exposure dose for a Japanese person is 5.98 mSv, of which 2.1 mSv is estimated to be from natural radiation (NSRA 2011).12 The Japanese Ministry of the Environment (2017) states that this natural exposure figure is lower than the world average of 2.4 mSv annually, according to data from UNSCEAR (2008, 4). The magnitude of this number in Japan could mainly be attributed to the intake of seafood, which has high levels of lead 210 and polonium 210, and to regular X-­ray checkups (3.87 mSv for Japan vs. 0.6 mSv for the world average). After this exhibition came the fifth laboratory: “Exploring Lab—­ Challenging Quizzes.” Following the learning experiences of the exhibitions, visitors were expected to challenge their knowledge by taking quizzes on computers. The room was filled with dozens of computers on desks, which would have been useful for visitors wishing to undertake further research. However, the room was empty when I visited. The Environmental Creation Theater was upstairs and comprised a 360-­ degree spherical screen with a pier that ran through its middle like a small overpass. Another guide told me that only two theaters of this kind exist in the world; the other one can be found in the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Tokyo. The audience is meant to stand on the pier and look at the image. The film began with an explanation of radioactive materials and radiation, giving an overview of the materials the visitors had seen in the center. It used computer graphics, and as the spherical screen moved dynamically, I felt as if I was riding a roller coaster. This film culminated with a live-­action scene of how decontamination tasks were successfully conducted in Fukushima, and appreciation was expressed to the people involved in the continuing decontamination efforts. There was also a clip promoting local tourism, which featured beautiful drone images of nature and the appeal of Fukushima as a beautiful hometown. At the exit, I was alarmed to see comments from children who had visited the center on display:

State of Exception

187

“I’m not scared of radiation.” “Thank you to all the decontamination workers.” “I will do my best for my beautiful hometown Fukushima.” “I was scared of radiation, but I am glad to be reassured that it exists in the natural environment and foods.” “If everyone learns here, Fukushima will no longer be discriminated against.” “Although the Great East Japan Earthquake destroyed many things, the situation is surely recovering. I appreciate all of people’s efforts to reconstruct Fukushima.” As my visit came to an end, I felt as if I had become desensitized to the dangers of radiation exposure. I had previously been highly sensitive and concerned about radiation exposure; however, the presentations and exhibitions at Commutan Fukushima had encouraged me to underestimate its effects. Radiation was presented as something that was taken for granted in our daily lives. I did not feel as if my visit had given me complete knowledge about radiation, nor had it given me information to help me fairly assess whether harmful rumors about Fukushima were true or not. I felt as if the diorama at the entrance hall had been the only exhibition that faced the accident directly. Even so, it presented this accident as an established fact while effectively ignoring many unresolved issues: there had been no information on stable iodine tablets, the rapidly increasing cases of thyroid cancer among children, or the antinuclear rallies after the March 11 disaster.

Accelerating a “New Normal”

As human beings can no longer comfortably live in Hamadōri due to concerns over radiation exposure, the Japanese state is currently playing an essential role in designing a “new normal” centered on innovation and adaptation. The state has used advanced technology, such as remote-­controlled robots, to progress toward decommissioning. Under Agamben’s concept of a state of exception, this is how the radiation-­tainted area has become sustainable and contributed to the national reconstruction efforts. In addition, Japan’s preparations to host the 2020 Tokyo Olympics helped accelerate sentiments regarding the importance of transforming the national economic and social

188

Chapter Six

structure post-­Fukushima. In fact, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics acted as a symbol of Japan’s recovery and reconstruction from the March 11 disaster. The Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games looked forward to this sporting event as an opportunity to showcase Japan’s robot technology. In July 2019, the committee unveiled four new robots that would be deployed to assist spectators, athletes, and officials at competition venues and to relay sound, images, and physical feedback from the venues to remote spectators.13 The new normal has led to increased collaboration between the public and private/business sectors in Japan. For example, the mascot robots Miraitowa (mirai means future and towa means eternity) and Someity (which means a variety of cherry blossom but evokes the English phrase “so mighty”) were designed by Toyota Motor to welcome athletes and spectators at the games with anthropomorphized movements, such as shaking hands and waving, alongside a variety of human facial expressions. The mascot robots’ arm movements can be remote-­controlled, and the robots share force feedback of their interactions via a camera mounted on their heads (see Toyota Motor 2019). They can recognize when people are nearby and then use their eyes to display a variety of expressions. The robots are also equipped with miniature joint units across their entire bodies, which offer flexibility when they are being controlled and enable users to operate them safely. Furthermore, the T-­HR3 is a humanoid robot that can reproduce the movements of a mascot robot in a remote location in nearly real time. In addition to providing images and sounds from remote locations to the operators, the users of this robot can also experience the power of movement and force feedback, allowing them to converse with athletes and other people and feel as if they are truly physically present. The T-­TR1, a virtual mobility or telepresence robot, gives those that are unable to attend an event a chance to attend virtually, with an on-­screen presence that allows remote conversation. Meanwhile, electronics manufacturer Panasonic (2019) said it would provide its Power Assist Suit for use at the powerlifting competition in the Tokyo Paralympic Games. These suits would be worn by the spotters or loaders tasked with moving weights and spotting lifters during the competition. They feature built-­in sensors that detect limb movements and motors synchronized to provide wearers with mechanized power for performing strenuous tasks easily and safely. The development of new robot technology for the Olympics, along with national invention efforts as part of the Fukushima Innovation

State of Exception

189

Coast Framework, has created momentum toward constructing a new Japan. In fact, many of the new technological innovations that were showcased at the previous Tokyo Olympics in 1964 have since shaped the Japanese way of life. These inventions include the introduction of Shinkansen bullet trains that travel at world-­record speeds; the combination of the Syncom III satellite with cutting-­edge Japanese technology, which enabled live TV pictures to be beamed across the globe; and Japan’s first online computer network, which was developed by IBM Japan.14 The Japanese state has prioritized the Olympics and, ultimately, the national economy over its citizens’ lives and their health concerns about low-­ dose radiation exposure, particularly those of the vulnerable members of society, who represent Agamben’s “bare life” (1998, 4). Under the Declaration of a State of Nuclear Emergency, the most vulnerable, the voiceless, and the socially and economically weak members of Fukushima’s society have been forced to accept the harsh reality of the annual 20 mSv benchmark for radiation exposure. They have had no choice but to follow the government’s decision. The risk of radiation exposure has not been distributed equally; rather, it has been distributed from the center to the margins and from the rich to the poor, reflecting existing socioeconomic disparities. I believe this to be a state-­ structured form of violence. One of the most pressing issues in post-­Fukushima Japan is the evacuees’ situation. As of March 31, 2021, some 40,988 people had still not returned home (Reconstruction Agency 2021). However, this number fails to capture the evacuees’ true situation. The government stopped treating those who lived in makeshift housing as evacuees when it terminated its provision of temporary housing assistance (see Löschke 2021). In fact, the Fukushima Prefectural Government slashed unconditional housing subsidies on March 31, 2017, refusing to provide them to evacuees from areas where the evacuation order had been lifted. Many of these evacuees have opted not to return to their homes and communities despite the lifting of the evacuation order due to persistent concerns about low-­dose radiation exposure. Some evacuees also did not wish to return because they had already started new lives elsewhere. Nevertheless, the government continued to push its repatriation policy as Fukushima Prefecture envisioned reducing the number of refugees to zero by 2020—­t he year of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics Games—­in the original comprehensive revitalization policy framework crafted by the Fukushima

