On September 11, 2011, twelve demonstrators were unduly and violently arrested during the Shinjuku ”No Nukes” demonstration against nuclear power. Revolted by the blatantly gratuitous nature of the arrests, a number of academics and others, including Mr. Karatani Koujin, organized around this statement for the right to public assembly. Denouncing the arrests as unlawful and unconstitutional, we are also calling for donations towards legal costs for the victims (more details will be added later).
Joint Statement for the Freedom of Demonstration and Assembly
In the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11th, TEPCO, METI and the government have colluded in covering up the real situation and underplaying its damage. This may eventually claim many lives in the near future. Such behavior is clearly criminal. This is even unconstitutional. Article 25 states that ‘all people shall have the right to maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living’, yet while TEPCO, METI and the government should take responsibility for it, they behave as if all problems have already been solved.
Voices of protest among the people, demanding full nuclear decommissioning, are now growing ever large. Naturally such opinions are expressed in the form of street demonstrations. Organizing and joining a rally that is ‘freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other forms of expression’ is a fundamental democratic right, guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution. The groundswell of political protests all over Japan is testament not to confusion or disorder, but to the maturity of Japanese civil society. This is what overseas media are now taking notice of.
However, the reality is that the police are systematically obstructing the demonstrations. During the ‘Genpatsu Yamero (No Nukes)’ rally in Shinjuku on September 11th, 12 participants were arrested. As movies uploaded to YouTube and other media testimonies show, these are coercive arrests without any reasonable grounds. Their true intention, of repressing all anti-nuclear demonstrations by targeting the particular group that has successfully organized rallies with young people, is apparent.
We condemn this injustice and support the people’s right to demonstration as part of the freedom of expression. Japanese mass media are complicit in concealing the fact that mass dissent against nuclear reactors exist, by neglecting to report the anti-nuclear protests or the malicious arrests in their coverage. We also call on the mass media to reflect on their news policies.
PRESS CONFERENCE Karin Amamiya , Author Kojin Karatani, Philosopher Eiji Oguma, Keio University Assistant Professor Satoshi Ukai , Hitotsubashi University Professor Language:
The speech and Q & A will be in Japanese with English interpretation Description:
Police arrested 12 demonstrators at a peaceful rally in Shinjuku against nuclear power plants on September 11. Five of the 12 are still in police custody, being held without charge. The arrestees included a French national and his Japanese partner.
Police changed the route for the demonstration just before nearly 10,000 people gathered for the march. During the demonstration, witnesses say the police intentionally divided the protesters into small groups then deliberately provoked sections of the crowd. The incident has barely been reported by the Japanese press, and even some of the few reports that were published alleged misbehavior on the part of the protesters based not on actual observation but entirely on police accounts.
Some allege that this particular group of protesters have been targeted by police because they are made up primarily of young people rather than the middle-aged and older protesters who turn up at many such events. In other words, the police seem to fear the politicization of the young more than other age groups.
Are the Japanese police trying to silence political dissent through a systematic campaign of intimidation against the young in particular? Are the democratic rights to protest being observed in practice by those who claim to be protecting Japan's social order? This event is an opportunity to reflect upon these crucial issues.
Scholars, writers and political analysts have issued a joint statement denouncing police suppression of the September 11 rally. The harsh measures against a peaceful protest may have enormous implications for the future in Japan. Come and hear what the speakers have to say and judge for yourself.
Kojin Karatani, Philosopher
Karin Amamiya , Author
Satoshi Ukai , Hitotsubashi University Professor & Eiji Oguma, Keio University Assistant Professor
※ＡＰＦ（Asia Press Front ）： 有限会社APF通信社。日本の独立系ニュースプロダクション。1992年12月設立。東京都港区赤坂に本局があり、大阪とタイのバンコクに支局がある。ミャンマーのヤンゴンで取材中に軍事政権の兵士に射殺された長井健司さんが所属していた戦争・紛争地帯専門の映像取材会社。
Tens of thousands of protestors gathered at Meiji Park in central Tokyo on Monday, Sept. 19, in what became the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March. Chanting "Protect our children," protestors marched for two to four kilometers to appeal against Japan's dependency on nuclear energy and to urge the government to abandon atomic energy. Police estimated that nearly 30,000 people participated in the event, but organizers' estimates doubled the figure. (Mainichi)
重荷を未来に託せるか フクシマを見つめて 大江健三郎
It hasn't been long since I read a science fiction piece in which humankind decides to bury massive amounts of radioactive waste deep underground. They are stumped by how they should warn the people of the future who will be left to deal with the waste, and by who should sign the warning.
