June 11, 2018 – Another election, another defeat. The good people of Niigata Prefecture elected an LDP candidate into the office vacated two months ago by Ryuichi Yoneyama, the all too conscientious governor. A man who fought TEPCO all the way, and who was brought down so easily: one of those horrible yellow press papers found out about an affair of his, and that was enough to finish him off.
Yoneyama, an overachiever if there ever was one, a nerd, was hopelessly in love with a certain girl, it seems. Yoneyama studied at the prestigious University of Tokyo, entering with better entrance test results than any of his peers, and studied medicine. After some years of work in radiology, he took the notoriously difficult bar exam and became a lawyer, just so, it seems. I record these facts to highlight what a character this man seems to be: all work, no life experience. No time for love. How could there have been? He became a politician (LDP his affiliation) and was defeated in three Niigata elections before he became aware of the dangers of nuclear power generation (joined a small opposition party) and went on to become governor of Niigata Prefecture in 2016.
Kashiwazaki Kariwa (the giant nuclear power plant located in Niigata) had become a symbol of TEPCO’s high-handed approach to solving the problems it had created, and at the time, the anti-nuclear current in Japan was strong enough to carry a man like Yoneyama into office. In consequence, the Prefecture of Niigata spearheaded the fight against the Abe administration. This lasted for two years – and one should be amazed it lasted that long. The fact it did is testimony to Yoneyama’s character, as is his absolute loyalty to and respect for the law. Each and every “true politician” in the vein of Abe and his ilk would have brushed the scandal off without even bothering to say sorry: not Yoneyama. Abe has been hounded by scandals for two years now without batting an eye. “You can’t prove anything!” is how he taunts his critics. Yoneyama stepped down even before the shameful article about his affair was published, possibly to protect his friend and lover.
Not much was said about the girl, but it seems he gave her money along with other presents, which constitutes, as his enemies saw it, sex with a prostitute. Prostitution is illegal here, although you would never know it. In one tense, sad press conference, Yoneyama deeply apologized for having broken the law and, “to avoid turmoil,” announced he would step down. What a shock. Not to investors, though: TEPCO’s shares rose by four percent on the news. I was devastated – another brick in the wall for me and all those who suffer from Dai-ichi. “Losers!” we were taunted once again.
Yoneyama was the man who would not permit TEPCO to restart the world’s largest nuclear power station, Kashiwazaki Kariwa, situated in Niigata Prefecture unless “F1”, better known as Fukushima Dai-ichi, would be thoroughly understood and lessons learned. He did not think TEPCO was fit to operate Kariwa’s seven reactors after what had happened in Fukushima, an opinion shared by many, and demanded the strictest measures to ensure Kariwa’s safe functioning, assuming nuclear stations can be safe at all. Thus, he was in harm’s way and was duly finished off. How easy it is to get rid of a truly honorable man. It is not known what the exact relation between Yoneyama and his lover was – but, even supposing, it was sex for money – Ryuichi, you should have fought. What a shock it was to see you broken like that. Destroyed by a silly yellow paper. Destroyed by the dragon, you went out to slay. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Here they were.
That was two months ago. Yesterday Mariko sat on her sofa, moaning as the results from Niigata came in: the anti-nuclear candidate lost the election. We all were trounced once again.
The year is 2018, and much has happened since we last met. For two long years now, I could not bring myself to take up the thread. It was just too much of an effort. I have been deeply depressed for weeks, and it is only this rainy morning of June 11th that I finally managed to give myself the order to “GO.” How writing will help me, if it can help at all, I don’t know. It might be worth a try. Leaving things unfinished is kind of hateful to me, anyway, and something just has to be done. So, here we go.
A dream, a short one: in a car with someone. I was the only passenger. I asked the driver, a man, a friend, to show me how to start the car with a mobile phone – which he did. I was excited and asked him to stop the engine in the same way: no problem. Next, I see us driving rather fast, apparently in Japan, when I suddenly notice we are on the wrong side of the road! An oncoming car evades us, then another one – my acquaintance, who I can’t identify, is not bothered in the least. This is when I realize he has fallen asleep at the wheel! It takes a lot of shaking to wake him up. We come to a halt. We are safe. “What was that?” I ask without getting an answer. I woke up just in time for coffee. Mariko was busy in the kitchen.
