Please click here to view this documentary from the homepage of Moving Image archive, National Library of Scotland.
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This is Japan Desk Scotland’s eighth Fukushima documentary.
JDS made its first Fukushima documentary, ‘Our friends in Fukushima‘ (2013), primarily to record activities and thoughts of those Fukushima University academic staffs who voluntarily measured environmental radiation of Fukushima Prefecture except the 20km radius evacuation zone and made the first evacuation map based on actually measured radiation level. It was based on our interviews with two of them: Kenji Nanba, Professor of Micro-Organisms, and Kencho Kawatsu, Project Professor.
This eighth Fukushima documentary includes our interview with Takayuki Takahashi, Professor of Mechatronic Engineering, who also volunteered in the making of the radiation map immediately after the nuclear accident of March 2011. His detailed account of the group’s activities and his thoughts behind his volunteer activity, is combined with stories of Nanba and Kawatsu to provide a much wider perspective of their activities. In addition, Takahashi, who was one of the Vice Presidents of Fukushima University at that time, talks about thoughts of the university’s senior management team at the time of the nuclear accident. What was expected from a university in Fukushima to act at the time of a crisis?
Their radiation map revealed that air dose level was high outside the 20km radius evacuation zone, such as Tsushima district of Namie Town. With Nanba’s introduction, we interviewed evacuees from Tsushima, Mr Senjro and Mrs Noriko Sanpei. Their forest has been used by Fukushima University as a one of research fields to see the impact of radiation on forests.
Interviewed guests in order of appearance: Takayuki Takahashi, Kenji Nanba, Kenji Watanabe, Kencho Kawatsu, Senjiro Sanpei, Vasyl Yoschenko, Hiroko Nagata, and Noriko Sanpei
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Camera: Fumi Nakabachi
Music: Oli Jan
Directed and edited by: Yushin Toda
Producer: Fumi Nakabachi and Yushin Toda
65 minutes
In Japanese with English subtitles
©2020 Japan Desk Scotland
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This is part of Japan Desk Scotland’s documentary films production.
It has been shown:
(1) on Sunday 8 March 2020 at Wellington Church, Glasgow, Scotland, as part of the ninth anniversary event for the East Japan Earthquake;
(2) on Friday 11 March 2022 at Fore Hall, the University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, thanks to the University of Glasgow Chaplaincy;
(3) on Monday 11 July 2022 at Fukushima University, Fukushima, Japan, thanks to Professors Kenji Nanba and Kazumi Kuga; and
(4) on Wednesday 31 July 2024 at Natonal Library of Scotland at Kelvin Hall, Glasgow, Scotland as part of ‘The Ltous Club: Japanese Documentary Series.”