Unfortunately, the situation is no longer a matter of fiction. We are one-sidedly unloading our burdens onto future generations. When did humankind abandon the morals that would stop us from doing such a thing? Have we passed a fundamental turning point in history?
After March 11, I stayed up until late every night watching television (a newly formed habit following the disaster). There was a television reporter who went to check in on a house with the lights on in an area that was otherwise dark due to evacuation orders. As it turned out, a horse was in labor and the owner was unable to leave its side. Several days later, the reporter visited the farm once again, and saw the mare and its foal indoors in the dark. Their owner's expression was gloomy. The foal had not been allowed outside to run around freely because radioactive material-contaminated rain had fallen on the grass.
The crisis has taken away lives that many people are still trying to get back. What messages can we deliver to those people and how? I need to hear those words, too, and the person I have turned to for guidance is the physician Shuntaro Hida, who has been speaking about the dangers of internal exposure to radiation since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
In an interview in the September issue of the magazine Sekai, Hida says: "If you have already been exposed, you must be prepared. Resign yourself. Tell yourself that you might be unlucky and see horrendous effects several decades down the line. Then, try to build up your immune system as much as you can to fight the hazards of radiation.
"But will making the effort to avoid buying vegetables that may be tainted be sufficient in protecting you? It's better to take precautions than to not take them. But radioactive materials continue to leak from Fukushima, even now. Tainted food has infiltrated the market, so unfortunately, there's no guaranteed method of protecting yourself from internal exposure. Abolishing nuclear power and cutting off radioactivity at its source is a much faster way of dealing with it."
I do not want to deliver these words to the men -- the politicians, the bureaucrats, the businessmen -- who intend to thrust the difficult task of dealing with radioactive waste, which was generated and continues to be generated by an electric power policy that puts production power and economic strength before everything else, upon future generations. Rather, I want to deliver these words to the women -- the young mothers -- who have been quick to catch on to the dangers being posed to their children, and are trying to deal with the problem head on.
After Italian voters rejected the resumption of operations at their nuclear power plants, a senior official in Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) attributed the referendum result to "mass hysteria," suggesting that the power of women was behind the results. An Italian woman in the film industry responded to the insult, saying: "Japanese men are likely moved to action by a 'mass hysteria' that puts productivity and economic power before all else. I'm only talking about men here, because no matter where you are, women never put anything before life. If Japan were to not only lose its status as an economic superpower but fall into long-term poverty, we all know from Japanese films that women will overcome such hardships!"
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan's World War II defeat, and the subsequent occupation of Japan by the Allied Forces took place during my childhood. We were all poor. But when the new Constitution was unveiled, I was struck by the repetition of the word "determination" in its preamble. It filled me with pride to know that the grown-ups were so resolute. Today, through the eyes of an old man, I see Fukushima and the difficult circumstances that this country faces. And still I have hope in a new resolve of the Japanese people. (By Kenzaburo Oe, author)
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Kenzaburo Oe, born 1935, was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. After the crisis started at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, musicians and writers, including Oe, released a statement calling for the abolishment of nuclear power. An antinuclear rally will be held in Tokyo's Meiji Park on Sept. 19.
「ジャーナリズムとは報じられたくないことを報じることだ。それ以外のものは広報に過ぎない」ジョージ・オーウェル
George Orwell： Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.
As David Shukman enters the exclusion zone, he finds cattle that have starved to death
Nothing stirs in the empty heart of Tomioka, a community of 16,000 now reduced to the eerie status of a ghost town after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.
The shops of the main street are deserted, motorbikes and cars are abandoned, weeds push through gaps in the concrete.
Vending machines selling drinks and snacks - always popular in Japan - stand unlit and silent.
Tomioka lies just inside the 20km exclusion zone that was hurriedly enforced last March when a radioactive cloud escaped from the stricken power plant.
In the rush to flee, doors were left wide open. Windows and roofs shattered by the earthquake and tsunami are still not repaired. A bicycle leans against a lamp-post.
Mr Matsumura is eager for the world to see how his community has suffered
We are making the visit after reassurances from scientists and other journalists that radiation levels had fallen in this particular area.
The worst of the contamination was blown northwest of Fukushima while Tomioka lies to the south.
