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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
(Notes added by the translator are set off in brackets and marked “Tr.”)
[1] The Tokaimura Criticality Accident. Japan's first accident involving a nuclear chain reaction, on Sept. 30, 1999 at the Tokaimura uranium processing plant (fuel conversion plant) operated by JCO Co. Ltd. Three workers were exposed to high levels of radiation, of whom two died from acute radiation exposure. In order to save time, workers preparing fuel for a high-speed experimental reactor didn't follow proper procedures. They added more than the prescribed amount of uranium to the tank, which resulted in a self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction. The criticality continued intermittently for about twenty hours, emitting neutron and gamma radiation. Households within a 350-meter radius of the plant were evacuated, and residents within a one-kilometer radius were asked to stay indoors. Some 700 people, including JCO employees, local residents and firefighters were irradiated.
[2] [The Precautionary Principle often cited by environmentalists addresses just such situations: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.” Tr.]
[3] Supreme Court ruling on Minamata. On October 15, 2004, in the first judicial finding of government responsibility for Minamata disease, Japan's Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of people who had not been officially recognized as victims of Minamata disease and ordered compensation be paid. The plaintiffs had moved to the Kansai region from the Shiranui coast of Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures. Both the central government and the two prefectural governments, the court said, failed to exercise their authority to regulate Chisso Corp., and thus exacerbated the damage from the disease. The state and the prefectures were thus determined to have lost the case that had begun forty-eight years earlier with the first public reports in 1956 about Minamata disease. The court also rejected a 1952 decision by the state that people with neurological damage also needed to have symptoms such as impaired mobility or eyesight in order to be officially certified as Minamata disease victims. It certified that the plaintiffs in the case, whose appeals for certification had been rejected, did indeed have Minamata disease.
[4] [The Mutsu-Ogawara Development Project emerged in 1969 as part of the Comprehensive National Development Plan, epitomizing policy emerging from the period of high-growth economics. Under this plan, several regional mega-industrial centers were to be created, all to be linked by high-speed trains and super highways. The Mutsu-Ogawara project, involving an enormous tract of land in Aomori, including Rokkasho, was originally centered on a petrochemical complex. From the outset, the project was riddled with difficulties—from the changing economic landscape due to several oil shocks and the rise of the yen to questions about environmental and archeological preservation. The Project has never been abandoned, however, and now lives on as a nuclear-waste storage and reprocessing site. For the larger context of this and other such projects, see Gavan McCormack, “Breaking the Iron Triangle,” New Left Review 13 (January-February 2002). Tr.]
[4] [Ogawa Shinsuke (1935-1992) is another celebrated documentarist best known for his series on the student-farmer Sanrizuka airport struggle. Motivated by the years spent living with the farmers resisting the construction of what is now known as Narita Airport as well as the quelling of the protest, he and his production company eventually moved to a rural area in Yamagata in northern Japan and turned their attention to documenting the details of the agricultural existence while pursuing the history of postwar Japan as reflected in the village. Find a brief introduction here (accessed 1 November 2007). Tr.]
[5] [Iwanami Film Productions was the brainchild of Hokkaido University Professor Nakaya Ukichiro and Kobayashi Isamu of Iwanami Publishers, who wanted to make new kinds of science films. After the company was established in 1950, it attracted such talented members as Hani Susumu, Kuroki Kazuo, Tawara Soichiro (commentator), and a host of photographers, translators, cameramen, and producers, resulting in many prizewinning works. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1998. Its collection was sold to Hitachi Media Productions in 2000. For information on Tokieda Toshie and the atmosphere at Iwanami during its formative years, see this website; for information on Haneda Sumiko, see this website (both accessed 1 November 2007). Tr.]
[6] [Ishimure Michiko is the author of Kugai jodo, arguably the most famous literary work on Minamata. It is now available in English translation by Livia Monnet from the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, as Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow. See Ishimure's “Lake of Heaven, Dams, and Japan's Transformation” in Japan Focus. Tr.]
[7] [For two accounts of Kamei (1908-1987), who went to Leningrad for study in 1928, and who, despite the precautions Tsuchimoto refers to here, ended up being jailed for Fighting Soldiers (1939), see here and here, both accessed 1 November 2007. Tr.]
[8] Rokkashomura mayor's suicide. Rokkashomura Mayor Hashimoto Hisashi committed suicide on May 18, 2002, after he was questioned by the Aomori Prefectural Police in connection with a bribery case relating to public construction in the village. There is great demand for public construction in Rokkashomura, where there is a concentration of nuclear fuel cycle facilities and huge sums invested in construction.
[9] [Tsuchimoto is surely referring to Sellafield, a nuclear site on the Irish Sea in Britain, owned since April 2005 by the British Nuclear Decomissioning Authority. For a report on leakage that forced the closing of the Thorp reprocessing plant in Sellafield in 2005, see here (accessed 1 November 2007). Kamanaka takes her camera and microphone to Sellafield and produces a sobering comparison to Rokkasho in her film. Tr.]
[10] Mihama Accident. On August 9, 2004, there was an accident at the Mihama No. 3 nuclear power station operated by Kansai Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) in Fukui Prefecture. A secondary piping (diameter fifty-six centimeters) rupture occurred during plant operation, releasing hot steam and hot water at 140° C. This was the worst accident in the history of Japanese power plants, involving 111 workers, five of whom died from full-body burns and six others of whom were injured to varying degrees. In the twenty-seven years of the plant's operation since 1976, the damaged piping had been neither checked nor replaced. All the casualties were employees of the local sub-subcontractor, and it is clear that the accident was the result of cost reductions by management at the expense of safety.
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