Robert Alvarez, a former senior policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Energy said in a Democracy Now! interview on June 10, “The nuclear industry, particularly in the United States, and elsewhere—Russia and Japan—has had a very long history of withholding information and misleading the public about the hazards of their activities.” Being no exception to Alvarez's generalization, the Japanese government, since the mutiple meltdowns and explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in mid-March, has withheld or controlled information about health risks of radiation, expected dispersion of radioactive materials, and their actual contamination measurements in areas surrounding Fukushima Daiichi. Instead of providing candid information to the public, the government started campaigns in the opposite direction—to lull the public into worrying less about radiation and its health risks.

“It's not that I'm weak, it's that the suffering weighs down on me too heavily.”

This was said, in 1938, by a writer whose life and death are noted with public attention every year in June. The popularity of this author has not waned in Japan. Crowds gather on June 19 around the country in rituals of celebration and mourning. Given the personality of this man, it is not easy to separate the two.