Many thanks to Rose Welsch of Peace Boat, Global Article 9 Campaign and US for Okinawa for sharing these great photos from the 7.16.12 "Sayonara Nukes" rally in Tokyo and for cutting through to the crux of the issue: people in Japan and everywhere want to live democratically, by government "of the people, for the people, and by the people." In Japan and other nuclear nations, this means living without the threat of being nuked by their own nations' nuclear plants.
170,000 people gathered at the event,
including this character, who depicted an "Imperial Nuclear Japan."
Great atmosphere here at the event!
Really interesting booths, speakers and musicians.
Famous Japanese musician SUGIZO joined the event today
and gave a fantastic speech about the need to reclaim Japan
from those steering it down a dangerous course.
Yukawa Reiko, a famous songwriter and music specialist in Japan, joined today's event.
Upcoming and mid-level artists are often silenced in Japan
if they take a stand against nuclear energy,but people like Yukawa are undeterred.
These young people held up photographs of the domesticated animals
such as cows, dogs, cats that were left behind in the Fukushima evacuation zone
and have starved to death or are on their last legs. Their sign asks us to remember all the creatures besides humans who have been victimized by nuclear energy.
"The Government of the people, by the people, for the people."
This quote in English included in a Japanese newspaper article about widespread opposition
to the restart of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors caught my eye today.
From Japan to the US, from Canada to Egypt, isn't this basically what people are calling for?
This gorgeous collection "dedicated to the pursuit of Beauty and Life on this planet" by Kim Oswalt and Helen Dryz is available for online listening.
Includes "Gymnopédies" by late 19th-century French composer Erik Satie, two compositions by the late Katsutoshi Nagasawa, and three compositions by the late Minoru Miki, who believed music can serve as an elevating and bridging force for humanity:
In a world powered by military muscle and crass materialism, music and the fine arts may seem weak and ineffectual, but they provide a way to raise consciousness and reverse the march toward increasing violence and intolerance.
"With music," Miki said, "we hope to lead the way in place of leaders who cannot be trusted."
Moving testimony by Mr. Idogawa, mayor of Futaba, where Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant is located. Mr. Idogawa testified that the day of Unit 1's explosion, the Japanese government did not announce SPEEDI data regarding levels of nuclear radiation, so Futaba's residents evacuated northwest, to an area with even higher levels of nuclear radiation (because of wind drifts) than their town. Many citizens of Futaba were exposed to these higher levels of radiation including children.
Senator Masako Mori also severely questioned to Prime Minister Noda about Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant's accident.
I have been fortunate enough to take part in many vibrant demonstrations calling for social change in such areas as peace, clean energy and other justice-related causes in various cities around the world for years. Here in Tokyo, Japan, where I have lived for the past decade, I have felt the demonstrations against nuclear power following last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster growing steadily. Nothing, however, compares to the size and intensity of yesterday’s Sayonara Nukes Rally, held in and around the city’s Yoyogi Park.
Deciding to take advantage of the summer sun by biking to the event, I understood that this demonstration was going to be different as soon as I approached police officers stationed more than a kilometer outside the park, followed soon thereafter by endless throngs of people clamoring to enter the demonstration grounds from all sides. Although the scene was familiar—event-goers of all ages waving placards, playing instruments, and shouting out various messages—the sheer immensity of the scale was absolutely unlike anything I had ever before experienced. The event had been extremely well-organized, catering to the many different demographics of protesters by arranging different marching contingents for the three major categories of attendees that were expected to attend: leftist labor groups, Gensuikyo and other anti-nuclear organizations, and NGOs/grassroots groups together with individual citizens—the latter of which constituted the newest historical element to protest culture in Japan. There was something here for everyone, and the combined energy felt vibrant, palpable—unstoppable.
The journey to the park (and adventure trying to find a space for my bike) took quite a bit longer than I had anticipated, and I ended up missing the first part of the day’s program, including speeches from numerous figures including musician/activist Ryuichi Sakamoto, author/nun Setouchi Jakucho, and performing artist/human rights activist Kaori Kanda, whose work I had become familiar with at a 2010 event. No matter, however; the day was just beginning, and there was plenty more to take in.
After swimming my way through the crowds, I was finally able to join members of the Namida Project to set off on the demonstration route through the streets of Shibuya. Needing more hands for our banners, we befriended a woman along the way who said she had never before attended a demonstration, but was moved to do so when thinking about the future for her two year-old daughter—a typical story I had heard many times during other post-3.11 demonstrations.
