Singer & Organic Farmer Yae: "That's what I want to prove by living this way, to show how important it is to live in a system that is sustainable and not simply going on exploiting and harming the land..."

Via webdocumentary AU-DELA DU NUAGE °Yonaoshi 3.11, singer and organic farmer Yae—daughter of two renowned Article 9, nuclear-free, environmentalist activists—singer Tokiko Kato and the late author Toshio Fujimoto, who created Daichi-wo-Mamoru-Kai (The Association to Preserve the Earth), an organic farming and food distribution organization and the Kamogawa Natural Kingdom, an organic farm/community in Chiba:

There's certainly something in this soil that protects us. That's what I want to prove by living this way, to show how impt is is to live in a system that is sustainable and not simply going on exploiting and harming the land...

We need to share ideas and build a future together...

All this didn't begin with 11 March 2011.

For many years, we've been subjected to many forms of contamination without even realizing it.

An yet, we're still alive. It's still a mystery, the life force, the power of life. It has so much undiscovered potential.

In the next five or ten years, we still don't really have any idea what diseases or physical changes we might see in children. Perhaps some incurable disease.

But at this stage, we don't know anything yet. We will think about what needs to be done when such things do happen. Together with the parents of the  little children, we'll be looking for solutions.

People are quick to forget. With the passage of time, we forget the past and look towards the future without learning from our mistakes.

In Japan in particular we have allowed things to happen during and after the war as if we didn't learn from our mistakes. We haven't learned from our mistakes. It's as if we were made to forget.

Today, we should teach the true history of Japan, the things we have done for the sake of the children, as well as for people like me so that we can reflect together on how we should behave in the future.

Iitate mura is a wonderful village, so very beautiful...The people tried to be self-sufficient in energy production....But from one day to the next, it has become a radiation hotspot, with high levels or radioactivity. Despite this, people in the village yearn to return to their homes.

I read in a magazine about a 102-year-old gentleman who committed suicide in one of the temporary shelters....If ever he'd remain behind in the contaminated area, he would probably have been irradiated, but he certainly wouldn't have died immediately. He had lived for 102 years but ended up taking his own life.

My father used to say: "If you don't take pleasure in life, then you're not really living...

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http://www.yonaoshi311.com

Singer and farmer, Yae is the daughter of the famous singer and anti-nuclear activist Tokiko Kato. Yae has written a song for UNESCO, dedicated to the children who were affected by the triple disaster of 11 March. She herself chose a different lifestyle when leaving Tokyo to live in the area referred to by her father as « the kingdom of nature of Kamogawa ».

We are in Chiba, two hours from Tokyo by train, where the land has also been affected by radiation. They can still plant the rice, and people come from Tokyo at each season to help and learn rice planting.

(Many more video interviews by Keiko Courdy at the AU-DELA DU NUAGE °Yonaoshi 3.11 website).

Some background on Yae, Tokiko Kato, and the late Toshio Fujimoto: 

"Soil and Peace Festival 2011 – it would never be the same again" (Keibo Shinichi Oiwa Tsuji, Slow Japan blog, Nov. 24, 2011)

"Hands-on farm training new path for city slickers" (Hayato Ishii, JT, Jan. 11, 2006)

"POWER TO THE PEOPLE: Tokiko Kato gives voice to anti-nuclear power movement" (Louis Templado, Asahi, Jan. 15, 2012)