Nevertheless we equip ourselves with overalls, boots, gloves and face-masks, all designed to minimise contact with the dust that is likely to be the main source of radioactivity.
The public and media are banned from entering the zone but as we approach a police checkpoint we are not stopped.
Radiation checks
We continually operate a Geiger counter - and though the radiation level rises slightly once we cross into the zone, it is even lower than we had expected.
For the record, during the course of a three-hour visit - which we kept deliberately short to minimise the risks - the rate averages about three microsieverts per hour.
We estimate our total dose to be roughly half that of a typical chest X-ray.
Our guide is a local farmer, Naoto Matsumura, eager for the world to see how his community has suffered.
Although he was part of the initial exodus after the accident, he could not bear life in a refugee centre and soon moved back to his farm, refusing orders to leave.
He's the last citizen to remain but he believes that it's his duty to do whatever he can to keep Tomoika going as a community.
Some animals have only known life within the exclusion zone
"We want this place to be safe again," he tells me, as we drive through quiet streets and past overgrown paddy-fields.
"We need gas, electricity and water. But the old people still want to come back, even my mother and father. Their wish is to die here.
"Now it's just me taking care of the animals."
The fate of the livestock is one immediate challenge. Dozens of cattle broke free after the evacuation and now roam wild.
Pigs and farmed boar also escaped and are living a feral existence - I see one litter of very young animals who have only known life inside the nuclear zone.
But others remained trapped - their owners fled in too much of a hurry to release them - and they have since starved to death.
Mr Mastumura leads us to a large cattle farm. Beef from this area used to be highly prized for its taste and quality.
'Failing' residents
Wrecked by the quake and over-run by massive spiders' webs, the sheds now make for a very grim scene.
At one end of a row of pens, I see the decomposed bodies of a cow and her calf. In all, 60 cattle perished here.
Mr Matsumura believes the authorities have failed the people of the area - which is why he's taken the risk of bringing us in.
As we keep watch on the Geiger counter, the radiation level, as expected, is generally higher down on the ground, very occasionally peaking at around 30 microsieverts an hour.
On a very rapid visit like ours, these rates are by no means threatening. But I ask our guide if he worries about living in this environment.
"I refuse to think about it," he says, joking that his chain-smoking may be more dangerous.
Inside the exclusion zone, dust is considered the main source of radioactivity
There may be others willing to join him but the exclusion order is unlikely to be lifted - even in this area - for a while yet.
Of wider concern is the impact of contamination beyond the zone.
The main plume of radioactivity reached far further than the 20km border with fears for agriculture and human health, and scientists are now in a race to gather reliable data to help shape public policy.
Japan's Institute for Livestock and Grassland Science has invited in a leading British expert, Dr Brenda Howard from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, to provide advice following her years of research at Chernobyl.
Her initial assessment is that the effects will not be nearly as serious as with that accident, partly because in Japan most cattle are kept indoors and so avoided the fallout.
'No Chernobyl'
"The animal production system here is very different to Chernobyl," she says.
"There the cows graze outside on pasture. Whereas cows and beef cattle here are housed and therefore there's less potential for being contaminated by the radioactivity."
Readings have confirmed contamination of the soil, often at high levels - which raises the question of how much radioactivity may pass into the plants growing on it.
Professor Tomoko Nakanishi of the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Agriculture and Life Sciences believes the contamination is mostly superficial.
Some structures have been over-run by spiders' webs
Her early studies have shown that vast majority of radioactivity is held within the top 5cm of the soil.
As a result, she believes that relatively small quantities of radioactive Caesium 134 and 137 will be absorbed into the stalks of rice, and even fewer into their grains.
"Only the surface is contaminated," she told me, "only the first 5cm is highly contaminated."
Professor Takanishi concedes that consumers might not be convinced by these reassurances.
"If you don't want to eat it," she says, "just discard this year's product but next year I'm really optimistic. It will be safe to eat."
But if that conclusion is proved right, there still remains the challenge of clearing up large areas of poisoned soil.
Removing the top soil is one technique but it needs to be disposed of and the work is very expensive. Ploughing it deeper into the ground can dilute it but that too is a costly option.
Six months on, much of the science is still uncertain and it may be years before farmland can be convincingly declared safe.
Meanwhile, Naoto Matsumura ekes out a pre-industrial existence in the shadow of Fukushima.
