Farmers were among the first to return to Fukushima towns; now, they’re paving the path to revive their homes
Keijiro Suzuki harvests kale from his farm in Namie, Fukushima, Japan on December 21, 2023.
NAMIE, JAPAN — Keijiro Suzuki’s boots sank into the dirt as he stomped through the field. His farm is lined with rows of sprouting vegetables such as tomatoes, green onion and kale. In total, he grows more than 30 crops and 100 variants.
Stopping at a ripe stalk of kale, he harvested it with his gloved hands and wrapped it in a plastic bag.
“You can put it in smoothies. It’s good for your health and it boosts your metabolism,” Suzuki, 63, said. Like many farmers in Fukushima Prefecture, he’s proud of his crops and the effort he has taken to grow them. It’s been 13 years since a tsunami hit the nearby Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, releasing clouds of radioactivity into the surrounding countryside, including Suzuki’s farmland.
Suzuki is one of the lucky ones. His farm escaped high levels of radioactivity, but other farms were deeply contaminated, and some remain abandoned.
Suzuki’s farm lies five miles from the power plant that led to the desolation of his hometown, Namie, and neighboring cities.
Namie is bordered by mountains to the west and the ocean to the east. Much of the town is made up of forests and farms. But, of the roughly 1900 acres of cultivated land in the town, less than 10% of it was being used a decade after the disaster, according to a town survey in 2021.
Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, about 18,000 residents have abandoned their homes, rebuilding their lives in other cities across Japan. Today, fewer than 2,000 people live in the city that once housed 20,0000.
A farmer rides a tractor on a farm in Namie in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
Farmers were among the first to return to towns like Namie when they reopened to the public, Suzuki said. Now, they play a pivotal role in the reconstruction of their homes.
“It’s the farmers who are coming back the most,” Suzuki said. “Isn’t it that human life starts with agriculture?”
In the years before the 2011 disaster, Namie was home to a thriving agricultural industry. There were 1,395 farmers in total according to the town census in 2010. Over 900 of them were dual-income farmers who worked day jobs while growing rice on their land, according to Toshiya Suzuki, a representative of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Division of the Namie Town Office. He said that rice farming made up about 70% to 80% of the town’s agricultural industry before the disaster.
But, many more residents of Namie worked for the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant that opened in 1971. The power plant didn’t just bring jobs to Namie, it also supported the economic development of the entire country of Japan by supplying energy for the Tokyo region, according to the Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum.
“Namie originally had too many people working at the nuclear power plant, so they started to stop thinking about creating the town’s industry by themselves,” Keijiro Suzuki said. “Everyone could live by working at the nuclear power plant, so they stopped thinking.”
The years of prosperity brought by the power plant turned to disaster in 2011.
On March 11, 2011, the strongest earthquake in Japan’s history triggered a tsunami off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture. According to a publication by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tsunami waves hit the power plants and destroyed seawater pumps used for cooling. Over a three-day period, three of six nuclear reactors lost their cooling capabilities, causing explosions in reactor buildings, releasing radiation. To reduce the reactors’ internal pressure, workers had to release steam that resulted in more radiation spreading out from the plant.
Of the radioactive isotopes released, cesium (Cs-137) presented the most serious risk because it was emitted in large quantities, has a long half-life and binds strongly to soil, according to Olivier Evrard, the co-director of the Mitrate Lab for post-Fukushima studies at the Paris-Saclay University.
Radioactive cesium emits gamma radiation that penetrates skin and clothing and can only be blocked by a shield of a dense material like lead. As a result of the nuclear disaster, 20.5 petabecquerels (Pbq) of radioactive cesium were released into the atmosphere, according to the World Nuclear Association. Petabecquerels measure the strength of radioactivity through the rate of radioactive decay.
Because of concerns about radiation, within a day of the disaster, the local and national governments ordered residents of nearby towns like Namie to evacuate. At 7 a.m. on March 12, local government officials arrived at Keijiro Suzuki’s home to tell him, his wife and two sons to evacuate. The family moved to a temporary shelter at an elementary school gymnasium. By 2 p.m. that day, Suzuki smelled a strange odor that he suspected was radiation. His family decided to flee northwest to Fukushima City, about 50 miles from Namie. Suzuki was unsure if and when he would be able to return.
