Please continue to follow our updates at uncannyterrain.com, safecast.jp, and SOS-Japan, and sign up for our mailing list. Much more to come!
Update June 10:
Hiruta has spent decades recruiting farmers from across Japan to join him in the tiny agricultural community of Kaidomari, nestled among tall pines in the mountains on the edge of Iwaki in Fukushima. But since the nuclear disaster, especially the younger farmers are fleeing.
Saturday is the 3-month anniversary of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. It's also the last day of the IndieGoGo.com funding campaign for our documentary Uncanny Terrain, about the impact of the nuclear crisis on organic farmers and the food supply. There are no simple answers here, but there are rich human stories, and a valuable discourse for all of us about how we feed ourselves and power our lives, how we relate to the land and tradition and deal with change. We're with the farmers of Fukushima through their October harvest, but we need your help to tell this story. Please share the link http://uncannyterrain.com and contribute if you can.
Update June 6:
We landed in Japan on 5/24 to and spent our first
three days in Tokyo. There we
interviewed representatives of Greenpeace whove engaged in independent testing
of land and sea contamination.
They argue that Japanese authorities have underreported radiation
levels, due to some combination of flawed testing methods and an effort to
minimize compensation claims, thus jeopardizing the public, particularly
children, who are most vulnerable to radiation. Readings are commonly taken a meter high, which doesnt
register alpha and beta radiation emitting from the ground, and doesnt account
for childrens exposure to breathed and swallowed dirt.
After a Greenpeace press conference on the
contamination they found in sea life off the Pacific coast, we met with Pieter
Franken, cofounder of Safecast, a radiation monitoring group that promotes
regular people doing their own reading and reporting of contamination
levels. Pieter supplied us with an
Inspector Geiger counter and instructed us in its use. He showed us levels as high as 350
counts per minute (the equivalent of 1 microsievert per hour) on concrete in
his Tokyo backyard. Radioactive
cesium apparently fell from above all over Japan and attached itself especially
to horizontal exposed concrete, wood and stone.
On 5/27 we took a bus to Hanawa, Fukushima, a
mountain farming town 45 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear
Power Plant. Hanawa was spared the
worst of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear fallout, and the farmers weve met
mostly see the stigma of being from Fukushima as their biggest obstacle. Soil samples here registered 250
becquerels of cesium 134 and 137, far bellow the legal limit for cultivation of
5,000 becquerels. The air outside
mostly reads about .15 microsieverts per hour, 50% above natural background
levels but a fraction of the levels seen closer to the power plant. But there are hotspots here that are
much higher. We found levels of
nearly 1,000 counts per minute on stones in front of a house where a
one-year-old baby lives.
Were staying with the Yoshida family, whove
farmed this land for nine generations, over 200 years. They grow premium quality rice free of
pesticides and chemical fertilizers, that they supply to international
consumers and macrobiotic restaurants.
Their soil showed low levels of contamination, but it will not be
certain whether the rice is contaminated until its been grown, harvested and
analyzed. So they planted their
five rice fields, though orders are down to nearly zero. The Yoshidas are not sure they can stay
here, but theyre not sure they can leave either. The family patriarch, Hiroaki Yoshida, talks about trying to
make the farm completely self-sufficient, so they can survive on what they grow
even if they cant sell their crops.
Farmers across the region face similar
dilemmas. Those outside the
evacuation zone are told to go about their business as normal, so long as their
crops stay below the high maximum levels set by the government. But what health risks do they face by
staying here, and what risks are posed by foods with legal levels of
contamination?
In the next few days we will venture closer to the
contamination zone. We are committed to follow the farmers through their autumn
harvest. But we need your help to
continue the project. We have six
days left to raise the remaining $21,000 of our funding goal to cover our costs
into the summer. If you can,
please provide some support to keep us going. And either way, please share this message with your networks
and help ensure that this important story can continue to be told.
