Watanabe Atsushi (not his real name) is an ordinary Japanese man in his 20s, about average height and solidly built, with the slightly bemused expression of the natural sceptic. Among the crowds in Tokyo, in his casual all-black clothes, he could be an off-duty postman or a construction worker. But he does one of the more extraordinary jobs on the planet: helping to shut down the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Korean-American writer Paul Yoon's 2009 short story collectionOnce the Shore (Sarabande), which won the prize for fiction at the 13th Asian American Literary Awards, is set on a fictionalized version of Jeju Island and deals with the devastating impact of militarism, colonialism, and the cold war on a rugged island culture.

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 worst nuclear disaster to strike Japan since a single bomb fell over Nagasaki in 1945 occurred in the spring of 2011 at the Fukushima nuclear power plant following the epic tsunami. On August 22, The New York Times reports (in submerged fashion, headlining Gaddafi's imminent fall in Libya) the disturbing news that a wide area around the Fukushima plant “could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels.”

The extent of radioactive contamination in Fukushima Prefecture is at the center of important debates as some scientists, NGOs, and citizen's groups argue that the Japanese government has not gone far enough in dealing with the fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi accident and has deliberately downplayed the potential health effects of radiation. With so much attention focused on Fukushima, however, there has been less consideration of the impact of the crisis, ongoing since March 11, on other parts of Japan. The August 22 issue of AERA magazine, published by Japan's major progressive newspaper Asahi Shimbun, ran a feature on contamination in the Kanto region entitled Kanto no ko kara hoshano (Radiation Detected from Kanto Children), which broadens discussions of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis’ potential impact. Below is a summary of the AERA article, published under the byline of editor Yamane Yusaku.

Nuclear power proponent turned critic Koide Hiroaki is one of the best informed opponents of Japan's nuclear system. Since the March 11 crisis, he has spoken out continuously on the potential for serious effects on radiation public health and the need for a more comprehensive government strategy to protect the people of Fukushima and surrounding prefectures. In the Asia-Pacific Journal piece The Truth About Nuclear Power, Koide highlighted flawed assumptions about nuclear safety. In addition, a June talk by Koide has been subtitled in English and posted on Youtube:

Now, in the major Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun, he turns his attention to gaps in scientific knowledge about the potential impacts of radiation on human health.

In a September 21 editorial, the Mainichi Shimbun called into question statements of government spokesmen suggesting that the Fukushima Daiichi reactors are well on their way to stabilization. They point out that a rise in temperature in one of the cores is still possible, calling into question the optimistic forecasts of officialdom. The Mainichi editors also remind readers that the location of melted core materials cannot be precisely determined, making any claims of a sustainable cool down premature. Another Mainichi piece has drawn attention to a different facet of Fukushima Daiichi instability – cracks in the containment structures. It is estimated that between 200 and 500 cubic meters of contaminated water is leaking out daily. The Tokyo Shimbun has also picked up the contaminated water story and argues that TEPCO simply does not know for sure how much water is being released per day. An Asahi Shimbun article by staff writer Ishizuka Hiroshi puts forward the newspaper's calculations that an area of over 8000 square kilometers has cesium 137 levels of 30,000 becquerels per square meter or more. This is, of course, an extremely serious situation for the people of Fukushima. But the Asahi puts it into comparative perspective, estimating that “The affected area is one-18th of about 145,000 square kilometers contaminated with cesium 137 levels of 37,000 becquerels per square meter or more following the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union.” In other words, the area is barely five percent of the comparably affected Chernobyl disaster area.

These are some of the quotes on the signs carried by some 110 demonstrators in Tokyo on September 25, 2011. The colorfully clad marchers chanted them cheerfully, insisting that “genpatsu are absolutely necessary for Japan's economic growth” and that building one in Tokyo, the largest consumer of electricity, would be most efficient.

In autumn last year, Shoji Katsuzo (75) was quietly farming rice, vegetables and a small herd of cattle in the picturesque village of Iitate. Today, he lives in a two-room temporary house 35 kilometers away with his wife Fumi (73). His herd has been slaughtered, his farm abandoned to weeds. He is unlikely to ever earn a working income again, let alone return alive to the home that has been in his family since the 1880s.

From the very first, it has been quite difficult to politicize earthquake and tsunami hit Tohoku, despite the poor planning, the slow and uneven response, the failure to provide aid in a timely way in the days and weeks afterward, and the often poorly organized evacuation centers—an issue which resulted in a number of unexplained deaths. Now, the temporary housing facilities virtually insure that communities, or what is left of them, will stay dysfunctional for a while, even as their residents are often the ones called upon to manage their own relief. While the silences of fatalism and the shock of such a terrible disaster have been noted, anyone who has been to the Northeast on a regular basis is aware that the frustration and anger erupt in different ways almost every day.

Lee Keun-mok, a Korean former labor conscript who was forcibly taken to Hiroshima and became an atomic bomb victim at the end of the Asia-Pacific War, died last July at the age of 87. Lee was a plaintiff in a lawsuit claiming it was illegal for hibakusha living outside Japan to be excluded from benefits under the national Atomic Bomb Survivors’ Support Law. The Japan Supreme Court agreed with Lee's position in November 2007. One month before his death in South Korea, Lee filed a new lawsuit with the Osaka District Court seeking the same payments for medical expenses that hibakusha living in Japan receive. We retrace the path of Lee's struggles.