190

Chapter Six

Prefectural Government (2012, 91). Yomiuri Shimbun (December 13, 2020) reported that, to buoy repatriation sentiment, Japanese government grants of up to JPY 2 million (USD 18,000) would be provided in the fiscal year 2021 to people who moved to one of the twelve municipalities surrounding the defunct Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The sentiment was further enhanced by a new UNSCEAR report published on March 9, 2021, two days before the tenth anniversary of the March 11 disaster, that claimed that increased incidences of radiation-­related health effects are unlikely to be discernible in Japan and that excess thyroid cancer risk attributable to radiation exposure was most likely not discernible in any age group (UNSCEAR 2021, 88). However, many evacuees continue to struggle with reduced incomes, social isolation, and deteriorating health. Help has been provided by civil society groups such as Cooperation Center for 311 (Hinan no kyōdō sentā; https:​ /​​/​hinan​-kyodo​.org​/​), which calls upon national and local governments to provide comprehensive support to those who were forced to evacuate due to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident. Such support includes assistance with housing, employment, and education aimed at realizing these evacuees’ “right to maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living,” as defined by Article 25 of the Japanese constitution, through mutual aid.15 The center’s main project has been supporting evacuees in finding housing, which enables them to continue their evacuation and not be forced to return to the radiation-­affected area. It has also held events allowing evacuees to socialize with one another to prevent feelings of isolation. I am reminded of what the PR official at CLADS said in response to my question, “What is the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework for, and for whom?” The PR official seemed to take a very cautious attitude when talking to me during the tour, but as we walked to the exit, he murmured, “There are no people here.” Before March 11, 2011, some 16,000 people lived in Tomioka Town, where the defunct Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and now CLADS are located. However, according to the data shown to me by the PR official, only 1,043 people lived in the area as of June 2019. Most were construction workers, TEPCO employees, or nuclear researchers. A shopping mall, hotel, and convention center have been newly opened in the town using government subsidies, yet the original residents of Tomioka Town have never returned. The dominant restructuring occurring here is economic and not social. Reconstruction is happening, but the state-­of-­t he-­art technology being

State of Exception

191

developed in Tomioka contributes almost nothing to the welfare and quality of life of the people who lived here before the March 11 disaster. The new normal of post-­Fukushima Japan is transforming the relationship between the state and the individual. The Japanese state has become much bigger and more interventionist as we have lived with radiation, which can be seen in certain actions such as the raising of the acceptable annual radiation exposure limit from 1 mSv to 20 mSv in April 2011. This change marked the beginning of the new normal that is characterized by fundamental shifts in the values and behaviors in people’s daily lives. We are not allowed to lament what could have been. Rather, we have been forced to deal with and navigate disaster. We have entered a new, restructured reality that demands that we adapt and adjust to change quickly. One personal example is that I now carry a portable Geiger counter for my own protection. I am constantly aware of the invisible, scentless radiation around me. In the face of this new normal, I have been required to prepare a new strategy for surviving in a new life. The changing landscape in Fukushima is an additional feature of the new normal. The Japanese government has been conducting controversial decontamination efforts to lower radiation levels in the Hamadōri area. When I visited, I saw many black plastic bags, also known as “flecon,” or flexible container bags, piled upon each other to form small hills. These dampened bags contained nuclear waste that had been cleaned up, including soil, leaves, and debris from the decontamination operation around the residential areas. Emitted radiation was sealed off inside these bags. These dampened piles of bags made me think that ordinary, peaceful life would never return here. The bags would stay in their current location until they could be transported by trucks to isolated “temporary” storage sites. Full-­scale operations had started at the interim storage facilities (located in Okuma and Futaba Towns) for storing contaminated soil and other materials from the affected sites (Nikkei, October 28, 2017). It is planned that contaminated soil will be transported out of Fukushima Prefecture for final disposal within thirty years from 2015, but no final disposal sites have been named. Toshitsuna Watanabe, the former mayor of Okuma, stated in an interview with Asahi Shimbun that when he accepted the use of the interim storage facility, he considered that the storage term would be extended because the national government would not be able to find a final disposal site (Miura 2020, 219). These “temporary” storage sites

192

Chapter Six

Figure 6.4 Flecon bags piled up in Minamisoma City on October 1, 2018. Photo by the author.

are likely to become permanent storage sites as nobody wants them in their backyards. The arrival of new people in Hamadōri is another feature of the changing new-­normal landscape. In addition to construction workers, TEPCO employees, and nuclear researchers, the number of foreign workers in Fukushima Prefecture stood at 6,914—­mostly Chinese (1,874), Vietnamese (1,577), and Filipino (1,251)—­as of October 2017, jumping 1.8 times from the prequake figure of 3,767 in October 2010 (Fukushima Labor Bureau 2017). One report tells of Vietnamese technical intern trainees who were sent by a contractor to carry out decontamination work at the Fukushima nuclear disaster area. These trainees came to Japan as part of the foreign trainee system, which aims to bring foreign workers from developing countries to Japan to learn technical skills (Mainichi Shimbun, April 18, 2018). However, assigning a technical trainee to a radiation cleanup zone is at odds with the program’s purpose. In fact, in August 2018, United Nations human rights experts raised concerns about “possible exploitation by deception regarding the risks of exposure to

State of Exception

193

radiation, possible coercion into accepting hazardous working conditions because of economic hardships, and the adequacy of training and protective measures” in the employment of these workers (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 2018). My research collaborator, Toshiko Okada, who organizes antinuclear rallies in Tokyo, has repeatedly noted to me, “The preparations for the Tokyo Olympics are going on as if nothing had happened. We have been abandoned by the government.” These remarks remind me of a Japanese word—­kimin—­ which means “abandoned people” and is spoken by those who are desperate to describe the reality of their displacement.16 They have become desperate because they have realized that their government does not protect the lives of its people. However, many people, including myself, still believe in the possibility of change by taking action. We believe that such change could be led by members of civil society. There are many members of civil society in Japan who would initiate such change; people I call “antinuclear citizens.” As seen in the elevation of the permissible radiation dose in Japan, the antinuclear citizens started taking action in order for our lives to be sustainable. The following epilogue tells a story of these antinuclear citizens standing up to make a significant change.