Marching with members of the Namida Projectcarrying a banner designed by Crystal Uchino, author of the poignant essay, "Rise like Tsunamis after the Earthquakes"
Shortly thereafter, I had to turn back to meet up with a student of mine whom I had missed earlier in the park. The timing turned out to be perfect, since just as I returned to the event grounds, I heard wafting through the warm breeze the now-familiar guitar refrains from “Human Error”—the epic song from Kyoto-based band Frying Dutchman that had become the voice of the anti-nuclear movement following the 3.11 disaster. This was the song that had changed the views held by many of my previously pro-nuclear students, and I had been wanting badly to see it performed live. To do so here, surrounded by the powerful energy of the Sayonara Nukes rally, was beyond incredible. (Someone called my iPhone midway through, cutting off the filming. My apologies...)
I headed next to the other main stage, where another series of speakers were in the midst of delivering rousing speeches regarding the historical moment now taking place in Japan. I was pleased to see that Nobuto Hosaka—the mayor of Setagaya ward, where I just recently moved, and a staunch opponent of nuclear power—onstage discussing the Transition Setagaya movement (part of the global Transition Network), as well as Japan’s need for implementation of a “zero nuclear” policy. He was followed by Hiroko Uehara, former mayor of Kunitachi City, who minced no words in saying that the reason why the Ohi reactor was restarted boiled down to economics, pure and simple. “There is immense money to be made from nuclear power, and the nuclear mafia will not give up easily,” she said, “but the power is in our hands. If citizens raise their voices and pressure their local lawmakers to take up this issue at the national meeting of city mayors, we CAN make change!”
The need for political change was strongly echoed by Hajime Matsumoto, the owner of a recycled goods shop in Tokyo’s Koenji district, who successfully organized a large-scale anti-nuclear demonstration last April—mostly by word-of-mouth and social networking sites such as Twitter. “The attitude of this governmental administration following the Fukushima crisis has been beyond contemptible,” he alleged. “When citizens are demanding and pleading with regard to a specific issue—in this case the restart of the Ohi nuclear reactor—any respectable government would take some notice. Not these bastards, who just went right ahead and did what served them. Truly, it’s time for citizens to take back our country.”
Hajime Matsumoto
Taro Yamamoto, the actor who lost work over his vocal anti-nuclear stance following 3.11, took the stage next and voiced his deep emotion at viewing the crowds of attendees from the chartered helicopter flying above the crowd—an initiative spearheaded by author Takashi Hirose and funded by the Johnan Shinkin Bank, which had begun weeks earlier in order to ensure media coverage of the weekly demonstrations outside the Prime Minister’s residence. “Honestly speaking, I had been losing hope that we as individuals would be able to make change. But when I saw the endless sea of people extending out from the park in all directions, I realized I was wrong: We HAVE made change,” he said impassionedly. “Now, we must take this to the next level. Politicians must know that if they do not respond to the peoples’ wishes, their jobs are finished.”
The New York Times has a good article on the demonstration, and this Daily Kos had a brilliant overview of the day’s events, including organizers’ rebuttal to the short-sighted argument that the disaster is owing to “Japanese culture”. Kanagawa-based blogger Ruthie Iida also has an interesting account of her experience during the demo at her beautiful photo site, Faces of Japan.
Powerful video showing Fukushima women engaging in a"die-in"
in front of the Prime Minister's residence on June 7, 2012 to protest the restart of the Ooi Nuclear Power Plant, after having submitted a protest to the office of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.
Top: "The Ohi Nuclear Power Plant and Osprey helicopters are destroying our lives and nature"
Bottom: Keibo Oiwa of the Sloth Club (left), whose sign reads "Nuclear power: Thank you and goodbye."
Above: Discussing the day's events together with a group of like-minded friends, including social and food justice activists, organic farmers, and filmmakers
This clip from Hitomi Kamanaka's Ashes to Honey gives voice to locals who have long opposed the destruction of Iwaishima island to make way for a nuclear plant in Japan's beautiful Inland Sea, and suggests alternative paths to a renewable energy future for Japan and the world. (NOTE: Swedish-born, Japan-based eco-blogger Martin Frid says that, in the Swedish deregulation booster spotlighted in the clip, who paints a rosy picture of Sweden's energy politics, is misleading: "Sweden has 12 nuclear reactors, 10 still up an running, and a new law that says new reactors can be built to replace the aging ones. So Sweden has not abandoned nuclear power - still some 30-40% of the nation's energy comes from nuclear, I'm ashamed to say. The referendum in 1980 was a sham with 3 different voting alternatives that made it possible for the people-in-power to keep the nuclear power plants up and running.)