Update May 6:
On May 23, filmmakers Junko Kajino and Ed M.
Koziarski fly to Japan to begin production of the documentary Uncanny
Terrain, about organic farmers' response to Japan's nuclear crisis. We've
been consulting with experts in the U.S. and Japan about safety precautions and
the questions we need to ask, as we capture the farmers' efforts to meet
this otherworldly threat with natural methods, and Japan's efforts to preserve
its food supply, its communities and its landscape.
This is a critical moment for the organic farmers
just outside the nuclear evacuation zone around the beleaguered Fukushima
Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Some of the farmers have already been forced
to abandon their land, their livestock, and their homes to the threat of
radioactive fallout. But many more are faced with uncertainty about the
level of contamination in their soil, and they're exploring how they can help
the land repair itself.
Nearly 50 donors have generously contributed to cover
our travel, but we still need your help to purchase video and audio equipment
as well as radiation monitoring and protection gear, and to continue production
through the September harvest. June 11 is our funding deadline, but PayPal
contributions are available to us immediately. If you can, please support
the film today, and either way, spread the word by forwarding this email. Thanks!
Japan Tsunami Charity ART show and Fukushima
Nuclear Disaster Benefit
The weekend before we leave, we're participating with
painter Hiromi Tanaka and
musician Tatsu Aoki in
a show at Creative Lounge Chicago in
Wicker Park benefiting the Fukushima Organic Farmers Network, Japanese Red
Cross, and the production of Uncanny Terrain. If you can,
please come wish us bon voyage and help these worthy causes.
It's Friday and Saturday, May 20-21, 6-10 p.m. at
1564 N. Damen Ave., 3rd Floor. $10 minimum donation includes food and
drink. Painting and video installation continues Sunday, May 22, 1-6 p.m.
Links
Following the Farmers of
Northern Japan, After the Quake by Twilight Greenaway in Civil Eats
Documenting the Disaster:
Words with director Junko Kajino before she heads to the devastated regions of
Northeastern Japan to document the effects of radiation on local organic
farmers by Quin Slovek in Inflatable Ferret
Uncanny Terrain in Nancy
O'Mallon's About Harvest
Directors to produce Japan documentary
this spring by Ed M. Koziarski in Reel Chicago
The Story
The first sprouts are beginning to emerge on Colors
of the Seasons Farm, 45 miles from the malfunctioning Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear
power plant and 20 miles outside the evacuation zone.
28-year-old Masanori Yoshida left his job as a cook
at a French restaurant in Tokyo three years ago to work his familys land with
his wife, siblings, parents, and grandmother. They grow natural crops
including firefly rice, so named because the insects, driven near extinction
by chemical pesticides and fertilizer, have proliferated as farmers return to
the traditional methods practiced by their ancestors.
The Yoshidas farm is one of hundreds of organic
farms in Tohoku, the earthquake and tsunami-ravaged region of northern Japan
that supplies much of the rice and vegetables to Tokyo and across the country.
Government warnings have limited the sale of food grown there since high levels
of radiation were detected in some spinach, milk and fish from the region.
We dont know if our crops will be safe, Masanori
says. We cant ignore this issue. But we wont stop cultivating our
land. We farmers need to nurture the environment, nature and culture, and
pass them to them to the next generation.
Noboru Saitous Nihonmatsu Farm is famous for
cucumbers. He also grows rice, shiitake, garlic chives, bamboo shoots,
and flowers. Noboru works closely with the agricultural city of
Nihonmatsu, 25 miles from the troubled nuclear reactor, just outside the
evacuation zone.
Today, the problem spinach sprouted, Noboru says.
We were supposed to ship this after it grew, but now we cant.
After spinach is cucumber season, then rice. When the fields are golden
we will harvest the rice. Thats the best part of farming. After
that well plant canola. Each plant yields a lot. I hope I can
continue this year. But now I see how hard it is.