Ten miles from the crippled power station, he lives by candlelight, mostly eating from tins, all the while he hoping the community he grew up in will come back to life.
Six months on from Japan's nuclear crisis, science correspondent David Shukman has made a rare visit to the abandoned town of Tomioka in the Fukushima exclusion zone.
He says that radiation levels have fallen dramatically in some areas, but the effects of the sudden evacuation are plain to see. （以上転載終り）
Residents of a town in the shadow of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant visit the houses they had to abandon when nuclear disaster struck
Justin McCurry and Michael Condon, theguardian.com
Thursday 8 September 2011 17.52 BST
Takashige Kowata thought he was prepared for the worst when he opened the door to his house for the first time in six months. But the trauma of seeing his family home abandoned amid the panic of a nuclear meltdown was compounded when he noticed a broken bathroom window.
"It looks like we have been burgled," the 63-year-old says, still too shaken to establish what is missing. "I can't believe that someone is capable of stealing from the victims of a disaster."
The intruders would have committed their crime with ease: Kowata's spacious house and garden lie about a mile from the scene of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which has turned large swaths of nearby land into an official no-go zone.
He was one of 80,000 people living within a 12-mile (20km) radius of the nuclear plant who were told to evacuate by the government in the hours after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake launched a tsunami that crashed through its protective seawall and triggered meltdown in three of its six reactors.
Kowata and more than 200 of his neighbours have been allowed to make a brief visit home to collect as many belongings as they can carry. It is a homecoming that many accept is likely to be their last.
Dressed in protective suits, masks and goggles, they have been given just two hours to survey the damage to the houses they have been barred from entering since the triple disaster struck north-east Japan on the afternoon of 11 March.
Months of radiation leaks from Fukushima Daiichi have rendered Okuma and the nearby town of Futaba uninhabitable for years, perhaps decades.
According to a recent government report, the annual cumulative radiation dose in one district of Okuma is estimated at 508.1 millisieverts, more than 500 times the acceptable yearly level and, experts believe, high enough to increase the risk of cancer.
"We've been told that we can't return home because of the radiation," says Kinuko Yamada, a 53-year-old woman who is making the trip with her husband. "I hope we can go back, but it could be 20 to 30 years before that happens. I'll probably be dead by then."
Radiation levels in the town are so high that decontamination could take years, or not succeed at all. Residents have so far been allowed just this one brief visit, organised by the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] and nuclear safety officials. The Guardian was the only foreign media permitted to accompany them.
Evidence of the area's dismal place in the history of Japan's nuclear power industry becomes visible soon after the convoy of buses passes through the police checkpoint.
All traces of ordinary life have been cast in eerie suspension: roadsides are overgrown with grass and weeds; shops and restaurants lie empty, and grand farmhouses – evacuated in the hours following the accident, when Tepco officials were considering abandoning the plant – stand quiet and deserted. Toppled walls and scattered roof tiles are reminders of the staggering force of the quake that caused the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
The only sound is the chirping of late-summer cicadas and the occasional beep of a Geiger counter. A scrawny black dog wanders into the road, sizes up his human visitors and scampers back into the woods.
And just visible above a line of trees is the roof of one of Fukushima Daiichi's reactor buildings. As our bus drives past, radiation levels inside surge to 61 microsieverts an hour (compared to the typical Japanese average of 0.34 microsieverts).Elsewhere inside the exclusion zone, at least 1,000 cattle are roaming wild after escaping from their farm homesteads, according to local authorities. Most pets, and tens of thousands of cows, pigs and chickens have starved to death.
A few days after residents returned to their homes, police officers and firefighters resumed the search for almost 200 tsunami victims in the area still listed as missing.
Some residents are reluctant to openly criticise Tepco, a major local employer. "I never worried about the nuclear plant before the tsunami," says one of Kowata's neighbours, a woman in her 60s who declines to give her name.
"When we left on 11 March we thought we would be back in a week or 10 days. Then the reactor buildings started exploding and we were more cautious, but even so I never thought it would be as bad as this. The power plant put food on the table around here ... I can't find the words to describe how I feel.
"I'm going to take back some valuables and our ancestors' spirit tablets – my parents are both dead. The earthquake left our family Buddhist altar in pieces, so I brought some flowers to place in front of it."
Her garden, usually a blaze of colour at this time of year, is a tangle of weeds and wild grass. "I spotted a few flowers blooming among the grass," she says. "I love flowers and told them I was sorry for not being able to look after them properly."