This page intentionally left blank

E P I L O GU E

Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan

Antinuclear Citizens Take a Stand

Eventually, the grassroots frustration at the Japanese government’s inability to better manage the March 11 disaster led to the call for the creation of the Chernobyl Law in Japan. This action was organized by the group Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice: Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan (Shimin ga sodateru Chernobyl hō nihon ban no kai; http:​/​​/​chernobyl​-law​-injapan​.blogspot​ .com​/​). Established in March 2018, the group has been gathering momentum among grassroots organizations across Japan. The group’s flyer introduces its activities and provides insight as to why the creation of the Chernobyl Law in Japan is necessary: Why can’t we do for Fukushima what they could do for Chernobyl? This is because the international nuclear lobbyists let the Chernobyl Law happen, which was a major failure for them. The nuclear lobbyists, seeing the effect the Chernobyl Law [in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus] had on nuclear production, do not want such a law to be established following Fukushima in Japan. In other words, [the nuclear lobbyists] do not think evacuation is necessary, advertise it is safe, use international authority [to justify their policymaking], and do not collect crucial initial exposure data; nor do they effectively measure subsequent health damage. They deny that the cause of an illness is radiation exposure even when there are clear signs indicating radiation exposure as the cause. We were too vulnerable. It is easy to distract an unprepared population from the health consequences of radiation exposure. . . . The nuclear lobbyists have repeatedly asserted that there is no health hazard following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. They approach those who want to believe them and call for “reconstruction.” Those who claim to be at risk of radiation exposure are accused of “harmful rumors.” However, we cannot give them our lives and our health, nor the lives of future generations.

195

196

Epilogue Many citizens have continued antiradiation exposure campaigns. One of the fruits of this effort has been the establishment of the “Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice.” . . . It is vital that the current radiation exposure policy be reoriented because Japan will be a model for future radiation exposure control in the event of a nuclear accident. We must be aware that we have unlimited responsibilities for the world and for future generations. (Flyer of Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice: Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan)

Lawyer Toshio Yanagihara is a major advocate for Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice. Yanagihara envisions remedies that provide immediate relief from radiation exposure. As discussed in chapter 3, the Chernobyl Law was originally referred to when the Japanese government created the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act in 2012. However, this act was principally a program act, specifying only its principles and framework. Thus, the government has not produced any concrete measures to assist victims since its enactment. In fact, Prime Minister Abe’s cabinet cut off the government’s support on August 25, 2015.1 It claimed that further evacuation would not be necessary as the air radiation dose had lowered significantly compared to the time of the accident—­below the 20 mSv threshold. The government planned to focus instead on supporting those who wanted to return home. Yanagihara told me, “As a minimum safety net that protects lives and health from nuclear accidents, it is necessary to establish a relief law based on international standards and modeled on the Chernobyl Law that guarantees the right to settle out (or resettlement without return) after nuclear accidents.”2 I came to realize that Yanagihara’s action was based on a previous court experience in which he had failed. He was a lead lawyer representing the plaintiffs at the Fukushima Collective Evacuation Trial (Fukushima shūdan sokai saiban), suing for the evacuation of children from Koriyama City, which had been deemed safe for habitation. On June 24, 2011, three months after the March 11 disaster, fourteen elementary and junior high school students in Koriyama had filed a lawsuit against the city, demanding their right to study in a safe environment. This suit sought an injunction against compulsory educational activities in a radiation-­contaminated environment of over 1 mSv per year. The Koriyama Branch of the Fukushima District Court, however, dismissed the case on December 16, 2011—­t he day that Prime Minister Noda announced that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had reached a state

Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan

197

of cold shutdown. As this decision was completely unacceptable, the plaintiffs (the fourteen children’s representatives) filed a formal objection before the Sendai High Court at the end of 2011, which was rejected on April 24, 2013. The plaintiffs’ lawsuit argued that Koriyama City had a legal responsibility to evacuate the students. The court acknowledged that radiation in Koriyama City exceeded levels deemed safe prior to the disaster, but that the government shouldered no responsibility for evacuating the schools. In effect, it told people to leave at their own discretion if they were concerned. The verdict’s tone was that evacuation was a matter of personal responsibility and that individuals could evacuate if willing and able to do so, without waiting for government instructions. Yanagihara talked about his assessment after the verdict: I think the judges admitted that governments are responsible for evacuating children in the general argument, although they were not brave enough to announce it as their final decision. What we expect to do next is to encourage the governments at both state and local levels to apply the spirit of the verdict in their policymaking and try to evacuate the children as soon as possible. This sentence means more than it appears. I think we can make something positive out of it. . . . I also think we actually did win, if we consider the tone of the verdict in general, although we eventually lost in the details. These achievements prove citizens’ power to convince judges. I would say that if citizens had paid more attention to this case, we could have won. . . . I hope we will bring all our resources and enthusiasm together in future activities.3

Along with Yanagihara, Toshiko Okada, a homemaker originally from Fukushima and a key research collaborator mentioned in chapter 6, leads the Network to Evacuate People from Radiation (Datsu hibaku jitsugen netto), a loose citizens’ network that calls attention to radiation exposure. She has also devoted time and energy to the initiative for creating the Chernobyl Law in Japan. Okada’s network has been organizing the “Shinjuku Demos” in central Tokyo, rallies that biannually voice concerns about radiation exposure. Like the Friday rallies in front of the prime minister’s office documented in chapter 2, the Shinjuku Demos are another series of antinuclear rallies that developed after the March 11 disaster. Okada told me that “the Friday rallies at Kantei-­mae are focused on one issue, which is ‘objection to restarting nuclear power plants,’ and the participants are continuously shouting ‘Don’t restart

198

Epilogue

nuclear power plants.’ That’s important. . . . But I wanted to bring more attention to protecting children from continuing radiation exposure.”4 Thus, Okada’s Network to Evacuate People from Radiation organized its first demonstration in February 2013, as the Sendai High Court was considering the Koriyama children’s case. At their thirteenth rally on November 9, 2019, I observed demonstrators once again declaring their concern regarding radiation exposure. The main message was that the demonstrators would not allow the government to act as if no severe nuclear accident had occurred, nor as if ineradicable realities and violations of human rights had not been caused by the March 11 disaster. These reflections motivated Yanagihara and Okada to eventually establish Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice: Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan. Yanagihara and Okada’s motivation for further action increased when they participated in the Thematic World Social Forum on Nuclears in Tokyo in March 2016 (see chap. 5) and Montreal in July 2016, where they presented their concerns about radiation exposure. Noriko Matsumoto, a voluntary evacuee from Koriyama City, also voiced her concerns about radiation exposure in these forums, sharing her story at the Tokyo meeting: I had never heard of air dose data in Koriyama City until I myself measured it at my home in July 2011. Neither the media nor the government had told us anything. I had not been informed that such high doses had been recorded in Koriyama since March 15 [2011]. I think that, had I been given the correct information and knowledge by the government, I would have been able to take appropriate actions promptly. I would never have made my second daughter return to Koriyama, even temporarily. I think the Japanese government and Fukushima Prefecture should have at least evacuated children immediately after the accident. Foreign governments such as France and Germany promptly recommended their citizens in Japan to stay away from the affected areas and the metropolitan area. On March 16 [2011], the US government recommended that Americans within fifty miles of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant should evacuate. However, the Japanese government did not inform its citizens of anything important; they said people “do not have to take any immediate special action.” We were exposed to radiation as a result. (Thematic World Social Forum on Nuclears, Tokyo, March 27, 2016)

Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan

199

At the time of the March 11 disaster, Matsumoto was living with her husband and two daughters in Koriyama City, seventy kilometers west of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. She initially stayed put, but three months later, her second daughter, then aged twelve, started having nosebleeds. She left her husband behind and took their children to Kanagawa Prefecture, 250 kilometers south. The radiation level hit a record high of 8.6 µSv per hour on March 15, 2011, in Koriyama City, and the Koriyama municipal government had an evacuation plan only for children immediately after the March 11 disaster (Asahi Shimbun, December 11, 2020). At a panel of the Thematic World Social Forum for a Nuclear-­Fission-­Free World in Montreal, Yanagihara introduced an action proposal titled “Another Relief Is Possible” that included four specific actions: (1) enacting the Chernobyl Law, which claims the right to settle out; (2) establishing the Chernobyl Law International Convention on the Evacuation of Nuclear Power, which can be modeled on the establishment of the Human Landmine Ban Treaty through the International Campaign to Ban Landmines; (3) pursuing criminal liability by undertaking criminal prosecutions of Japanese nuclear business people for “humanitarian crimes” (precedents exist in Spain and Argentina); and (4) establishing cooperatives and workers’ collectives (like Spain’s Mondragon Corporation), which are independent organizations for the creative mutual aid of citizens to rebuild the lives of evacuees in poverty. When I asked Yanagihara in June 2019 to reflect on his participation in the Montreal Forum, he said, “I thought we had to stand up. We were told by the forum participants that we must be in solidarity.” He continued, “I strongly felt that it would be necessary to strengthen domestic social movements in Japan. Otherwise, I realized the power to expand the movement beyond national borders would be really limited.” The Chernobyl Law was first promulgated in 1991, five years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, by three republics of the former Soviet Union: Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.5 It aimed to protect the lives and health of citizens exposed to radiation and was the first law in the world that explicitly covered the universal human right to life of people affected by a radiation disaster. This law guaranteed the right to settle out for residents of radiation-­ contaminated areas while also providing social security to people living in areas where evacuation orders were issued. Under the Chernobyl Law, areas

200

Epilogue

where the contamination is higher than 1 mSv per year were designated as covered by the right to settle out. The law included policies to help evacuees find jobs, accommodation, and medical treatment and to secure food supplies.6 Meanwhile, as discussed in the introduction, on April 19, 2011, the Japanese government raised the radiation exposure dose limit from 1 mSv to 20 mSv per year (MEXT 2011) as the standard for Fukushima residents. As of March 11, 2021, it continued to maintain the same dose limit; in fact, the Japanese government is forcefully requiring evacuees to return to their homes in areas where the dose limit does not exceed 20 mSv per year. The Chernobyl Law primarily focused on ensuring the right to settle out. However, Yanagihara often says, “In light of the reality of Fukushima, that is not enough. For example, even if a formal and general health checkup is specified, there is more than enough risk that it may not be sufficient to protect the lives and health of the victims.” While the law is centered on the right to settle out, other relevant rights should be comprehensively considered, including the rights to information disclosure, reconstruction of life, medical examination, food safety, radiation measurement, and knowledge of radioactive waste. This law aims to protect the lives, health, and livelihoods of citizens amid radiation disasters. The only way to reach this goal is to escape from radiation exposure: first by evacuation and eventually by settling out. Yanagihara asserts that the key principle of radiological disaster relief is that human beings cannot survive with radiation. I share his point of view. As I expanded my research scope on the development of civil society in post-­Fukushima Japan—­t he main theme of this book—­I became acquainted with Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice. I came to believe that establishing the Chernobyl Law in Japan would be the most reasonable solution, enabling Japanese citizens to live with a reality that included the possibility of nuclear accidents as long as Japan keeps nuclear power. I joined the group in 2019; a year later, I was nominated as a corepresentative. I have been contributing my knowledge, experience, and time to its activities, including making action strategies by participating in monthly meetings via video conferences and email exchanges. I helped draft a proposal for the Chernobyl Law in Japan with Yanagihara and translated it into English as we believe it is important to develop solidarity across the globe (a full draft of the proposal is available on the group’s website at https:​//​​ ​citizenactionchernobyllaw​-jp​.blogspot​.com​/​ ). Among the regular and supporting group members with whom I have been

Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan

201

working are individuals operating recuperation programs across the country, such as voluntary evacuees from Fukushima, like Matsumoto, and Masami Ueno, who I mention later in this chapter. As the first step toward institutionalizing the Chernobyl Law in Japan, we proposed creating a series of local policy ordinances ( jōrei) on the right to settle out. Yanagihara referred to the previous “successful” experience of a grassroots campaign in Japan to create the national Information Disclosure Law (Jōhō kōkai hō), which was a product of the cumulative efforts of citizens across the country. The people requested that their municipal and prefectural governments introduce a local ordinance on information disclosure, local council members discussed the request, and the local ordinances were enacted. These efforts began in 1982 in Kaneyama, a small rural town in Yamagata Prefecture, and spread to Saitama and Kanagawa Prefectures and Kawasaki City in 1983. By 2001, 2,065 prefectures and municipalities had followed suit (Ishida 2003, 18; see also Uga 2000). This citizens’ movement eventually led to the promulgation of the national Information Disclosure Law in 1999, which was enacted in April 2001. Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice prepared the template for a draft proposal for a local ordinance that can be used as a model: Chernobyl Law as an Ordinance in Japan Preamble (excerpt) We, citizens of the municipality [subject to insert the name here], recognize that all citizens of the world have the right to live healthily in peace, free from fear and want. We do proclaim that every citizen shall have the right to guaranteed life, health, and livelihoods free from nuclear disaster and to be protected from nuclear power plant accidents. We therefore do firmly establish this Ordinance. We hold these truths to be self-­evident, that Government that has licensed the installation of nuclear power plants, etc., shall bear unconditional legal liability as a perpetrator to all of the victims for damage from a nuclear disaster, and that Government shall bear unconditional legal liability to residents for not only compensating for the damages caused by a nuclear disaster but also fulfilling the realization of residents’ “right to settle out.” Consequently, we do believe that Government should bear expenses which the municipality [subject to insert the name here] spends through the enforcement of this Ordinance, and, to clarify this point, Government shall be re-

202

Epilogue sponsible for amending promptly the law equivalent to the Local Government Finance Act, Article 10, no. 17 and no. 28. In addition, we do believe that Government shall bear unconditional legal liability for not only compensating residents for damages caused by nuclear disaster, but also have responsibility for preserving the lives and health of workers from a nuclear disaster. However, given the enormous destructive power of today’s nuclear power plant accidents, we must admit that it is not possible to guarantee citizens the right to life, health, and livelihoods free from nuclear disaster in the municipality [subject to insert the name here] by simply enacting this Ordinance. We shall, therefore, call to the municipality [subject to insert the name here], and even all Japanese municipalities, for the enactment of Ordinances similar to this Ordinance in the name of the residents of each municipality, and furthermore for legislation as a culmination of these Ordinances similar to this Ordinance in the name of the Japanese people. In addition, given the severe nature of nuclear power plant accidents that respect no borders, we must admit that it is not possible to guarantee the Japanese people the right to life, health, and livelihoods free from nuclear disaster by simply enacting Japanese law. We shall, therefore, call to the municipality [subject to insert the name here], and even all municipalities and countries around the world for the enactment of Ordinances and laws to guarantee residents of the countries with nuclear power plants the right to life, health, and livelihoods free from nuclear disaster. We do believe that this call will serve as the basis for establishing a treaty that guarantees citizens of the world the right to life, health, and livelihoods, free from nuclear disaster. We, citizens of the municipality [subject to insert the name here], pledge our city honor to accomplish these high ideals and purposes with all our resources. (https:​/​​/​citizenactionchernobyllaw​-jp​.blogspot​.com)

