information about Fukushima published in English in Japanese media info publiée en anglais dans la presse japonaise
8 Mars 2014
March 08, 2014
When TV documentary producer Nao Kubota saw media reports about the no-entry zones around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, he thought there must be people who wanted to return to their former hometowns now that they were deserted.
That thought led him to make his first movie “Ieji” (homeward), which opened March 1.
“If I produce a TV documentary under the same theme, people who talked honestly in the documentary could be criticized by other people. (If that actually happens) I cannot take responsibility (for the criticism). But I wanted to convey the reality of Fukushima as a universal work that people will watch, even after many years,” Kubota said.
He chose to set the time element of his movie as occurring in the present, rather than soon after the nuclear accident, triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.
The film is set in a coastal town in Fukushima Prefecture, whose residents were forced to evacuate and are now facing difficulties in returning home.
One of the former residents is a man played by actor Seiyo Uchino who stands to inherit the family farm, but lost the farmland due to the nuclear accident.
His younger half-brother, played by actor Kenichi Matsuyama, had left their hometown many years ago. The two brothers face a “hometown they cannot return to.” In such a situation, the two look to the future as a true family again.
The younger half-brother returns and decides to live in the now-deserted town and actually starts to plant rice there, even in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster.
As for the younger half-brother and his biological mother, Kubota said, “People are strong but weak. That’s why they live together as a family.”
In the film, Kubota tried to describe the sadness of people who were forced to leave their hometowns and the difficulties of making a living.
In seeing the abundant nature in Fukushima, however, he felt puzzlement as to why people cannot live there. Wanting to convey this feeling, he shot the movie in no-residence zones in Kawauchi and some other municipalities where the residents had evacuated, and the greenery in the fields and mountains have become greener.
When he shot the film's climax of rice planting, the actors received instructions from a farming family in Kawauchi. Other local people also helped with the filming.
“I strongly felt that farmers are not just cultivating rice but are lavishing affection on their rice fields,” Kubota said.
“I repeatedly asked myself whether it is really allowable to shoot a movie in Fukushima. But now I think from my heart that it was good to have done so."
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