Inside, the doors have come away from their hinges and the walls have been pushed up by the force of the quake. "It's terrible," she says. "The kind of shock from which you can never recover. I want to come back, but it might be better for my peace of mind to stop hoping."
However, Kowata, a former local government official who witnessed the arrival of MOX (mixed oxide) nuclear fuel at Fukushima Daiichi last year, makes no attempt to hide his bitterness towards Tepco.
He has lived in this neighbourhood all his life and had only just built a new house, which he shared with four other members of his family. His father, like many other elderly tsunami survivors, died soon after being evacuated.
"I don't know how much Tepco and the government will give us as compensation, and in any case it will take a long time to arrive," says Kowata, who is living in rented accommodation in Aizu-Wakamatsu, a town farther inland.
"We can't wait around for them to take action. The nuclear accident is a man-made disaster.
"The government and Tepco kept telling us that this kind of thing could not possibly happen. Tepco hasn't changed when it comes to covering up trouble."
Just two hours after they arrived, Okuma's residents must board buses to take them back outside the exclusion zone to be screened for radiation.
They emerge from their homes gripping plastic bags bulging with clothes, valuables, heirlooms, children's toys and photo albums.
Kowata gathers his belongings, walks out of his front door and turns the key one last time. "As far as I am concerned, this is the last time I will see my home," he says. "The house itself isn't very old ... it's a great shame."
Halfway down the driveway he turns and fixes his gaze on the home he is leaving behind.
"I wanted to say thank you one last time. Now it's time to move on."
Source: CNN Ghost town: Japan's exclusion zone 01:42
Story highlights
Tomioka was once home to 52,000 people It sits in the southern section of the exclusion zone Except for the livestock roaming the region, there are no people Surface radiation meter climbs near entryway to exclusion zone
As we travel down the road toward the 20-kilometer (12-mile) exclusion zone, the entryway is blocked by half a dozen police officers and a large sign flashing red lights. The sign reads: "Keep out. Don't enter."
This is Japan's exclusion zone. No one lives here, a place where 78,000 people once lived. Nearly a year after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster, the exclusion zone remains off-limits due to high levels of radioactive contamination.
My goal today is to see the town of Tomioka, a farming and factory community which sits in the southern section of the exclusion zone. It's a town that was once home to 52,000 people.
It's hard to imagine that many people once lived here, as we drive into the center of town. That's what strikes you first about the exclusion zone -- what you can't see, the people. Even though I know the residents have been evacuated, it is still eerie to be in a town where it seems the people have simply evaporated. Bicycles near a bus stop lie tipped over, as if owners forgot to retrieve them. Cars sit in a shopping center, seemingly waiting to have groceries loaded into them. A 7-Eleven convenient store sits in disarray, the items shaken from the shelves from the March 11 earthquake. These communities are complete ghost towns, frozen in time.
The signs of life can oddly be found among livestock roaming the region. We come up to cows grazing on the hill right off the main road. They stare at us, the visitors, and then return to grazing, as we drive off. We're surrounded by what appears to be farmland, overrun by brown weeds.
I'm carrying two radiation meters with me, one to measure surface radiation and one to track how much my body accumulates. The surface reader begins to climb, as soon as we drive past the entryway, even though I haven't placed it next to a contaminated surface, which residents hope will be decontaminated within a few years. The release of radiation from the plant primarily covered the communities to the north of the plant. Tomioka, in the southern end of the exclusion zone, has a lower level of contamination than towns to the north and northwest of the plant.
But a lower level doesn't mean it's safe to be here long. We stop in a neighborhood to check the radiation. On the pavement, the surface reads a radiation level of 0.042 millisieverts per hour, which is 10 times what you're exposed to in a dental x-ray. Not a significant problem since we're in the exclusion zone for a short visit and wearing protective suits. But living on this street carries possible long-term health risks, especially for children.
At a nearby park, contaminated soil sits under blue tarps. It's the first hopeful sign of progress we've seen, contained in this small park. But the rest of Tomioka sits empty, of people, of progress and an apparent future.
は日常でも
スタートからの「主権者は」バナー以外、今日追加したバナーは「原発にニャ～！」バナーと、「デモだぁ いいニャ～」バナーです。
Kojin Karatani, Philosopher
Karin Amamiya , Author
Satoshi Ukai , Hitotsubashi University Professor & Eiji Oguma, Keio University Assistant Professor
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