As residents evacuated, radiation spread within a 12-mile radius of the nuclear power plant. Radioactive materials coalesced into a cloud that spread radiation in higher levels when it rained or snowed. When it reached the ground, cesium bonded with the soil.
In total, the Japanese government ordered more than 300,000 residents to evacuate. Another 50,000 more voluntarily fled areas exposed to radiation, according to a CNN report.
Data acquired from Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Fifty-four nations restricted shipments of Japanese food products after the disaster, according to the Asahi Shimbun. Since the disaster, market prices of Fukushima specialties such as beef, peaches and rice have decreased in comparison to other regions of Japan, according to the Japanese government’s Reconstruction Agency. Even in regions of Japan that weren’t affected by radiation, buyers demanded food inspections for radiation.
Some questioned whether the prefecture’s agricultural industry could ever recover from the blow to its reputation.
But Keijiro Suzuki wouldn’t give up on his farmland.
Settling into a new life in Fukushima City, Suzuki began an office job like many other evacuees. As Suzuki’s retirement approached, he decided to return to his 2-acre farm in Namie with his border collie Leon. Although Namie was still closed to the public when he returned in 2016, Suzuki received a special permit to return to his farm on the weekends and maintain it.
“I knew I couldn’t leave this farmland as it was,” Suzuki said. “This land is good for farming. I inherited it, so I want to try to pass it on.”
While Suzuki was returning to his farm on the weekends, decontamination had already begun in Namie and nearby towns. In 2013, two and a half years after the disaster, government-contracted construction companies began the process of cleaning up radiation.
Since Suzuki’s land had low levels of radiation contamination, workers decontaminated the soil by mixing it with zeolite that worked like a sponge, sucking up radioactive toxins by binding with them.
Other farms neighboring Suzuki's weren’t as lucky. Because their land had received higher doses of radiation, more intense decontamination had to be conducted. Workers removed five to 10 layers of topsoil. On average, Evrard said, this process removed about 80% of radioactive substances.
Cultivated soil on a farm in Namie.
Although farmers mixed compost into the soil afterwards, Suzuki said that the removal of topsoil impacted its fertility. “It’s not very good land, that side of the mountain,” he said. “I would lose my motivation if I were them.”
When Namie reopened to the public in April 2017, some of the returnees were farmers. Currently, Namie has about 44 active farms, a sharp decrease from the 1,019 there were before the disaster in 2011.
“Farmland occupies a large area,” said Yoshinori Hangai, a rice farmer in Namie. “If it’s not cultivated, it becomes desolate and covered with weeds. I don’t think that’s good for people’s lives. I think it is fundamental to the landscape of the region and the life of the region that the farmland is properly maintained.”
Namie is giving financial incentives for returnees to farm. Those who want to become town-certified farmers can receive an income supplement of about $650 a month and an additional $400 a month for rent. Post-disaster, government subsidies have helped pay for Suzuki’s agricultural equipment.
Outside of agricultural initiatives, Japan’s rural migration program awards a little more than $13,000 (2 million yen) for families and almost $8,000 (1.2 million yen) for individuals in the Tokyo area to move to Fukushima Prefecture.
Aside from stipends, passion to rebuild the town has motivated returnees.
Yoshinori Hangai’s rice farm in Namie.
Yoshinori Hangai poses in front of his farmland in Namie on December 19, 2023.
“When I saw the effort they were making to resume farming here, I thought I would like to be a part of it,” said Hangai, whose father was one of the farmers working to bring rice farming back to Namie. Despite not previously owning farmland, Hangai decided to make the move and take part in the effort to rebuild the town’s agricultural industry.
Hangai now runs his rice farm with the help of his wife and children. He sells his rice to the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives, which distributes it nationally.
