2016 / Editorial / Environmental

Stray land

  • Photographer
    Shin Yahiro

I feel some sign in the town where nobody is.Is it the wild sign that is going to return to the figure which there should be which a person was not? Or is it the memory of people stuck? Quietness individualizes presence of their memory more. Stuck their memory cannot lose even high pressure washing to wash away radioactive material and does not have enough power to be opposed to the nature that is going to come back to the figure which there should be from the ancient times of the main absence. The shoreline of the Tohoku district in Japan was affected by massive tsunami which generated by a 9-magnitude earthquake on March 11, 2011. In particular Futaba county, Fukushima prefecture where a nuclear power plant operated, radiological pollution became serious, and 110000 people who lived in Futaba county and the outskirts broke up to the various parts of Japan. Their hometown was shut by a rustic gate. It was regulated that they returned to their house. Something invisible blocks the return. Cesium, strontium, plutonium, the invisible radioactive material, or something primitive of human subconsciousness, or a social thing brakes it. The government rebuild vast land using a large quantity of staff, huge cost, lengthy time. They cut grass and replace soil and wash away dust and fix the land for the people who do not know whether they come back either. I feel even hopefulness in the powerful power. Distorted expectations and relationship appear and disappear through a strange scene of the land where the government reformed. People notice slightly, but do not raise a voice 'where dose the strategic effectiveness leave for?'. The people who evacuated from nuclear disaster colonized in a place where they refuged, the person who wait for the return, the person who gave up the return, a person to carry the memory of the hometown, a person who inherit their memory, the people walked each way. Change, which happened to them always were exposed to choice. They must do it well. Do not take a burden. The stress is accumulated into them. The system is heartless. The best efficiency of civilization built on system is divide. The element including feelings does not enter at all there. Where is the final destination? They were noticed suddenly. They were dragged into the huge river. They can not see the opposite bank. Nobody knows what there is. They should go to the opposite bank through big flow and undulation whether they cross it by ship whether they swim whether they just flow.