The effects of the Fukushima shock continue to spread. Throughout the eventful summer, one of those consequences was the turn away from nuclear power with a dramatic emphasis on renewable power and the feed-in tariff (FIT) to deploy it fast. The FIT policy was championed by former Prime Minister Kan Naoto as well as the CEO of Softbank, Son Masayoshi. They and others in the political, business, non-profit, and academic communities strongly endorsed a legislative bill to expand Japan's handicapped FIT to geothermal, wind, biomass and small hydro. The bill was passed on August of 26 with explicit constraints on the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry's (METI) capacity to hamstring renewables in favour of nuclear power and on behalf of the nuclear village. Notably, the bill took price setting out of METI's hands. But now METI and its allies in the nuclear village are trying to get that clout back in their hands.

Many people in Japan have understood for years that the country's nuclear power industry was heading for catastrophe; few people have worked as hard or as passionately to prevent that catastrophe as Hirose Takashi. Since the early 1980s he has written a shelf of books, mostly on that subject. The first to attract notice was his Tokyo ni, Genpatsu wo! (Nuclear Plants in Tokyo! [1981]), a reductio ad absurdum of the nuke promoters' argument: if they are so safe, why not put them in the center of the city, rather than hundreds of miles away, forcing you to build expensive and destructive power lines all over the country, which also eat up a vast amount of electricity in the wires? The book was a bombshell, exposing as it did big-city egoism: we get the electricity, somebody else gets the danger. The exposé applies to the 3/11 catastrophe: many people haven't noticed the significance of the fact that the plants at Fukushima belong to the Tokyo Electric Co. The electricity they (used to) generate goes (went) to Tokyo; Fukushima's electricity comes from elsewhere.

Tokyo Shimbun, which many regard as one of the few Japanese newspapers that honestly report what is going on at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, ran an important article yesterday, drawing on their own investigative interview with NISA, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a division of METI, Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. Here is a translation of the report. This is a critical article that calls for further investigation, particularly in the wake of PM Noda's “Cold Shutdown” declaration concerning which questions have been raised by experts and international media (See New York Times, Bloomberg, CNN, Xinhua). According to Geoff Brumfiel at Nature: “the reactors are leaking, and TEPCO must continue to inject water at the rate of around half-a-million litres a day, according to its latest press release. Moreover, the plant continues to pose an environmental risk, as evidenced by a recent leak from a system designed to decontaminate water flowing out from the core.” Bloomberg quotes reactor safety expert Narabayashi Tadashi: “Achieving cold shutdown does not change the condition of the reactors. It does mean the government will start reviewing evacuation zones and perhaps lifting restrictions depending on extent of contamination.” He also emphasises that “Work on decommissioning is a long way off. For now, they have to focus on making robots to remove melted fuel and developing new technologies to demolish facilities.” With work on bringing Fukushima Daiichi under control far from over, despite the Japanese government's self-congratulatory tone in the “Cold Shutdown” announcement, Tokyo Shimbun's exposé on the lack of official concern for radiocative water leaks seems particularly important. Even if the situation at the plant itself is improving, honest reporting is absolutely necessary as Japan moves from control to clean-up. Here again, Japanese regulators and politicians seem to be falling short.

Last summer, the Asia-Pacific Journal highlighted the views of Hiroaki Koide, one of the leading critics of nuclear power from within Japan's scientific establishment and an important voice on Japan's current nuclear crisis. Koide, with four decades of experience as a nuclear engineer, is an Assistant Professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute. He has long been mired in that low academic rank because of his shift from support of nuclear power early in his career, to consistent criticism. Since the March 11 disasters, he has been especially prolific, publishing a series of books including Genpatsu no Uso (Nuclear lies), Shiritakunai keredo, Shitteokanebanaranai Genpatsu no Shinjitsu (What we don't want to know, what we must learn: Nuclear truths), and Kodomo-tachi ni tsutaetai: Genpatsu ga yurusarenai riyu (I want to tell the children: The reasons why nuclear power is unforgivable).

Even as the Japanese public turns against nuclear power at home, the Japanese government and corporations such as Toshiba are moving swiftly to expand the country's nuclear business by exporting reactor technology abroad.

In a December 10 editorial, the Mainichi Shimbun said that an agreement for nuclear power cooperation and export to Jordan, Vietnam, Russia, and South Korea was based on a decision that “… came too hasty and has not been thought through.”

The Mainichi editors are concerned that the agreements have no details about how nuclear power stations will be regulated and safety ensured. There are worries that an accident involving Japanese nuclear technology abroad could further undermine international confidence in Japanese technology and industry already shaken by the 3.11 earthquake tsunami and nuclear disaster.

On January 17, PBS documentary program Frontline ran a feature on the Fukushima nuclear meltdown entitled Nuclear Aftershocks. It is available online here. The show has generated buzz, but also drawn significant critiques. The most powerful criticisms come from author Gregg Levine, writing on the website my FDL. The review is reproduced below. Please view the original here.

The Asia-Pacific Journal has closely followed the case of a group of Tokyo teachers punished because they refused to stand during school ceremonies for the playing of Kimigayo, Japan's national anthem. Some consider the anthem, a hymn of praise to the emperor, to be too closely connected to Japan's history of militarism and imperialism. For them, not standing is a form of conscientious protest. From 2004, Tokyo Governor and staunch conservative Ishihara Shintaro has led a drive to have the anthem played at Tokyo schools and to take punitive action, including fines and suspensions, against teachers who refuse to stand. That crackdown has spread, moreover, to Osaka and other cities.

The sudden death of North Korean National Defense Commission chairman Kim Jong-il was a major event for the whole of the Korean Peninsula. Even western media that ordinarily pay little attention to the Korean Peninsula dedicated major coverage to it, issuing a torrent of commentary on how events would proceed in the “post-Kim Jong-il era.” Everyone is naturally curious to see what shape the Kim Jong-un era will take.

Late January saw a 24-member delegation of Okinawans in Washington to convey Okinawan sentiments to the US. The delegation included elected representatives from national, prefectural and local assemblies.