Benefit reception at High Concept Laboratories featuring Tatsu Aoki‘s MIYUMI Project 2/5/2012—photos by Daniel Guidara
Uncanny Terrain benefit photos
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Uncanny Terrain is a documentary about organic farmers facing Japan’s nuclear crisis. Please support the production of the film.
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Uncanny Terrain in the Chicago Reader
by Sam Worley
Chicago Reader
Along with Junko Kajino, occasional Reader contributor Ed M. Koziarski is codirector of Uncanny Terrain, a documentary about effects from last year’s tsunami and nuclear crisis on Japan’s rice farmers. This preview screening event includes music by Tatsu Aoki and his band the Miyumi Project, and David Tanimura shows digital collages about the nuclear threat. RSVP required; e-mail uncannyterrain@gmail.com.
Eating Fukushima
by Ed M. Koziarski
North Avenue Magazine
Jan. 28, 2012
When does a victim become a perpetrator? That’s the question that kept coming up as we made our way across the irradiated landscape.
Many foreigners fled Japan after the tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant last March. My wife Junko Kajino and I went the opposite way, spending five months inside the U.S.-declared 50-mile no-go radius for our in-progress documentary Uncanny Terrain.
The Harvest Approaches
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Sugeno relaxes in the grass beside his radish field, Geiger counter in hand. -
Junko and Sugeno finish planting radishes in his mountaintop field in Nihonmatsu. -
Guests at Sugeno's farm enjoy flowers transplanted from the evacuation zone. -
Asami looks out on his rice field in the mountains of Kitakata. -
Asami shows Junko his favorite vantage point. -
Asami and his intern Ota in the chicken coop. -
Watanabe's fruit is showing undetectable radiation levels despite surrounding contamination in Fukushima City. -
Masanori Yoshida looks out on his ancestral land, foreseeing big changes ahead. -
Yumi and Masanori Yoshida care for their vegetable garden. -
Yumi Yoshida displays her sweet potatoes. -
Junko digs up a choice bunch of sweet potatoes. -
The Yoshidas have been eating a lot of sweet potatoes. Sales of the bumper crop have been slow.
Safecast Radiation Monitoring Seminar
At Tokyo Hacker Space on 6/24/11, members of the NGO Safecast present the goals, methods, and results of their ongoing volunteer project to independently measure and map contamination levels from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant fallout at hundreds of thousands of sites across Japan.
Uncanny Terrain is a documentary about organic farmers facing Japan’s nuclear crisis, and an international online community fostering dialogue on food safety, sustainable agriculture, alternative energy and disaster response. Please keep the conversation going by making a tax-deductible donation.
Positive stories of Japanese recovery from Ganbatte 365
These 15-second videos we produced for the Tokyo nonprofit Ganbatte 365 will appear on electronic billboards in Tokyo and Osaka.
Remembering Hiroshima bombing after Fukushima disaster
On Aug. 6 we attended the 66th anniversary of the world’s first nuclear attack in Hiroshima, with Yuji Ohashi, a Fukushima City bread company owner who is committed to rebuilding Fukushima in the face of the nuclear fallout.
But Steven Leeper, the first non-Japanese chairman of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, says Fukushima’s recovery will be much harder than Hiroshima’s was. He’s hopeful that in light of the Fukushima crisis, Japan might overcome the nuclear industry’s dominance of its national politics and lead an international movement for a future free of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
Uncanny Terrain is a documentary about organic farmers facing Japan’s nuclear crisis, and an online community fostering international dialogue about food safety, sustainable agriculture, alternative energy, and disaster response. Please keep the conversation going by making a tax-deductible donation.
Hiroshima, Soma, Nihonmatsu and Fukushima City
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On Aug. 6 we attended the 66th anniversary of the world’s first nuclear attack in Hiroshima, with Yuji Ohashi, a Fukushima City bread company owner who is committed to rebuilding Fukushima in the face of the nuclear fallout. -
The Hiroshima victims' memorial -
Obon, the August ancestors holiday, is especially poignant this year for those who lost family in the March disaster. -
We marked the occasion at a floating lantern ceremony in the ravaged port of Soma, led by fishermen unable to catch their harvest in the irradiated ocean. -
The Soma floating lantern ceremony -
Monks at the Soma floating lantern ceremony -
In Nihonmatsu, 50 km from the still-leaking Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, organic farmer Sugeno planted sunflowers instead of rice on contaminated parts of his land. Sugeno will continue cultivating, growing what he can in greenhouses and otherwise minimizing his customers' exposure. He will work to reduce his land’s contamination each year until he can eventually approach pre-meltdown levels. -
Sugeno is sheltering this goat rescued from the evacuation zone. -
Ota is the 16th president of his family's 260-year-old premium sake company, Daishichi. Their business is up 70% since the disaster, with more orders from the U.S., less from Europe. But it will be another 2 1/2 years before sake brewed from this year's rice reaches the market. -
This wild mushroom on Shinobu Mountain in Fukushima City would normally be edible, if not for the nuclear fallout.
“Don’t forget us,” cry Fukushima nuclear evacuees
Tens of thousands of people evacuated due to radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant are living in shelters and storage unit-style temporary housing. Nearly 100 have committed suicide. Many relocation centers are in highly radioactive areas—sometimes higher than the towns that were evacuated.
On July 12, the evacuees held their first protest in Tokyo, marching from Hibiya Park to parliament, calling for their land to be decontaminated, and for better resettlement conditions. “Don’t forget us” was their rallying cry.
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Fujiwara is an animal welfare advocate for Saitama Prefecture. She's helping Yoshizawa try to save his 300 cows from a government-mandated death sentence. -
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Parliamentarians greeted evacuees outside the Diet.