The diverse candidates in the upcoming (July 29) Yamaguchi gubernatorial election reflect parallel disjunctures in Japan's political economic and cultural landscape. The outcome in the prefecture just south of Hiroshima prefecture could influence national energy policy (& whether Tokyo implements a US military plan to test V-22 Osprey throughout Okinawa & the mainland), according to Kyodo (via JT):
An advocate of renewable energy, two former bureaucrats and an ex-Diet member declared their candidacies Thursday for the July 29 Yamaguchi gubernatorial election.
The campaign is expected to focus on whether to approve a plan to construct Chugoku Electric Power Co.'s Kaminoseki nuclear plant, with political observers saying the outcome could affect national energy policy.
Since the 1980's, Chugoku Electric has wanted to build the nuclear plant on landfill at Nagashima Island in the seismically active Inland Sea, epicenter of the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Likewise, local residents, fisher people, environmentalists, and nuclear-free activists have fought the plant for three decades. The beautiful Inland Sea, revered for centuries in Japanese culture, and made famous abroad by Donald Ritchie's eponymous travelogue, is also known as Japan’s Galapagos because of its diverse species, including the black finless porpoise.
In 2010, the Kaminoseki struggle went global when a coalition of activists submitted a petition with 860,000 signatures to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. They announced this at a press conference that coincided with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Nagoya; and placed an ad in the Asian edition of the International Herald-Tribune. The ad presciently expressed concerns about earthquake damage that would result in nuclear plant damage and the release of radiation.
Hitomi Kamanaka's 2010 film, Ashes to Honey, explored the Kaminoseki struggle from the personal perspectives of local residents. Among them: the fisher people of Iwaishima (Iwai Island), most of whom oppose the construction of a nuclear plant just four miles from their ancestral community. Ashes to Honey is the last film in the filmmaker's trilogy of documentaries on nuclear issues including Hibakusha at the End of the World (about victims of nuclear radiation exposure from Japan to Iraq to the U.S) and Rokkasho-mura Rhapsody, about the decrepit nuclear reprocessing (plutonium) plant at the northeastern tip of Tohoku. Through making these films, Kamanaka has become an expert in nuclear issues and a prophetic voice.
The industry has long been releasing propaganda saying that nuclear power is safe, and now, following the accident, they have continued with the same lies by declaring that the radiation being released is also nothing to worry about. People prefer to believe the propaganda because it’s easier, but unless they face reality, they won’t be able to protect themselves.
Here in Japan, we have been led to believe that the matter of electricity simply involves flipping on a switch, and people do not think about where it comes from. My latest film takes up the issue of the radiation emitted from nuclear power plants on a regular basis—as well as during accidents like the one we are now experiencing—which is something that people here have not been educated about whatsoever.
Besides exploring the ongoing struggle over nuclear power in Kaminoseki, Ashes to Honey suggests an alternative path: the example of Sweden where citizens, by referendum, abandoned the dangerous technology in 1980.
Watarida retired early from his nearly twenty-year career in the organic produce distribution industry in order to spend a year in the United States learning English and studying food security issues before returning to Hiroshima to become a full-time activist...
He told me that since the plant site was not in direct view of residents in the town of Kaminoseki, it was easier for the Chugoku Electric Power Company to buy them off and keep them quiet about nuclear power's potential dangers. “The fishermen’s cooperative from Kaminoseki sold their fishing rights around the plant site for hundreds of millions of yen, and the people have also gotten quite used to the cushy arrangement whereby the power company hands out huge subsidies for road repairs and other local projects,” he explained.
Watarida told me that the town of Kaminoseki and its environs are a “hotspot for biodiversity”, rich in seaweed and aquatic creatures such as the sunameri (finless black porpoise), and featuring one of the last pristine untouched spots in the entire Seto Inland Sea. “This was an extremely important area from around the 17th to the 19th centuries in terms of communication and transportation, so there is also enormous potential here in terms of tourism and history,” he explained. “We still have hopes that the local community here will wake up to these possibilities and stop being so dependent upon corporate handouts.”
The story was a completely different one, however, Watarida said, for those living on the nearby island of Iwaishima (mostly fishermen, and their wives), who literally find the proposed nuclear power plant site staring them directly in the face. He said that they had been loudly protesting the plant—which sits a mere four kilometers away from their island—since its inception some thirty years ago. Its fishing cooperative members staunchly refused to sell their rights to the electric power company, choosing instead to put up an impassioned fight to protect their natural way of life.
