¹ See the website of the “NHK Special: The Choice Made By130,000 Refugees.” March 8, 2014. Also see Shoji Masahiko, translated and introduced by Tom Gill: “The Rage of Exile: In the Wake of Fukushima.”

² Hiroko Tabuchi, “Unskilled and Destitute are Hiring Targets for Fukushima Cleanup” (The New York Times, March 16, 2014).

³ See “Muto Ruiko and the Movement of Fukushima Residents to Pursue Criminal Charges against Tepco Executives and Government Officials” published on this site; see also the movement's website. See also the blog entry by the plaintiffs in the TEPCO stockholders' lawsuit criticizing across-the-board sloppy reporting that failed to discriminate between the various criminal complaints. Crucially, the Fukushima residents group did not include former prime minister Kan Naoto in its list of subjects for investigation, but rather, focused on individuals in responsible positions and TEPCO as a corporate entity for promoting a “safety campaign” after the accident. Nor did the Hirose-Akashi complaint referred to by Takahashi include Kan. By uniformly naming Kan in their headlines, as if he were the chief target of these complaints, when in fact only one group had included him, the media subtly underscored the unreasonableness of the criminal complaints since it was widely known by then that Kan had become explicitly critical of reliance on nuclear power.

⁴ “Tepco official denies Abe's claim that nuclear crisis is ‘under control‘” (Asahi Shimbun, September 13, 2013).

⁵ The chances for success through appeal to a Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution are exceedingly slim, 0.98% according to a statement by the Tokushima Prefectural Teachers Union, which is pursuing a case in which the Zaitokukai and other ultranationalist groups and individuals broke into the union office, threatening workers and obstructing business.

⁶ “‘Sendai’ saikado ni hantai” (Shimbun Akahata, April 19, 2014).

⁷ For background on Native American communities and radiation poisoning caused by uranium mining, see Jeff Gerritsen “Uranium Mining Poisons Native Americans” (Culture Change, Feb 25, 2009). For information on the uranium mining problem in the Black Hills, South Dakota, see wendydavis, “The Black Hills and the Lakota: Cursed by Gold and Uranium” (my FDL). In April, 2014, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission permitted and issued a uranium mining operating license in the Black Hills, but later in the month, a federal panel placed a temporarily hold on the license. See Matt Remle, “U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Issues Uranium Mining Operating License in the Black Hills.” (Last Real Indians), and Carson Walker, “Federal Panel Issues Temporary Stay on Nuclear License for Proposed Edgemont Uranium Mine.” (The Republic via AP, April 30, 2014).“ Clean Up the Mines! and Defenders of the Black Hills are citizens' groups working on the issue of uranium mining in the Black Hills. On the recent campaign to clean up the Black Hills, see ”National Campaign Launched to Clean Up ‘America's Secret Fukushima.‘

⁸ Quoted from Barker's email to McCray and Yamaguchi, March 31, 2014.

⁹ Also see Adam Broinowski, “Fukushima: Life and the Transnationality of Radioactive Contamination” on the problem of the transnational “nuclear village,” especially on the question of radiation.

¹⁰ “Japan's Nuclear Waste Problem” (Japan Times, January 21, 2014).

¹¹ “Lower house stamps pacts with Turkey, UAE” (Japan Times, April 4, 2014). See the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website for the actual pacts between Turkey and Japan, and between UAE and Japan. For citizens' protest against the pacts, see “Parliament sitting & rally on 4/15 against the ratification of a Japanese nuclear agreement with Turkey and the United Arab Emirates” (The Anti-TEPCO Action) and a video of the group's action on April 11, 2014, “Genpatsu yushutsu wa shinryaku da! Kyoko saiketsu yurusanai!” For the reaction from the anti-nuclear movement in Turkey, see “No Nukes: Anti-Nuclear Activists Condemn Turkey's Plan to Build Second Atomic Plant” (International Business Times, May 6, 2013), “Nuclear Protest in front of the Consulate General of Japan” (Harber Monitor, January 22, 2014), and “Toruko kara no tegami: genshiryoku kyotei wo hijun shinaide” (Tanaka Ryusaku Journal, April 7, 2014).

¹² Takahashi offers a brief overview of the history of Yasukuni: “[t]he forerunner of the Yasukuni shrine was the Tokyo Shokonsha, the Tokyo shrine to the war dead, which was established in 1869, a year after the Meiji Restoration. Its function was, initially, to honour those men of the victorious Restoration forces who had fought against the preceding Tokugawa regime and had given their lives in these battles to establish the new imperial state. … In 1879, it was renamed Yasukuni shrine.” Takahashi Tetsuya, “Legacies of Empire: The Yasukuni Shrine Controversy” in Yasukuni, the War Dead, and the Struggle for Japan's Past, ed. by John Breen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 109.

