Speaker: Tom Gill, Professor of Social Anthropology, Meiji Gakuin University He notes "Nagadoro, a community with a tiny hamlet of 71 households, on the southern edge of Iitate village. After 3.11, it absorbed more radiation than any other hamlet in the village, and it is currently totally evacuated and barricaded with locked gates and sentries on all the four roads that lead into it. In five years and 40 field trips, I have slowly got to know the people of Nagadoro as they undergo an agonizing series of trials and tribulations. By telling their story, I hope to offer a glimpse of what life is really like for the residents of the nuclear disaster zone."

1. Tom Gill, Meiji Gakuin University
FUKUSHIMA AND FURUSATO:
RURAL COMMUNITY AFTER
NUCLEAR DISASTER
Temple University Presentation
18 March 2016

2. 「故郷」 高野辰之
‘Furusato’ lyrics Takano Tatsuyuki, 1914
兎追ひし彼の山 小鮒釣りし彼の川
夢は今も巡りて 忘れ難き故郷
I chased after rabbits on that mountain.
I fished for minnow in that river.
I still dream of those days even now
Oh, how I miss my old country home.

3. 如何にいます父母 恙無しや友がき
雨に風につけても 思ひ出づる故郷
Father and mother―are they doing well?
Is everything well with my old friends?
When the rain falls, when the wind blows,
I stop and recall of my old country home.

4. 志を果たして いつの日にかえらん
山は靑き故郷 水は淸き故郷
Some day when I have done what I set out to do,
I'll return home one of these days
Where the mountains are green, my old country
home,
Where the waters are clear, my old country
home.

5. LDP
manifesto,
December
2012 lower
house
election.
Cover: “Take
back Japan”

6. P.1
“First,
recovery.
Take back
the
furusato.”

10. March 12, 2016
Iitate Village
Hall
0.477
microseiverts an
hour

11. Fukushima N-plant
30km exclusion zone

13. Hiso
比曽
Nagadoro
長泥
Warabi-
daira
蕨平

14. Iitate population decline…
Year 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Pop. 9,385 8,331
-11%
7,920
-5%
7,093
-10%
6,211
-12%
Population of Iitate village, 1970 to 2010
Source: Statistics Bureau, Ministry for Internal
Affairs and Communications

15. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Age distribution: Iitate (purple) and all-Japan (green), as of 2005

16. Water supply: wells

17. Norio
Kanno,
mayor of
Iitate
飯舘村長
菅野 典雄

18. Revived rice-planting dance (taue-odori)

19. Cosmos
Dogwood
Daffodil
Hydrangea

20. Iitate frozen radishes
Shimi-daikon: an Iitate winter speciality

21. A smallish
yacon.
Nagadoro’s
new crop

22. Yacon
shochu --
a budding
business
before the
disaster.

24. On the hamlet noticeboard

25. Reality
grudgingly
recognized

28. Last shop… Kanno Shoten, closed in
2010

29. Last petrol station…. Also closed in 2010

32. Black box:
Iitate village
Red box:
Nagadoro hamlet

33. IITATE
飯舘村
Nagadoro
長泥

34. Government “safe” level: 1mSv/year
19 μSv/hr = 166 mSv/year
15 μSv/hr = 131 mSv/year
9.5 μSv/hr = 83 mSv/year
3.8 μSv/hr = 33 mSv/year
1.9 μSv/hr = 16mSv/year
After disaster: 20mSv/year

35. 2nd stage evacuation:
August 15 2011, Matsukawa
temporary housing
Mr. K and wife
Mr. S

36. Mr S’s three
Geiger counters

37. Environment Agency Iitate
decontamination page, 25 July 2013
Two years after the
disaster, work on
decontamination
had barely started.

38. Decontamination map, 9/30/2014
Ministry of
Environment
home page
Nagadoro: not
even started

39. Decontamination map, 2/15/2016
Nagadoro: not
even started

40. Feb. 15 2016

41. Compensation
Tokyo Electric has been paying 100,000 yen per
person per month for ‘mental suffering’. For the
forced evacuation zones, five years’ worth of
that was paid as a lump sum in 2012. For the
most heavily irradiated zones (over 50 mSv a
year), a further six years’ worth was paid in 2014.
That comes to about 7 million yen per person
for most of Iitate, about 15 million yen for
Nagadoro people.