An important aspect of the preamble of the ordinance is its reflection upon the preface of the Japanese constitution, which “recognizes that all peoples of the world have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want.” The ordinance also follows Article 22 of the Japanese constitution, which rules that “every person shall have freedom to choose and change his residence and to choose his occupation to the extent that it does not interfere with the public welfare,” and Article 25, which states that “all people shall have the right to maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living.” Usually an ordinance does not include a preamble; however, Yanagihara, who drafted

Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan

203

the template, said, “By writing the preamble, I was able to speak my mind.” Furthermore, the subject of the article is “citizens”: To make it clear that the rights stipulated in this draft are the inherent rights of citizens, we avoided using the state as the subject. These rights are not granted by the state; they exist for all. Local actions calling for the creation of the Chernobyl Law as an ordinance have taken place across Japan since 2016, spreading to Ise City, Mie Prefecture, Koriyama City in Fukushima Prefecture, Chofu City and Kiyose City, both in Tokyo, and Akaiwa City in Okayama Prefecture by October 2022. Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice hosted a series of study sessions in these cities and online that aimed to inform residents about the Chernobyl Law and why it is needed in Japan. Among these cities, citizens in Ise City have been leading the action, organized under the Fukushima-­Iseshima Association (Fukushima-­Iseshima no kai; https:​/​​/​f ukushima​-iseshima​.jimdofree​.com​ /​), an NPO group established in November 2011 to support the recuperation of children from Fukushima. The action has been strengthened by voluntary evacuees from Fukushima who joined the NPO. Far from Fukushima, they have raised their voices without reservation to their local relatives and friends in Fukushima—­a place where “old Japan” can be found, and where there are solid kin relationships, strong ties among neighbors, and friendships within communities (see Shishido’s testimony in chap. 3). Ueno met Yanagihara at the general meeting organized by 311 Ukeire Net, the national network for supporting the recuperation programs. Yanagihara had developed a recuperation program in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, with the help of locals (see chap. 3). While hosting children and their mothers from Fukushima, Ueno felt the need for more institutionalized measures to support them since recuperation programs have been primarily organized by volunteers at their own expense. Ueno grew sympathetic to Yanagihara’s proposal to create the Chernobyl Law in Japan and became a founding member of Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice. Ueno was further motivated by the fact that Ise City’s mayor, Kenichi Suzuki, is a member of the Mayors for a Nuclear Power–­Free Japan network (the group that wrote to Turkish antinuclear counterparts protesting Japan’s nuclear export, as discussed in chap. 5). Ueno and her group held a press conference in Ise City on April 2, 2019, where Ueno discussed her motivation for the campaign. Ueno, a school nurse, expressed her concern, claiming, “I am thinking and making an action for

204

Epilogue

children’s health. The Chernobyl Law was established five years after the nuclear accident. We must hurry.” During the press conference, she shared a story a parent in recuperation from Fukushima had told her, in which three junior high school students in Fukushima Prefecture died suddenly of unknown causes following the disaster. The children’s parents believed their deaths were related to accumulated radioactive materials such as cesium in their cardiac muscles. Ueno added that based on her experience as a nurse, “that kind of thing” does not happen under normal circumstances.7 In August 2019, Ueno’s group received approval from the mayor of Ise City to bring the proposal of the Chernobyl Law as an ordinance to the municipal council. To do so, the group was required to increase the number of municipal council members who agreed or make a direct petition with a certain number of resident signatures (one-­f iftieth of the municipal population over age eighteen) within one month.8 Ueno’s group chose the latter method and started collecting signatures. During the one-­month period, however, it only collected 64% (1,377 signatures) of the required 2,151 signatures, and its bid was not successful. Ueno primarily attributed this result to insufficient preparation and the lack of media attention in the municipality. Undeterred, it began collecting signatures again in March 2020. This time, 2,255 signatures were collected, exceeding the requirement (then 2,128). However, the municipal government approved only 1,953 of these signatures because of a lack of adherence to administrative rules; as such, the group had only collected 92% of the requirement. Eventually, despite the large increase in signatures, Ueno’s efforts fell short. After the second attempt, Ueno shared her thoughts with members of Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice: “Many people understood why this ordinance would be needed, and many even said, ‘It’s absolutely necessary.’ I am confident that our path was not wrong at all.” In the process articulated by the law, the signatures for a direct petition were only collected by government-­ approved special appointees ( juninsha), and their number was increased from 70 to 120 in the second attempt. This increase indicates that Ueno was able to gather local attention and that local people came to understand the significance of this action. She often said, “I hope that Ise City will become the first city in Japan that has such an ordinance that protects its citizens in times of nuclear emergency.” Ise City is about 130 kilometers from Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture and about 150 kilometers from the old nu-

Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan

205

clear power plant complex in Fukui Prefecture. If a nuclear accident were to occur, it would be within range of dangerous radioactivity. The second attempt to collect signatures faced new obstacles as the COVID-­19 outbreak emerged in Japan in early 2020. However, the pandemic simultaneously helped enhance the sense of crisis and gave momentum to Ueno’s endeavor to collect signatures. We realized that science and technology were initially powerless in the face of COVID-­19, as they had been in dealing with the radiation leakage since the nuclear accident. During the pandemic, the best countermeasures were wearing face masks and avoiding crowds—­in short, it was necessary to escape the virus while waiting for science and technology (i.e., a vaccine) to defeat it. We are living in a new normal in Japan, in a post–­COVID-­19 and post-­Fukushima world. Ueno’s group is now actively lobbying council members to gather support. In the previous trials, only four of the twenty-­four council members supported the initiative started by Ueno’s group. However, more than 2,000 people signed the petition in the second attempt, exceeding the minimum number of votes needed to become a municipal council member in the previous elections, and, thus, justifying council support for the action developed by the group. Indeed, municipal council members are responsible for assisting vulnerable citizens in emergency situations, and a legal basis is necessary to set the parameters of this support. Introducing the Chernobyl Law as a local policy ordinance in Japan is one such tool that might provide legal rationales for supporting the exercise of rights and claiming of liabilities. In May 2020, Ueno’s group surveyed the twenty-­four council members about their genuine opinions on nuclear power policy. The survey included three questions: (1) Do you think it will take a long time for the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to be resolved? (2) Do you think there is a possibility of Ise City being exposed to radiation? (3) Do you think the citizens of Ise City should respond individually to radiation health hazards or radioactive contamination of the soil? Seventeen council members responded. To the first question, eleven members responded “yes,” zero responded “no,” and six did not answer. To the second question, two members responded “yes,” five replied “no,” three did not know, two sought clarification, and five left the response blank. To the third question, zero members responded yes, nine replied no, two did not know, one sought clarification, and five left the response blank. Some members who left blank responses provided comments, includ-