Is this dream a parable for our life here in Fukushima, I wonder? Going down the road at speed, the driver asleep? How could it be otherwise? It is so obvious, isn’t it? Speeding, fast asleep, on the wrong side of the road. Notice the happy ending, though! A happy ending – be it personal or in affairs more generally – is something I do not expect at all anymore. This morning’s dream gave me one, though. So let me take it to be a sign. All is not lost yet.
It is a fact that Dai-ichi is still smoldering, in a way, even if there is no smoke. And it is a fact that March 11, 2011, has finally brought me to my knees, but even from that position, I can continue to write. Actually, it’s a bit funny. I wrote all the preceding pages kneeling in front of my keyboard, as our living room is tatami and the desk my PC sits on is a very low one. It is good, gentle, old Aoki-san’s desk. I inherited after his death (after his wife’s death, to be precise) when their own old house was torn down, and all their tenants were invited to take what they needed or wanted. The whole house was stripped bare, lovingly, and thoroughly. The year was 2004, and nobody had an inkling of the tragedy that was to befall us seven years later.
I was brought to my knees a long time ago, kneeling before the old desk. There’s no way around it: it’s the Japanese style! There is symmetry here, I can’t help noticing: seven years from 2004 to 2011, and seven years again have passed since 2011, and I wonder if this might indicate a chance for me to get up again. 2011 – seven years ago. The disaster caught up with me, finally. I feel so very old and weak these last months, and it is getting worse. Apart from my mental anguish (oh, I know the separation is fictional), I suffer from high blood pressure, me, who always had low blood pressure, which of course, is an open door for all kinds of future trouble. Thank you, TEPCO! The first time I noticed my blood pressure had shot up to 180/90 was in 2013. It is not something that worries me much. I avoid modern medicine if possible at all and am not contemplating medication.
More recently, I lost all joy in life, which is harder to bear, but, hey, you don’t really feel it so painfully when you’re down low anyway, you know? That’s Mother Nature’s way of soothing and taking care of her suffering sons and daughters, I suppose. What else? Scientists know about 101 ailments that are caused by a traumatic experience like the one we here in Fukushima experienced. Cancer is not the only problem. There have been many more suicides related to the catastrophe of March 11, 2011, in Fukushima Prefecture than in any of the neighboring provinces, I read. More than a hundred, as of April this year.
Fortunately, I am not exactly suicidal, as I was always a forward-looking person – which I am not anymore. Well, there it is, now: I lost all desire to live and love. That is a fact. All I do is just plodding along. My greatest and only satisfaction is to do my work reasonably well so that I am able to support my dear wife. She looks at me and says, “You will have to live for a long time still, you know?” and I smile and tell her not to worry, but in reality, I don’t see the use of it all. When you are down, really down, you smile and pretend. Well, you might object there are many more stages for a soul to descend and tell me I am far from the very bottom of it all – and I bless you for it, and hope, yes, I HOPE I will never need to go there. Let me try and lift my head again after all these years of going down, down, down. Weak lungs, weak knees, weak legs, weak eyes: so many folks my age have them. My own father – didn’t live to reach his only son’s age at all. I outlived him four months ago. Am I proud of it? Living on is a duty, I feel, and not much more.
Looking at Mariko, my sweet wife, I see hope: she was in such an awful state the years from 2014 right to the end of 2017 that it is like a miracle to see her now. She overcame. She crawled out from under her dark, dark cloud, and entirely by her own efforts, too. I could not help her. I was paralyzed myself, I must confess. At the time, I understood only vaguely how numb and heartless I was, as the feeling of, “There’s nothing I can do about it!” was so powerful that it rendered me totally helpless. What saved her, and me, in consequence, were our children. Especially Leon, who, by a stroke of good fortune, was in Japan precisely when his mother needed him most. His sister May joined him when she could free herself of her obligations, so Mariko pulled through. She had regular attacks of panic; real fits: would sweat profusely, moan and writhe about until Leon, again and again, managed to reassure her that all would be well. “Don’t worry!” It was awful. She was in a state of fear, of absolute horror: “What will become of us? Where will we live?”
It was the loss of our home. The realtor who managed the Aoki’s’ few remaining houses in Yotsukura indeed had the gall to call on Mariko one day, out of the blue, to say something crude like, “Well, you aren’t expecting to go on living here forever, are you now?” to my shocked wife. I was out of the country at the time, unfortunately, so it was several weeks before I could go to see him. “Please, with all due respect, do not ever show your face at our door again!” is what I told him. It was the right thing to do but did not prevent the heir to our landlord’s fortune to call and ask for a meeting. I have to explain that there are three children to the long-deceased landlord and his wife and that we are friendly with two of them. Those two and their families didn’t have much contact with the third man, the eldest child: who, as such, was in charge of their parents’ heritage. We could not refuse to meet him. To make a long story short: he came –- and we died. It was all friendly enough, he brought cookies, as polite tradition wants it, and Mariko poured tea while we talked about the weather and couldn’t stop beating around the bush for quite a long time before he got down to business. He made us an offer. We refused. He left, not without asking us to reconsider and advising us he would be back.