42. Compensation
The villagers were further compensated for the
loss of their housing, their land, their jobs, and
their agricultural equipment. The amounts
were substantially increased through legal
action via the ADR (Alternative Dispute
Resolution) Centre, set up by the government
to process claims against Tokyo Electric.
In Nagadoro, a family of five has now received
well over 100 million yen, or $1 million.

43. Further compensation
In addition, those living in rented housing are
still having their rent paid for them by the
Fukushima prefectural government.
Villagers trying to resume agriculture are being
provided with land and equipment at no cost to
themselves.
As of Feb 16, 2016, total compensation to
Fukushima nuclear disaster victims totalled 5.9
trillion yen,

44. Trouble with compensation
Some people cannot handle the sudden influx
of cash, and are steadily wasting it on pachinko
and other leisure pursuits.
The cash is paid to the head of household,
leading to complex family arguments over
whether it should be shared out with his wife
and grown-up children.
The cash attracts envy, perhaps discrimination,
from others who have received less.

45. Consider Mr. S
With his compensation money, he has bought a
substantial 6-bedroom house in a rural outskirt of
Fukushima city. It has solar panels, a jacuzzi, and a
large plot of land for kitchen gardening.
He has also bought a second house, for his son.
He has been given a rent-free lease on a nearby
piece of land, and the government has built six
large hot houses for him to grow flowers. They
have also provided him with saplings and seeds to
get started.

46. His total compensation is in the
region of $1.5 million.

47. Why go back?
With two houses, and a nascent agri-business
in Fukushima city, there is no reason for him to
return to his decaying isolated farmhouse, far
from shops and services, even if the radiation
does one day decline to what he considers safe
levels. The last straw came on a recent visit to
his house in Nagadoro, when he found a wild
boar drowned in his water tub, contaminating
the house’s water supply.

48. Is he happy?
No. Money cannot buy happiness. Prone to
depression and a confirmed alcoholic, I would
describe him as bewildered by the massive
flood of events that have disrupted his life over
the last five years.
Like other people of Nagadoro, he has to hide
his background and the amount of
compensation he has received from the people
of his new habitation.

49. His mother
Despite Mr. S’s newfound wealth and spacious
home, his mother continues to live in a
cramped unit of temporary housing in another
outskirt of Fukushima city. She has friends and
a community there. This is a common pattern:
families that used to live in three-generation
households are now divided, with the older
generation still in temporary accommodation.

50. The school
Many Iitate villagers are sending their children
to a temporary school in the neighboring town
of Kawamata. The mayor has announced that
he will close this school in March 2017, and
reopen a school in central Iitate. The PTA are
battling the decision, asking for a three-year
postponement. They are not convinced that the
decontamination program is sufficient, and
many are now living a long way from Iitate.

51. The certificate of residence
Most of the evacuees still hold this important
document (juminhyo) in Iitate. It is a
requirement for them to receive compensation
payments. But it also requires them to use the
Iitate school when it reopens. Since reopening
the village will mean and end to compensation,
many will move their juminhyo to their new
place of residence if that happens.

52. The future
The slow pace of decontamination, the
establishment of new lives outside the zone,
the availability of compensation money to
make that happen, the dying of the old people
who would perhaps have returned to the
village… these things mean that Iitate will not
be restored to anything like its pre-disaster life
in our lifetimes. The same is even more true of
Nagadoro.

54. 29.4% say they want to return…
… but only 30.8% of 29.4% want to return as
soon as decontamination is completed. That is
9% of the village population.

55. An instant ‘marginal settlement’
For people aged under 50, only about 3% say
they will return after decontamination is
completed. The village will have almost no
young or middle-aged people. It will heavily
depend on health and welfare services for a
very small, very old population.
Some 600 old people, spread over 230 square
kilometers of mountainous, forested land.

56. Consider Naraha 楢葉
In September 2015, Naraha became the first
community in the disaster zone to lift its
evacuation order. Six months later, only 450 out
of a pre-disaster population of 7,000 had
returned.
The government’s rosy view of a steady return
to normal life does not match ground-level
reality.