206

Epilogue

ing one stating that nuclear power is a national policy concern and should not be discussed at the municipal level. Following these survey results, Ueno’s group plans to approach the nine council members who responded “no” to the third question, which indicated that they believed some measures beyond those at the individual level are necessary to prepare for nuclear accidents. For now, Ueno’s aim is to secure a majority vote from the council members (twelve or more). These nine members could be strong supporters of Ueno’s efforts. With full support from Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice, Ueno’s group is lobbying for the third petitioning process. It also pushes a plan for the municipal government to store iodine tablets for the residents. Following the second failure to collect enough signatures, Yanagihara highlighted Prime Minister Abe’s persistent negligence in terms of the Japanese Basic Environmental Act (Kankyō kihon hō), opining, “It is national sabotage because there is a lack of legislation regarding ‘environmental standards’ and ‘regulatory standards’ for radioactive materials.”9 Japan enacted the Basic Environmental Act in 1993, a year after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, as the defining measure for Japanese environmental policy. Prior to this law, the Basic Pollution Control Act (Kōgai taisaku kihon hō) was enacted in 1967 to set the foundation of Japan’s pollution control measures. The Natural Environment Conservation Law (Shizen kankyō hozen hō) was then enacted in 1972 as the basic law concerning natural environment control measures. However, these two laws were insufficient for dealing with increasingly complex and global environmental problems, so the Basic Environmental Act was enacted to integrate the pollution and natural environment control measures. Article 21 of the Basic Environmental Act states: Article 21 (Regulations to Prevent Interference with Environmental Conservation) 1. The Government shall take the following regulatory measures to prevent interference with environmental conservation. (1) Regulatory measures necessary to prevent environmental pollution, inter alia, by setting the standards with which corporations must comply regarding such activities as emission of substances causing air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination, or offensive odors; generation of noise or vibration; and the taking of underground water causing ground subsidence.

Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan

207

At that time, the Basic Environmental Act excluded radioactive materials from its scope. Rather, Article 13 states: Article 13 (Prevention of Air Pollution and the like by Radioactive Substances) The measures to prevent air pollution, water pollution, and soil contamination caused by radioactive substances shall be implemented under the Atomic Energy Basic Law (Law No. 186 of 1955) and other related legislation.

Article 27 of the Air Pollution Control Act (Taiki osen bōshi hō) and Article 23 of the Water Pollution Control Act (Suishitsu odaku bōshi hō), which are subordinate laws under the Basic Environmental Act, also established provisions to exclude radioactive materials. Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Basic Law (Genshiryoku kihon hō) did not clearly set out environmental or emission standards, nor did it outline penalties for violating them. It did not envisage a situation in which a large amount of radioactive materials would be released into the surrounding environment. Presumably, there was strong pressure from the Japanese nuclear village to make such an exception for radioactive materials, although nuclear power plants had the potential to cause the worst form of environmental destruction. After the March 11 disaster, the Democratic Party of Japan government stepped in to revise these standards. In June 2012, the National Diet passed a law to amend the Basic Environmental Act, which abolished its exemption of radioactive materials, deleting Article 13. Furthermore, in June 2013, the Act on the Development of Related Laws for the Prevention of Environmental Pollution by Radioactive Substances (Hōshasei busshitsu ni yoru kankyō osen no bōshi no tame no kankei hōritsu seibi ni kansuru hōritsu) was enacted, and exemptions for radioactive substances that had been established in individual laws and regulations were deleted. The only task that remained was to set specific “environmental standards” and “regulatory standards” for radioactive materials, as the government had done for other pollutants (with some of the world’s strictest regulations), in accordance with the revised Basic Environmental Act. However, in December 2012, the Democratic Party of Japan lost a lower house election and could not finish this important task. The returning Liberal Democratic Party government, led by Prime Minister Abe, has not yet defined the environmental and regulatory standards for radioactive

208

Epilogue

materials; thus, we citizens of Japan must stand up to give shape to our anger: our government has failed in its responsibilities. I do not believe the Japanese government will abandon nuclear power, even though decommissioning is in progress. Japan’s nuclear policy has been located in international politics; a product of complex politics, it is embedded in the US-­Japan alliance that has spanned the past seven decades. As documented in chapter 1, the clear premise for the bilateral agreement was reducing plutonium reserves in Japan—­operating nuclear power plants is a method of reducing these reserves. Realistically, we must consider how we will act in response to a nuclear accident, which could happen anywhere that nuclear power plants continue to exist. As long as the Japanese government promotes nuclear power as a national policy, we need to promote formal resettling measures in the event of a nuclear accident. It is important for us citizens to work with local governments to plan for a worst-­case scenario. When a nuclear accident happens, the Chernobyl Law in Japan will rescue its victims, regardless of pronuclear or antinuclear stances. Acting under the constraints of international politics, establishing the Chernobyl Law as an ordinance in Japan is a last-­ditch form of resistance made by antinuclear citizens. Humans and nuclear power cannot coexist, and human beings make mistakes. These are some of the major beliefs on which I act together with Yanagihara, Okada, Ueno, and other members of Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice. I believe our most important task is to make the voices and experiences of the victims of the March 11 disaster heard. We believe life and health should come before the national economy, into which the government infuses massive power and intervention under the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework (chap. 6). Our actions to foster the Chernobyl Law in Japan have constantly kept in mind all the victims of Fukushima. Through trial and error, the action narratives for fostering this law are now powerfully spreading across Japan, envisioning a sustainable future for all. “I was determined to live,” Wakana, a Fukushima evacuee who experienced the March 11 disaster at the age of fifteen, recounted. She has been active in Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice and said that “if we had had the Chernobyl Law, we could have handled it better. . . . We could have avoided grief, anger, fear, conflicts, divides, and jealousy among the victims—­t hose who were compensated for evacuation and those who were not.” She stresses

Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan

209

that “through dialogue with the person next to you, we can take action toward launching a new society by unleashing imagination in full force.”10 I document here the development of responses by the antinuclear citizens of civil society to the March 11 disaster over the past decade, including antinuclear demonstrations, advocacy for renewable energy, and transnational actions against Japan’s nuclear power exportation. Each social movement was successful—­nowadays only a few nuclear power plants are in operation, renewable energy production has expanded across the country, and all Japan’s nuclear export deals have been cancelled. I believe this is a result of each social movement investing all its available resources to solve one issue effectively. However, all these individual issues were actually connected. These movements tactically left out one core issue, the health effects of low-­dose radiation exposure, which I believe is the most crucial issue in post-­Fukushima Japan. In so doing, antinuclear activism in post-­Fukushima Japan excluded other voices and, consequently, these movements limited the scope of their actions and even generated divides within antinuclear activism. More than ten years after the March 11 disaster, it is time for Japanese antinuclear activism to be reorganized by reframing action strategies around the health effects of low-­dose radiation exposure. That is why I stepped into the Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice. It is time for me to engage in changes more directly and work with my fellow antinuclear citizens. The actions taken to create the Chernobyl Law in Japan have just begun, and I see this as being an emerging dynamism in grassroots Japan in the coming decades. We are only beginning to fully realize the severity of radiation exposure. This conclusion should be a lesson for post-­Fukushima Japan and for envisioning a sustainable tomorrow. Antinuclear citizens have taken a stand and will never back down.