Hangai is one of many who believe agriculture plays an important part in rebuilding the town. “We need to create a place for people to return to, a place they want to return to,” Toshiya Suzuki, Namie representative, said. He and others say they hope that revitalizing the agriculture industry will create an environment that feels more like the Namie everyone remembers.
“I think we are returning to the old scenery of Namie,” Hangai said about the state of the town. “Rice paddies as far as the eye can see—it feels good to see that view.”
Namie today is quiet and empty, built for a population ten times its current size. Most of the cars on the street are construction vehicles, working on projects to clean up and reconstruct the town. The town is filled with rice paddies that once were pillars of Namie’s agriculture industry, many of which are now covered in weeds or barren.
Yet, agriculture is still at the heart of life in the reopened Namie. Though the town seems empty when walking the streets, the Namie Roadside Station is a lively place where locals go to buy produce and necessities.
Walking through the roadside station’s aisles bustling with customers and vibrant chatter, it seems like any other town, one that isn’t plagued by a history of disaster.
Near a major road, the station is an easily accessible center that sells local produce, daily goods and traditional pottery. About 570,000 customers purchased goods at the roadside station in 2022, according to the station manager Yuji Watanabe.
“The most important thing is to continue to fulfill the purpose for which this place was established,” Watanabe said. “Which is to provide a facility that will make locals happy.”
All of the produce sold at the station was grown on local farms such as Keijiro Suzuki’s K-chan Farm. The ‘K’ in the name stands for his given name Keijiro and the ‘chan’ is an endearing suffix used in Japanese for close friends.
“I don’t want the shelves at the roadside station to be lonely,” Suzuki said.
A customer looks at the produce selection in Namie Roadside Station.
Outside Namie Roadside Station.
Behind the scenes, Keijiro Suzuki and other farmers are working to bring food to locals’ tables. Suzuki and about 30 others are a part of a collective farmers group that supplies the Namie Roadside Station with produce. In a uniquely Japanese fashion, Suzuki also sells his produce in a vending machine neighboring his farm.
Namie Roadside Station inspects all produce for radiation, and none of Suzuki’s crops have ever been shown to have a dangerous amount. The station has a zero-tolerance policy for radiation to guarantee safety for its customers.
In Japan, the national allowed amount of radioactive cesium in food is 100 becquerels per kilogram. On average, the natural radioactivity for food is around 0.003 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive particles other than cesium, according to a study by the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection, which only tested food produced in Germany.
Stigma surrounding Fukushima produce still exists, though it has lessened since the initial reaction after the disaster.
“There are people who understand the situation and buy Fukushima products, and there are people who understand but shun Fukushima products,” Hangai said. “I think it can’t be helped. I don’t think there is any need to force people to eat what they don’t want to eat. For my part, I will continue farming for those who understand the current situation in Namie and who will still buy and eat our produce.”
Keijiro Suzuki poses with his border collie, Leon.
Keijiro Suzuki’s farmhouse, with a sign reading “K-chan Farm” in the bushes.
As stigma wanes, agriculture is beginning to blossom in Namie.
In a partnership with Namie, students from the Tokyo University of Agriculture visited the town to help local farmers with their harvests in fall 2022. One of the farms the students visited was Keijiro Suzuki’s.
On a sunny day in October, students arrived at Suzuki's K-chan Farm to help with the fig harvest. It’s taken years for Suzuki to grow his fig trees that become saplings after four years and full-fledged trees after 10. With rows upon rows of fig trees, Suzuki didn’t have the manpower to harvest them alone, now that his wife and two sons no longer live on the farm, having permanently moved to Fukushima City after the disaster.
Although it meant living away from his family, returning to his farm in Namie was something that Suzuki always knew he would do. Even before the earthquake, he had decided to dedicate himself to cultivating his father’s land after retirement. It was a decision that couldn’t be changed, even by disaster.
“I can feel the change of seasons with my five senses. I can smell it in the dirt. That’s why I like farming,” Suzuki said. “I feel more motivated than ever. I would have continued to do it even if there was no one else around me and I was alone.”
