Dispatches from the No-Go Zone
立ち入り禁止地帯からの特報

Aug. 15, 2011 [15.08.2011]

By Pio d’Emilia

There are many other ways of spending time, but I find wandering around inside Fukushima Prefecture’s supposedly sealed 20-kilometer “exclusion zone” has a special, although at times macabre, fascination.

The more time you spend inside, the more you get, somehow, addicted. That this beautiful region, crafted by dedicated farmers into one of the world’s showcases for organic agriculture and eco-sustainable tourism, is becoming yet another example of nuclear devastation is difficult to swallow. Since March 11, I have entered the zone legally and illegally seven times, including one night-visit following a small team of female animal activists trying, at any cost, to save abandoned pets.

I’ve spent so much time there that I could easily guide a tour. I knew the region from
before. Being a soccer fan and a lover of agritourism, I’ve visited the J-Village many times. I even organized there, right before the 2002 World Cup, the epoch-making clash between the FCCJ team and a group of lawmakers, which we won 3-1. I stayed in some beautiful bed-and-breakfast accommodation, which had been mushrooming in the region – until March.

It was especially painful to see the Soma Bokujo, a farm I once stayed at with friends, totally abandoned, raided by crows and pigs and rotting with a carpet of decomposed, liquefied corpses of cows. This disgusting sight should be enough in itself to immediately bring about the disbandment worldwide of the nuclear industry. It should also lead to the moral indictment, if not legal prosecution, for crimes against humanity of all those who have contributed to promoting, designing and building the plants – those who have offered kickbacks to profit from this lucrative, but socially devastating business.