This page intentionally left blank

Notes for Anthropology of Policy

This book analyzed the impact of Japan’s nuclear policy through the lens of civil society. I have also argued how civil society worked through a crisis to maintain the democratic participation of ordinary people in the creation of policy advocacy. Throughout my decade-­long ethnographic inquiry into Japanese civil society’s reaction following the March 11 disaster, I have documented the actions of survivors who must navigate a new reality in post-­Fukushima Japan. The primary agents for change are “antinuclear citizens”—­conscientious citizens who envision a sustainable life in a nuclear-­f ree society. Throughout my research, I aimed to address a key question: How have grassroots civic actions exploring sustainability influenced national and global agendas? My projects (e.g., Ogawa 2009, 2015) have addressed important issues in contemporary society from the perspective of civil society. One consistent question I have been exploring is how citizens access policymaking to shape democratic governance. To solve this puzzle, I needed to clarify the relationship between the state and the individual, where civil society could be used as an analytical lens. Civil society is a public sphere broadly comprising the nonstate institutions and associations critical to sustaining modern democratic participation (Ogawa 2009, 2). It is an arena where grassroots activists have access to public affairs via policymaking. As an anthropologist, I might argue that civil society is a culture-­bound concept with all the complex issues that arise from intercultural comparisons. However, the existing scholarship on civil society largely lacks the anthropological perspective that is critical to our understanding of the lived perception and experience of social and political life. Debates on civil society have been narrowly circumscribed by the modern, Western form of liberal individualism. It is an ethnocentric idea with highly abstract theoretical conceptualizations. 211

212

Notes for Anthropology of Policy

As I try to connect the Japanese experience to the international civil society scholarship, I commit to a grounded ethnographic analysis of the grassroots practices and values that are expressed by local actors in the context of civil society. This is because much of the traditional anthropological research has focused on civil society’s key features, such as reciprocity and exchange, elements of connectivity, informal social processes, the mobilization of interests, modes of social affiliation, and patterns of public participation. We anthropologists have documented these features through ethnography. Ethnography is also quite attractive for me because it facilitates the inclusion of diverse voices, which are products of complex sets of associations and experiences and which help us interpret the deeper structural and cultural patterns behind the dominant political rationality. In this book, I took on an intellectual challenge: integrating my ongoing studies on civil society into the anthropology of policy scholarship, an innovative field in contemporary anthropology. As the introduction argues, civil society is an instrument of greater transparency that heightens social accountability and improves the governance of public institutions. Civil society also plays an important role in human services provision as a form of coproduction—­t he core of new public governance thinking in contemporary advanced democracies. Coproduction is a substantive policy tool used by governments that prefer collaborative forms of governance to implement policy goals. Most relevant to this book, civil society is a source of innovation in identifying real problems and presenting them to government officials, policy elites, and public audiences. Since its experiences are embedded in everyday life, civil society organizations spotlight better and more sustainable solutions: they can both shape new “terms of political debate” and “frame issues, define problems and influence agendas” (Sheingate 2003, 188). Civil society can infuse new ideas and grassroots insights into Japanese nuclear governance and even help generate a new policy paradigm for a postnuclear society. Primarily inspired by the anthropology of policy scholarship (e.g., Shore and Wright 1997a; Shore, Wright, and Però 2011), I study policy-­in-­practice (what it does) rather than policy-­as-­proclamation (what it should be) (cf. Pellissery 2014, 6), thus illuminating how Japan’s nuclear policy impacts the welfare of our society and how antinuclear citizens negotiate the meanings of their experiences. I believe my anthropology can function as a public witness to our times. My mission is to make a powerful statement against the state-­

Notes for Anthropology of Policy

213

dominant discourse by presenting local voices and experiences and highlighting the limits in social and political life. To achieve this mission, I developed the “action narrative,” which I defined as a researcher’s commitment to document and cocreate knowledge about the issues that citizens face and to jointly generate actions for social change. I propose action narratives as a new research strategy for anthropologists interested in public policy. They are a direct reflection upon the praxis of action research led by Davydd Greenwood (e.g., Greenwood and Levin 2007), in association with narrative theories focusing on the social construction of reality framed by language, knowledge, and metaphor (e.g., Dodge, Ospina, and Foldy 2005). Since I trained under Greenwood at Cornell University, action research has been a core of my work. In my first book, I defined my goals as a professional researcher as helping to empower ordinary people and forwarding the democratization of society by practicing action-­oriented research (Ogawa 2009). Since 2001, I have been practicing action research at an NPO that promotes community-­oriented lifelong learning in eastern Tokyo, in a place called “Kawazoe” (pseudonym). I have also documented the development of an action research project that I have undertaken for the last two decades (Ogawa 2006, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2020, 2021). For me, action research is my own commitment to collaborative and cogenerative knowledge production between a researcher (myself) and collaborators, which proceeds in an upward spiral that comprises planning, action, and evaluation, eventually solving problems that people need to address. Through ethnography, I have also portrayed the culturally nuanced practices and understandings that I have observed in the context of Japanese civil society. Japan’s state of nuclear emergency has not yet been lifted on October 31, 2022, as I write these Notes. The ongoing state of nuclear emergency, declared by the Japanese state after the March 11 disaster, resonates with what Agamben (2005, 1) called the “state of exception”—­a special condition in which the juridical order is suspended due to an emergency or crisis that threatens the state. One crucial case of the suspension of judicial order following the March 11 disaster was the Japanese government’s drastic increase of the official “safe” radiation exposure levels for Fukushima Prefecture residents to 20 mSv per year above background from 1 mSv per year on April 19, 2011. The dynamic interface between radiation-­tainted environments and human societies is

214

Notes for Anthropology of Policy

necessarily mediated by actions, which are carefully processed by civil society. Furthermore, the search for sustainability requires collaborations that are grounded by voices arising primarily from civil society. My action narratives are socialized commitments for envisioning our future. At the heart of my anthropology is a new relationship born out of a series of civil society actions. With regards to Japan’s nuclear policy, my experience of documenting ongoing efforts to seek sustainability led to taking action for social change. As this book documents, I have joined antinuclear rallies in central Tokyo, engaged in dialogues on the right to evacuation with lawmakers and bureaucrats at the Diet, visited renewable energy production sites in rural Fukushima, attended the construction site of a proposed Japanese nuclear plant in Sinop, Turkey, and explored the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework—­a ll in the process of engaging with a network of people who envisioned a sustainable future. Those people opened up new, workable, and sustainable imaginations, subjectivities, technologies, and knowledge. Armed with action narratives, I, as an anthropologist, can start problem-­ solving in the real world. In my research process, I encountered Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice: Fostering the Chernobyl Law in Japan. The group is working to create a Japanese version of the Chernobyl Law, which aims to protect the lives, health, and livelihoods of citizens amid radiation disasters. The only way to achieve this goal is to avoid radiation exposure, which can be accomplished by evacuation and, eventually, permanent relocation. Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice advocates a series of local policy ordinances on the right to settle out across the country and aims to enshrine it in national law. Initiatives for local policy developments have begun in several municipalities. I started my commitment to Citizens’ Action for Fukushima Justice after an intensive interview with its founder, lawyer Toshio Yanagihara (see epilogue). He asserted that the key principle of radiological disaster relief is that human beings cannot survive with radiation. After many years of research for this book, I fully embraced this view and became a member of the group, where I currently work as a corepresentative, contributing my knowledge, experience, and time to facilitate its discussion and activities. Meanwhile, my scholarly interest has been documenting how group members frame their experiences in their own language, what kinds of knowledge they need and