“Since the islanders of Iwaishima do not have many employment opportunities other than fishing due to being separated from the mainland, many men have gone on assignments to work in nuclear power plants in Shikoku or other parts of Japan,” Watarida explained. “They know the dirty truth of the industry firsthand, and in fact, a majority of these men have already died from cancer.”
Read more about Kim's journey to the Iwaishima and meetings with other locals (notably Yoshito Kanaka: “If this plant is built and something goes wrong, the entire Seto Inland Sea will be completely destroyed") here.
(July 30, 2012 Update: Nuclear-free candidate Tetsunari Iida lost in a close outcome. His Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) opponent Shigetaro Yamamoto, going against his party's record of strong support of the nuclear power industry, promised to freeze the proposed nuclear plant.)
"How many times do we have to be exposed to nuclear radiation?" This video footage is of Dr. Shuntaro Hida speaking in front of Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima city at the "One Million Action Hoping to Live a Life without Nuclear Power" held April 26, 2011. Dr. Hida treated Hiroshima survivors exposed to the high dose of radiation from the Hiroshima atomic bombing. He also treated patients exposed to low doses of nuclear radiation; found them suffering from a disease called "Bura Bura Syndrome" caused by low-dose internal exposure. Dr. Hida describes the US military occupation's censorship of information about the health effects of nuclear radiation. (Original footage: Sunameri (Finless Porpoise) YouTube channel. This clip with English subtitles: via Canale di Koikzuka77. Dr. Hida is also featured in Hitomi Kamanaka's "Radiation: A Slow Death, A new Generation of Hibakusha".)
In "A-bomb doctor warns of further Fukushima woes" (JT via Kyodo), Dr. Shuntaro Hida, a Hiroshima survivor & physician, links lack of public awareness about the effects of radiation with US military occupation censorship of information about the effects of radiation after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
The amount of research into and public knowledge about internal exposure to radiation is still limited because the United States "concealed" information about the problem for a long time after it dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Hida says. "It is a fight to change the mindset of each and every person," Hida says, recalling his decades-long struggles to make people aware of the danger of internal exposure to radiation amid a lack of scientific data.
"Under the Occupation until the early 1950s, people were forbidden from "speaking, recording or doing research into symptoms of atomic-bomb survivors," he says. "I was stalked by the military police when I was talking about what I witnessed in Hiroshima," and arrested several times by the Occupation forces for "not abiding by their Occupation policy."
Hida, as a representative of a group of medical professionals called the Japan Federation of Democratic Medical Institutions, urged U.N. Secretary General U Thant in 1975 to hold an international conference on the effects of radiation on hibakusha, which was realized two years later.
"It's anger that has kept me speaking to this day. How could I remain silent even 67 years after the bombings?" Hida says.
Dr. Hida's 2006 memoir, Under the Mushroom-Shaped Cloud in Hiroshima, is available online at this link.
July 15 live at Roguii Cafe, Okinawa, with Amana band. Doors open at 19:00, show at 19:30. Cafe address: 1663 Yogi, Okinawa City, Okinawa. Hand craft and farmers market at the cafe from 15:00.
More about Alicia at Kim Hughes' post about the holistic practitioner's visit to Tokyo.
Mainstream news doesn't cover it much--if at all--but hundreds of thousands of people in Japan are participating in demonstrations against nuclear energy. On Facebook, great aerial shots of crowds have been circulating, but in these photographs, I'd like show some of the faces (and spirit!) of the people participating in this Hydrangea Revolution.
Dressed in hydrangea colors, this woman was distributing
Calling for a national referendum to be held regarding whether or not
Japan should have nuclear power, this young woman passed out fliers
explaining how such a referendum could be carried out.
Passing out a batch of fliers on green paper, this man explained that he is starting
a Green Party in Japan that would not only protect the environment,
but would also guarantee the representation of women in the party.
Still dressed in rain gear, this woman moved inside the station to pass out information explaining what it's like for people in Fukushima to live 3.11 every day.
This lovely lady (right, in green) was very quiet,
but her gleaming eyes and sweet smile made her stand out in the crowd
at a protest against the restart of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors in July.
Here she is with her friend.
Despite the difficulty of navigating train stations and crowded sidewalks,
it's not uncommon to see people in wheelchairs participating in the demonstrations.
These two young men are promoting a large anti-nuke rally
that will be held in Tokyo on July 16 in Yoyogi park.