What to do? In Mariko’s sorry state, she would not even think of fighting back. After renting a house for thirty years (even though we never had a contract and didn’t have a key to the house; there was no lock on the entrance door), tenants can’t be evicted so very easily in this country. Mariko would have none of it. “We have always been treated so well!” she said, determined not to cause trouble. At the next meeting, some weeks later, we tried to make him an offer: “How about us buying the house?” – “Sorry, that is impossible. The adjoining plot is involved, unfortunately. The whole area needs to be redeveloped as one, you see. “Very sorry,” he said, and his expensive pair of glasses reflected the light. The background to all of this, the real deal, was money, of course. Real estate prices in Yotsukura, as well as rents, have gone through the roof. “Now or never!” our landlord’s children must have thought, and I can’t blame them. Prices in Yotsukura rose like in no other place in all Japan! A mystery? Not at all.
Yotsukura happens to be the destination of choice for Dai-ichi evacuees. A hundred and fifty thousand people were forced out of their homes after March 11, 2011. Eleven communities were partially or completely evacuated. In other communities, residents were advised to leave, and after a relatively short time, told they could go back. “It’s alright, everything is under control, don’t worry!” Some of them did go back. Some of the remaining ones were hopeful of returning eventually – others were not. Most of those who had once lived in the vicinity of Dai-ichi understood the prospects of starting over in their old homes were more than bleak. Everybody was scared of the lingering radiation – however forcefully, the government tried to get people to go back.
Incentives were given, of both the positive (no good information on that) and the negative kind: aid was cut, and temporary housing sites were razed (all to little avail). I saw the situation close up in 2015 when I was an interpreter for a renowned journalist accompanied by a no less renowned photographer. For one week, we explored the situation in the town of Naraha. Naraha had officially been declared “safe” from April 2015, but only a tiny fraction of its former inhabitants were willing to return. In the four years that had passed, opinions about the future had hardened. Who wants to live in a place, however thoroughly decontaminated, that doesn’t even allow your children a stroll in the woods behind your home? Decontamination was limited to farmlands, roads, and homes within a perimeter of 20 meters. Beyond? The wilderness of M. Becquerel! Cesium and friends have taken up residence in hill and dale, in trees and roots, in moss and softly murmuring brook. They came to stay! It will be decades until they’ll leave again.
We saw how incredibly beautiful the hills around Naraha are. We saw the rivers flow and the seagull’s circle – we saw it. We met a dozen people or more, down from the mayor and the despairing abbot of an old temple right down to evacuated families who all told us their stories. What we wanted to find badly was a family with children, a real family back in Naraha. Families with children now are an absolute rarity in those parts. We were extremely lucky to get an introduction to one fearless household just when we had practically given up. Our friend Eiko has relatives out there in Naraha, and it was they who knew someone who knew the Xs. “Aren’t you scared?” we asked them. They were a family of six, and (our prize) they had a baby! “No!” was the answer to the question we had not dared ask many others. The “Xs” were proud to be back, and hadn’t they even got a certificate issued by Mr. Abe himself, commending them for their courage? We were stunned.
As for most of our interviews: how can you coldly question someone grieving? We saw tears in many eyes. I had tears in mine, again and again. It is hard to live in the vicinity of an exploded nuclear power plant. Even if most of the radioactivity was blown away, out to sea: enough remains to render moot all efforts towards safety, real safety, like in “life before the catastrophe.”
So, what are you going to do, young mother? And you, father of two lovely little children. Are you ready to endanger their future? No, you are not going back, especially as you have found work somewhere else. Your children are happy in their new surroundings, and when you think of your old life, you realize it is light years away already. No, you don’t go back. But, you would still like to be near the old place, and who wouldn’t? Well, the closest you can get without losing shopping, medical assistance, and all the other amenities and services you need is a village named Yotsukura. The very village I called home for thirty years. You and your neighbors came to Yotsukura, and I can’t blame you, and you took over. You had some ready cash, you needed houses and apartments, so prices went through the roof, and our landlord likes you better than us, much better.