The Present and Future of Fukushima

Fukushima City, the Fukushima City Agricultural Product Sales Promotion Association, and the Fukushima Prefecture Fruit Consumption Expansion Committee held a reception in Tokyo on Saturday to continue the dialogue with various supporter groups, including representatives from the Tokyo American Club’s Women’s Group and the Culture, Community & Entertainment Committee, which have been engaged since 2011. The following is an excerpt from Fukushima City Mayor Hiroshi Kohata-san’s speech, a message we would like to help carry out to the world.

Fukushima City is a beautiful “urban, cultural city” as nicely expressed by our new catchphrase “mi-waku-man-sai” or “alluring Fukushima City”, providing many opportunities to taste delicious foods and experience versatile activities including arts and crafts.

In spring, you can visit a magnificent flower-filled mountain called Hanamiyama, a “fairyland in Fukushima” with a view of Mount Azuma. As the snow melts away, a white rabbit appears on the side of Mount Azuma.

And in the fall, colorful autumn foliage is expected to be seen in Fukushima City. Our city is blessed with natural beauty, featuring natural onsens, or hot springs, such as Iizaka, Tsuchiyu, and Takayu. And each onsen area has its own distinct history, quality, and atmosphere. Also, Arakawa River, a clear stream running through the city, is ranked as number one in Japan in terms of water quality for nine consecutive years.

As a lively cultural city, we are holding many concerts at Fukushima City Concert Hall, which is well known in Japan for its top-level acoustics.

But the Great Japan Earthquake and the following incident at the nuclear plant left us in a devastating situation. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 6 hit us and damaged a considerable amount of infrastructure, including electricity, water facilities, traffic, and the supply chain of municipal gas. We had three casualties. But the worst was the incident of the nuclear plant that directly damaged our city.

Since Fukushima City is located more than 60km away from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, there was no evacuation notice necessary for locals, but the level of radiation went high. A nuclear disaster is tremendously difficult to deal with in terms of contaminating our living environment and feeding public fears which are groundless.

The number of evacuees to Fukushima City accounted for up to 12,000 whereas the number of residents who voluntarily evacuated from Fukushima City was approximately 7,500 — as of now, 2,500 of them have not returned to our city yet.

We have carried out the decontamination project (removal of 5cm surface of soil) to totally clean up the living environment such as the areas of housing, schools, roads, as well as agricultural lands and this project was completed at the end of last year. The current radiation dose is drastically lower than the level of initial stage measured at the time of the 3–11 disaster.

Concurrently, we are thoroughly maintaining the food safety level. For the residents who are anxious about the food contamination, we are providing places to openly measure the radiation dose while carrying out sampling inspections for agricultural products for shipping in order to deliver only safe products to the markets.

As for rice, all packages are inspected and no radioactive substance has been found since 2017. Our local school children have been eating rice made in Fukushima City at school lunch since 2013.

Talking about the tap water in Fukushima City, we have received the Monde Selection Grand Quality Gold Medal for three consecutive years. Enjoy our crystal clear cold water from our mascot MOMRIN’s public water server located at the Fukushima JR Station West Exit!

And finally, I have to mention the fact that we have received generous support from all over Japan and from the world. In our sister city, Arakawa, Mayor Nishikawa has been leading promotional activities for selling peaches, our major agricultural product, and thanks to the members of the Arakawa Nishi Lion’s Club, who hosted PR events in the city, we were able to witness people purchasing lots of peaches.

Three years have passed since our friendship with the members of the “Ginza Mitsubachi Project” started. This is a pioneer project for collaborating with Fukushima, Ginza and Yamaguchi to produce sake made from local Fukushima rice.

Also, thanks to the cooperation with the Tokyo American Club, we have successfully carried out the projects for reconstruction support after the 2011 East Japan Great Earthquake, such as music programs or workshops for learning English at our elementary/junior high schools, and invitations to the recreation camps for our children.

We are working very hard to eliminate harmful rumors, for example by executing top sales at the markets and mass retailers, and PR activities at various events for sports or exhibitions. We will make further efforts to speak about the safety and deliciousness of our agricultural products and to recover our market share and price of agricultural products.

Meanwhile, the Fukushima Prefectural Government is working on deregulation for export and expanding our market share abroad. Fukushima City is also working on these issues by successfully holding fruit-picking events for peaches targeting foreign guests visiting Fukushima to participate in the 2020 Olympics-related events.

Visitors included the members of Swiss Yorokobi Choir, the Vietnamese Women’s National Football Team, and the members of the World Children’s Baseball Foundation with participation from 14 different countries. With such efforts, the export volume of Fukushima’s fruits has reached a record high, exceeding the level of exports before 3–11.

We are also working on two additional projects: namely, increasing the quality level of our products and obtaining the highest number of the GAP (Good Agricultural Practice) licenses in Japan. Aiming to offer our local products at the Tokyo 2020 Games, which requires GAP licenses, we are currently striving to achieve our goal.

In April this year, a new agricultural-related department called the “Faculty of Food & Agricultural Sciences” was established at Fukushima University. By taking this into consideration, we are cooperating with this department to nurture the agricultural successors as well as to work on innovation for agricultural production.

As for an orchard tour in Fukushima City, we have started the project called “Orchard in the Night”. We are sure that you would enjoy the artistic and gorgeous atmosphere in the night at one of Fukushima’s orchards.

Since the 3–11 disaster, the Tohoku Rokkonsai (former Six Festivals) annual events have been held successfully with the theme of reconstruction, and this year, it was held in Fukushima City.

Next year, the 2020 Olympic Games for Baseball and Softball will be held in Fukushima City, starting with a softball match, which will be the first game of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Further, an NHK drama, “Yell”, modeled after the life of a Fukushima-born composer, Yuji Koseki, and his wife, will be broadcast from next April. By seizing this unique opportunity, we are eager to create a new “FUKUSHIMA” and express our sincere thanks to the world and propelling our project for further recovery and reconstruction forward.

Fukushima City is widely known as the “Treasure Trove of Fruits”. We produce various kinds of seasonal fruits including cherries, peaches, pears, grapes and apples. Thus, we think of the smiles of our farmers, who are producing precious fruits with all their hearts despite difficult conditions, and are truly our treasure.

As we will provide safe and delicious agricultural products for the future, we would like to ask for your continued support and encouragement.

If you found value in this article, please “clap” (up to 50 times).

This article is part of our Tokyo FinTech Publication, please follow us to read more from our writers, like hundreds of readers do every day.

Should you live in Tokyo, or just pass through, please also join our Tokyo FinTech Meetup. In any case, our LinkedIn page, Facebook page and our Instagram account are there for you as well.