bread – Uncanny Terrain

September 30, 2011

Baking bread by headlight

We produced this series of 15-20 second videos for Tokyo nonprofit Ganbatte 365, about Fukushima City bread maker and hemophiliac amputee Yuji Ohashi, whose company Ginray was one of the few reliable food sources in the area in the immediate aftermath of the 3/11 disaster.

During several nights of blackout, they baked and sold bread by car headlamps. Now he must seek organic suppliers outside Fukushima, even if local ingredients test negative for radiation. The videos will screen on electronic billboards in Tokyo and other cities.

July 25, 2011July 25, 2011

Carry On Fukushima

This video was presented at the Institute for Strategic Leadership‘s “Carry On Fukushima” program in Tokyo on 7/21/11. It includes voices from food producers in the area around the still-leaking Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant:

Ohashi may need to look outside Fukushima now for organic suppliers for his bread. He says we need to learn to coexist with radiation.
Suzuki and Fukumoto are leaving the idyllic farming community of Kaidomari to live in balance with nature elsewhere.
Hongo won’t sell his potentially contaminated rice this year, but he’s eating it himself.
Yoshizawa wants to save his 300 irradiated dairy cows from a death sentence.
Yamamoto was a farming intern when the disaster struck. She decided to stay and volunteer at an evacuation center.
Yoshida is committed to stay and continue farming on the land his family has cultivated for 200 years.

June 22, 2011July 2, 2011

Fukushima pride is strong close to evacuation zone

Ohashi owns a successful baked goods company in Fukushima City. He has used grains from organic farmers in Fukushima Prefecture, but now he may have to look elsewhere. Even if the grains are uncontaminated, the stigma against Fukushima produce would likely hurt sales. Ohashi’s health is frail but he has no intention to leave despite typical background radiation here of 1 microsievert/hour. He says the disaster has strengthened local pride, and people here are learning to living with radiation.
A pair of comedians bartend at the Showtime bar in Fukushima City. I sat down with my camera gear and they kept calling me Michael Moore (pronounced mo-ah).
Sugiuchi was banned from selling his crops due to high contamination levels found near his farm in Haramachi. Now he’s researching soil remediation.
Mrs. Sugiuchi watches one of their greenhouses in Haramachi being tested for radiation.
.7 millirems (7 microsieverts) per hour on the highway in Iitatemura.
4.1 millirems/hour (14,350 counts per minute or 41 microsieverts/hour) on a mountain road in Iitatemura. The town is mostly abandoned but on Sunday there were some people around. They apparently came back to check on their property.
The edge of the evacuation zone in Iitatemura.