Hiromasa Kitagawa is the unofficial leader of Mattari
Village, an off-the-grid community of homes made from recycled construction
lumber, powered by wind, solar and water, heated by wood fire. The people
of Mattari share the food they grow.
We grow vegetables that you can even eat the skin,
Hiromasu says. We spend our time and passion to go back to the way
vegetables are supposed to be grown We aim for 100% self-sufficiency.
Soon we hope to open our community for people to experience the sustainable
lifestyle. Its cold in winter, but spring is so green, autumns colors
are vivid, the night sky is beautiful, the water is clear.
After the earthquake, Megumi Kondou was evacuated
from her Chitata Farm. Megumi awaits government approval to return to her
farm. She may not be able to grow her renowned koshihikari rice
this year. Instead shes considering growing canola, which she believes
may help reduce radiation in the soil, and is a potential source of biodiesel.
Farmers and scientists search desperately for ways to
continue safely using this rich land, or restore it to its natural state.
Whether they can succeed, or whether the farmers must abandon their ancestral
homesteads, remains to be seen.
After suffering the worlds only nuclear attacks in
World War II, Japan emerged from poverty and devastation and entered into a
period of unprecedented technological innovation and economic growth. Can
todays Japanese respond to this catastrophe with new forms of innovation that
will allow this nuclear-dependent society to continue providing healthy food to
its people, and live in better harmony with the natural world?
The Project
Filmmakers Junko Kajino and Ed M. Koziarski are
embarking on the new documentary Uncanny Terrain, to follow the organic
farmers of Tohoku as they contend with the threat that nuclear fallout from the
Fukushima Power Plant poses to their land and their livelihood.
From spring planting season, we will document the
testing of their land and crops for radiation, their efforts to adjust to the
changing environment, through the harvest and beyond.
We are seeking financial support to cover our travel
and living across Tohoku in the coming months, and for the purchase of highly
portable, high quality video equipment to document what we find.
We will build an international online community of
people interested in sustainable agriculture and energy and in the future of
Japan, through regular video updates and ongoing dialogue around the issues
raised in the film. In the end we will have a film intended for
international broadcast and distribution, and around the film we will have
generated a wealth of new friends, knowledge and media to address these
questions in our own communities.
The Filmmakers
Ed and Junko wrote, produced and directed the
psychological drama feature film The First Breath of Tengan Rei.
Erika Oda of Kore-Edas After Life stars as an Okinawan woman who
kidnaps the teenage son of a U.S. Marine convicted of raping her when she was a
girl. An IFP Independent Film Lab selection, Rei screened
theatrically, at educational venues and festivals across the U.S., Japan and in
India.
Theyre developing the film and graphic novel Hand Head Heart,
based on Junkos experience growing up in a traditional extended family on
a cattle farm in central Japan, and learning the sword fighting martial art kendo.
Their short film Homesick Blues,
starring pop singer Zoey (now Remah) as an Osaka girl running off to America to
sing the blues, won the IFP/Chicago Flyover Zone Film Festival and played the
Hawaii and Chicago international film festivals.
Theyve been co-producer, line producer, production
manager, production designer and assistant director on films including Wendy Jo
Carltons Hannah Free starring Sharon Gless, distributed by Wolfe
Releasing; Malik Baders crime mockumentary Street Thief, a Tribeca Film
Festival selection released by A&E Indie; Noel Olkens Meditations on
Trafficking; Brigid Mahers Adrift in the Heartland; Anthony
Collamatis The Acedia Thing featuring Stana Katic (Castle);
Scott Cozzolinos Dead Letters, and Wojciech Lorencs pilot Windy
Field.
They teach producing at Chicago Filmmakers. Ed
writes about film, media and arts for Filmmaker Magazine, the Chicago
Reader, Time Out Chicago, and Reel Chicago. A native of
Nagano, Japan, Junko studied film at Columbia College Chicago and Wright State
University. A native Chicagoan, Ed studied communications at Antioch
College.
