Nearly three years have passed since the tsunami that accompanied the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011. However, no homes stand on the devastated plains of the afflicted area; 110,000 refugees continue living in temporary residences as of August 2013; large numbers of young people have lost hope and are leaving the places they grew up in in search of jobs and a new start. Why are these things happening?

When Miyazawa Kenji was writing his stories and poems nearly a century ago, Japan was a country with a two-pronged mission: to become the first non-white, non-Christian nation to create a modern prosperous state — and to be the leader of an Asian revival.

The Japanese people were obsessed with their cultural identity and their place, as an imperial power, among the first rank of nations in the world. It was an obsession that would lead them to prosecute an aggressive and brutal war in Asia and the Pacific.

With the third anniversary of Fukushima's triple meltdown approaching, stories of incompetence and corruption in the nuclear cleanup are rife. A team of Reuters' reporters working in Japan has researched working conditions at Fukushima Daiichi and decontamination jobs outside the plant. Their findings are shocking.