No living zone, altered landscape

(oil painting on wood panel. 117×91cm × 3 pieces. 2013)

“ But, the handicapped, the elderly, the dementia and the mentally disabled...They can’t tell their will!

They can’t make claim for compensation even if they got addicted to suicide.

Actually, these kinds of many people are existing.”

( a monk of Naraha village about 20km far from Fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant January 2015.)

There is a concept of < disaster-related death > in Japan.

Not only in 3.11 but also another disaster,

if a family lose a kinship and this bereaved family judges that the incident was caused by a disaster,

they start to submit seven sheets of documents to a recognition committee of disaster condolence money.

This committee is composed of doctors and lawyers and local public workers in each municipality.

When the death is recognized by the recognition committee as a result of the disaster,

condolence money will be paid, counted publicly as victims of the disaster and publicly announced.

Among these related deaths,

suicide case is the one of biggest element which we should not overlook in understanding of Fukushima’s nuclear accident.

Until 2018, Fukushima had about 100 related suicides.

To think about Large-Scale Disasters Related Deaths,

it is easy to understand to watch the case of 2007.

2007, the Niigata Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake occurred,there were 68 Related Deaths.

But this is the total number including suicide.

There was no element of nuclear accidents for example evacuating life that’s been going on seven years after the accident in Fukushima.

At the time the approving limit of the criteria 2007 was set until sex months after the disaster by the government.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan has been showing that Japanese government uses this criteria 2007 to Fukushima’s cases too.

It means actually that,

each judgments ‘ whether this suicide case holds the factors of the nuclear accident or not ‘ were through to local municipals level.

Watching the criteria 2007 which didn’t accept approving after sex months on our left hand,

let’s watch related suicidal death in Fukushima on right hand.

10 persons in 2011.

13 persons in 2012.

23 persons in 2013.

15 persons in 2014.

19 persons in 2015.

7 persons in 2016.

12 persons in 2017.

( source : the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare “the number of suicides related to the Great East Japan Earthquake ” )

Until 2018,

99 people have been recognized their deaths as suicide cases.

And there has been no stop.

There is a significant variation in prefectural governments’s recognition because there has not been united criteria.

Up until last year,

a report by Japanese news paper showed that recognition rate is

Fukushima was 38%,

Iwate 12%,

Miyagi 4%.

And also there is a possibility that there may be unaccounted for deaths.

Many certified suicides are reported to be women of former farmers in their fifties.

When I visited to towns set as no-living zone around 2013,

the former farmlands were filled with black bag containing contaminated soil,

these black bags deposited.

There were no ordinary people but decontamination workers or police cars were moving.

( text : Akira Tsuboi )