A whiteout

February 10, 2014

Nuclear energy issue snowed under in Tokyo gubernatorial poll

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/perspectives/news/20140210p2a00m0na020000c.html 

Abandoning nuclear energy did not, in the end, become the lightning rod issue of the Tokyo gubernatorial race. A serious debate over power consumption, which would have shown a commendable self-awareness of Tokyo's electricity-hogging ways, never really got off the ground. Tokyo's nuclear-powered prosperity, built on contradiction and fear, continues unaltered.

How, in the end, was atomic energy discussed during the campaign? One candidate in a televised debate I saw had this to say: "There is not one radiology expert in the whole world saying that nobody can live in that area (around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant)." And, "The government forced residents to evacuate even without a scientific reason, casting those people's lives into chaos."

In response, an anti-nuclear power candidate referenced the number of people killed in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The candidates' points failed to mesh, and the atomic energy discussion ended there.

How are we to see this missed connection? If the pro-nuclear power candidate was saying that people could still live around the wrecked reactors, that's an irrational argument. But perhaps that's not what he was trying to get across. Maybe he wanted to say that compared to international standards, the Japanese government's radiation dose limits are too strict. Even if that was his intent, it still clashes with what some experts believe about cancer stemming from indirect radiation exposure.

Meanwhile, the number of dead at Chernobyl includes people killed by direct exposure to radiation, and bringing this up simply complicated the discussion.

Granted, we can allow the candidates a little room for slipups since the debate was live. Still, however, I suspect that there were a lot of viewers out there wondering what on earth the two men were talking about.

Watching the candidates talking past each other, I recalled an NHK documentary called "Fukushima: Hamadori genpatsu to ikita machi," or, "A Fukushima town that lived with a nuclear plant," aired on Jan. 4 this year. The program was part of an oral history series about the hopes and goals of the Japanese people since the end of World War II. The documentary centered on the difficult story of former Futaba Mayor Tadao Iwamoto, who was at first against atomic energy but ended up embracing the nuclear plant in his town.

Iwamoto had been a sitting Socialist Party member of the Fukushima Prefectural Assembly, as well as the chairman of the Futaba regional anti-nuclear power league. In 1985, when the incumbent mayor of Futaba was brought down in a corruption scandal, Iwamoto -- an energetic and a refreshingly new presence on the ballot -- ran to take his place. He was elected, and went on to serve five terms in the post -- finally quitting in 2005.

In July 2011, Iwamoto passed away quietly in a hospital in the city of Fukushima, where he'd been evacuated after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 plant forced the abandonment of his town. The Mainichi Shimbun published a long retrospective on his career in its Aug. 25 morning edition.

If I consider Iwamoto's position, I have to admit that it's very human indeed to think, "I don't like nuclear power, but I dislike poverty and inconvenience even more." Fight against atomic energy, or embrace it? That was the dilemma Iwamoto had to face head-on -- and it's also the question that the people of Tokyo, of Japan, and even the entire human species must answer.

The people of Futaba staked their livelihoods on their answer to that question. The people of power-hungry Tokyo felt no such urgency, and atomic power had never been more than one of many topics for discussion.

In 2003, as Iwamoto neared retirement, the mayor had this to say to an interviewer: "Nuclear energy holds so much possibility, but at the same time, it's an enormous gamble. I'd like to see that gamble continue to be proven right."

Futaba gained much prosperity from that gamble, and then on March 11, 2011, it lost everything. So went the fate of that town and its former mayor. While I cannot say that all of humanity faces the same destiny, there is also no proof that we are completely disconnected from it, either.

Starting on the day before the Tokyo gubernatorial vote and continuing into the wee hours of election day, Tokyo was blanketed in the third-heaviest snowfall to hit the city since the end of World War II.

Tokyo was covered in white; a whiteout.

Last autumn, a novel about a central government bureaucrat caught up in the turmoil of Japan's energy policy became a best-seller. It was titled, "Genpatsu Whiteout," or "Nuclear energy whiteout." I think it's right to say that debate over atomic power in Tokyo, despite its unquenchable thirst for energy, has been whited-out just as thoroughly as the city's streets in a snowstorm's embrace. (By Takao Yamada, Expert Senior Writer)

February 10, 2014(Mainichi Japan)