Notes for Anthropology of Policy

215

produce, and what stories they use to convince their public audience while creating the policy. My commitments are action creation with the group’s members, which include voluntary evacuees from Fukushima. It is essential that civil society frames issues, defines problems, and influences agendas, infusing new ideas and grassroots insights into radiation politics. What we are doing is generating a new policy paradigm and practice under the new normal—­living with 20 mSv per year after the March 11 disaster. I helped draft a proposal for the Chernobyl Law in Japan with Yanagihara, which I translated into English and which the members are using as a template to craft their local policy ordinance.1 The Japanese government created the Nuclear Disaster Victims’ Support Act in 2012 (see chap. 3). It was originally recognized as groundbreaking and was drawn up by a multipartisan group of lawmakers who recognized the right to evacuation for all people within the radiation-­affected areas. However, as a program act that only specified principles and a framework, it did not work well. Further, the legal philosophy underlying this act indicated that the victims’ fate lies at the government’s discretion (or directive order) and that evacuation is not a human right to which they are entitled. Thus, even if the act resembles the Chernobyl Law, they differ significantly because the Chernobyl Law in Japan sees the right to evacuation after radiation disasters as a right for all, not one that the state decides whether to grant or not. Unfortunately, Japanese law has never considered the treatment of disaster victims as a human rights issue: even if the government’s remedy is inadequate, the victims have no legal position to claim it as a violation of their human rights. This is contradicted by the fact that the entitlement of displaced persons to certain basic human rights is clearly stated in the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement that were adopted by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1998.2 We strongly believe that the state is obligated to support the vulnerable, in this case, the Fukushima evacuees. In the event of a nuclear accident, the best thing people can do is evacuate from the radiation-­affected areas. Consequently, most lose their jobs, homes, and relationships. In this scenario, the state should provide essential support so that these people can rebuild their lives wherever they have been evacuated to. Since the government has been

216

Notes for Anthropology of Policy

promoting nuclear power as a national policy, it is only natural that it should meet this obligation. The state should provide a vision for employment and rebuilding homes and relationships so that the victims can reconstruct their lives. However, this can no longer be accomplished by our old mentality that “the state will do everything for us.” To truly overcome the national crisis of the March 11 disaster, we must take action for ourselves. Yanagihara calls this action “citizen-­ oriented public works,”3 envisioning the establishment of an enterprise similar to Spain’s Mondragon Corporation. The livelihood reconstruction projection for the victims of the nuclear accident is not a self-­driven initiative but a public project of the utmost importance. The citizens’ actions to create local policy ordinance for the Chernobyl Law in Japan are part of this endeavor. It is difficult to solve this problem with the traditional approach to public works, in which solutions are left to a handful of experts (politicians, chief executives, bureaucrats, etc.) to implement. A new style of public works projects led by citizens is essential, where we all cooperate and support and cheer each other on. This type of project can only be initiated through proactive citizen engagement. In every era, while it is these proactive citizens who drive society forward, action-­minded anthropologists can also work with them to effect change.

Notes

Introduction 1. The story of the Djang is an oral legend. One of the very few written sources that mention this legend is in Tatz (1982, 136–­37). 2. The gist of the letter is available as a media release from the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation website. April 7, 2011. http:​/​​/​w ww​.mirarr​.net​/​library​/​mirarr​-resolve​ -against​-uranium​-mining​-strengthened​-by​-fukushima. 3. The timeline was compiled based on the National Diet’s Official Report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (National Diet of Japan 2012), as well as TEPCO’s press release documents at http:​/​​/​w ww​.tepco​.co​.jp​/​ cc​/​press​/​indexold​-j​.html, and the official updated information about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant by Fukushima Prefecture at https:​/​​/​w ww​.pref​.fukushima​ .lg​.jp​/​site​/p ​ ortal​/​cat01​-more​.html, both accessed April 30, 2020. 4. This action was based on the Act on Special Measures concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness. The National Diet Library in Tokyo holds a simple digital record of this declaration (Prime Minister’s Office 2011b; see also National Diet Library 2011). 5. The March 11 disaster marked the first time that the Japanese government had to declare a state of nuclear emergency. The system for the declaration of nuclear emergencies was originally established following a previous nuclear accident on September 30, 1999, in Tokaimura, a village in Ibaraki Prefecture, approximately 120 kilometers northeast of Tokyo. This village hosts numerous nuclear technology research facilities operated by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, among other agencies. The Tokaimura case was a “criticality” accident or a “state of a nuclear chain reacting medium when the nuclear fission chain reaction just becomes self-­sustaining” (see IAEA 1999, 1) that occurred in a reprocessing plant operated by JCO, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining Company. The Japanese authorities classified the accident as level 4 on the IAEA International Nuclear Event Scale, indicating the event did not have any significant off-­site risk. A reflection report published by the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center stated, “This criticality accident was the first of its kind in Japan, and it was the first example where people died of acute radiation injury in the course of carrying out tasks as part of Japan’s ‘peaceful use of nuclear energy’ ” (Citi-

217

218

Notes to the Introduction

zens’ Nuclear Information Center 2001, 1). See also Takagi with the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (2000), Cavasin (2008), and NHK (2006). 6. After making the declaration, the prime minister established the Nuclear Emergency Control Headquarters in the Cabinet Office and the Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters on-­site. The relevant prefectural governors and municipal mayors set up disaster control headquarters. Additionally, the Joint Nuclear Emergency Response Committee was established at the local emergency response base facility, and information was shared with national and local levels, TEPCO, and the defense minister, enabling the dispatch of Self-­Defense Forces for disaster relief. The prime minister issued instructions alongside this Declaration of Nuclear Emergency, including evacuation orders, and designated areas where specific measures were required. Eventually, once the nuclear disaster is deemed to have ceased and emergency measures are not required, the prime minister would hear the opinion of the Nuclear Regulation Authority and end or continue the state of nuclear emergency accordingly. 7. CPM, or counts per minute, is a measure of the detection rate of ionization events per minute. 8. The updated number of individuals who were killed by the earthquake and tsunami is available at https:​//​​ ​w ww​.town​.okuma​.fukushima​.jp​/​soshiki​/​jumin​/​1007​ .html, accessed September 5, 2021. The number was relatively small compared with other disaster-­stricken areas. 9. Later, in December 2011, following confirmation of the cold shutdown conditions of the nuclear reactors after the March 11 disaster, the Japanese government reclassified the areas under evacuation orders as follows: (1) difficult-­to-­return zones (>50 mSv per year), (2) restricted residence zones (20–­50 mSv per year), and (3) zones in preparation for the lifting of the evacuation order (