¹³ See also Norma Field, In the Realm of Dying Emperor: Japan at Century's End (Vintage 1993), especially chapter II, “Yamaguchi: An Ordinary Woman.”

¹⁴ See “Philosophy as Activism in Neo-liberal, Neo-nationalist Japan” published on this site.

¹⁵ See, for example, “After ‘Peace and Prosperity’: Interview with Norma Field, Professor Emerita, University of Chicago” (“Heiwa to han'ei” no ato de, Asahi Shimbun, March 1, 2014).

¹⁶ In referring to the concept of “colonialism” in explaining the “sacrificial system,” Takahashi claims that by analogizing the plight of Fukushima to colonial experiences, he does not intend to gloss over Japan's responsibility for colonization. Rather, he is trying to illuminate Japan's role as a perpetrator in the discussion of “nuclear-power-as-sacrificial-system.” For more on Takahashi's thoughts on the sacrificial system and Japan as a colonial empire, see the proceedings of “Responding to the issues of ‘Fukushima’” symposium at Tokyo Keizai University (“'Fukushima’ no toi ni dou kotaeruka: higashi ajia gendaishi no nakade”), May 19, 2012.

¹⁷ Similarly, Bo Jacobs claims that “radiation makes people invisible.” One may extend this insight by suggesting that social “invisibility” begins as soon as people become potential hibakusha by working in nuclear power plants, for example. See Bo Jacobs, “Radiation Makes People Invisible” at SimplyInfo.

¹⁸ From “Prevent the Crime of Silence: Reports from the sessions of the International War Crimes Tribunal founded by Bertrand Russell.” Cited in part in Ukai Satoshi, Tanaka Toshiyuki, and Maeda Akira, “What is the People's Tribunal, Why and What Does It Seek to Judge? The Characteristics and Mission of This Tribunal” (Minshu hotei to wa nan de ari, naze, nani o sabaku no ka).

¹⁹ On the “Women's Tribunal,” see here. For videos of the tribunal, see the “Fight for Justice” website. For related articles on this site addressing NHK's handling of the tribunal, see Field and Penney.

²⁰ For background and indictment, see here.

²¹ See Genpatsu Minshu Hotei for the names of participants (including judges, prosecutors, and attorneys), the list of defendants, and relevant documents. Many of the “defendants” of the NPP Tribunal are also candidates for indictment in the several attempts made to seek assignment of criminal responsibility through official legal processes. Muto Ruiko, one of the petitioners of the NPP Tribunal, is the leader of one such group. See “Muto Ruiko and the Movement of Fukushima Residents to Pursue Criminal Charges.”

²² The Tribunal also urged the WHO, ILO, UNESCO, and IAEA to take responsibility in their various domains to protect workers and children from radiation harm, to establish standards according to the precautionary principle, to provide medical assistance, and to acknowledge that there can be no such thing as the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to strive for the elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

²³ See “What is the People's Tribunal, Why and What Does It Seek to Judge?”

²⁴ See here for the videos of the first session of the tribunal.

²⁵ In fact, this complaint, like the Fukushima residents' complaint referred to in the Introduction, was dismissed by the Tokyo Prosecutors Office. See note 4 above.

²⁶ See the official blog by the plaintiffs for information on the lawsuit against TEPCO by the company's stockholders. According to a press release by 42 stockholders on March 5, 2012, the final number of the accused went down from 60 to 27. See the video here.

²⁷ As Takahashi will elaborate, the reference is to the first postwar prime minister Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko (1887-1990)'s proclamation of “one billion all penitent,” sometimes referred to as a “national confession of guilt,” wherein there was no distinction between the responsibility of those leaders who took the nation down the path of a devastating war and those who were compelled to follow.

²⁸ See Martin Fackler, “Forced to Flee Radiation, Fearful Japanese Villagers are Reluctant to Return” (The New York Times, April 27, 2014) and “Survey: Half of Fukushima Evacuee Households Split Up; Distress Rife in Families” (The Asahi Shimbun, April 29, 2014) for the continuing struggles of the evacuees.

²⁹ This is political theorist Maruyama Masao's famous description of the prewar imperial system. See his Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics (1963).