Fukushima Radiation Threatens Traditional Life In Northeast Japan

When the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station was struck with a triple-meltdown in March 2011, it spewed radioactive material across a wide swathe of northeastern Japan's forests.

Photo Insert: Due to the cesium in the soil, the livelihood provided by the Abukuma mountains, once one of Japan's leading sources of logs for shiitake mushroom cultivation, has been at a virtual standstill.

Even now, more than a decade after the catastrophe, the impact of the cesium still found in the region's trees is enormous, Rikka Teramachi reported for Mainichi Japan.

One area to feel the brunt of the fallout's effects is eastern Fukushima Prefecture's Abukuma mountains, once one of Japan's leading sources of logs for shiitake mushroom cultivation, and now at a virtual standstill.

Ten years into this continuing disaster, locals, and experts have been working hard to find ways to revive the traditional industry, in hopes of being able to pass on the mountains' rich natural resources, and the life connected to this landscape, to the next generation.

Kazuo Watanabe, the 59-year-old head of the Miyakoji office of the Fukushima central forestry union, is standing by a copse of konara oaks for shiitake cultivation, sighing as he speaks.

Watanabe says that the oaks are harvested for the shiitake business when they are about 15 centimeters across. And it takes about 20 years to get that big. If the trunks are too thick, it becomes difficult for new growth to sprout from the stump. But konara logging has stagnated severely because of the nuclear disaster, leading to a halt in shipments.

Radioactive cesium exceeding the government-set maximum of 50 becquerels per kilogram has been detected in logs from Miyakoji and other parts of the Abukuma region. Even 10 years after the Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdowns, testing has turned up cesium levels in the logs of between 100 and 540 becquerels per kilogram.

To grow shiitake, mushroom mycelia are put into holes drilled into sawtooth oak, konara oak, and other types of logs. In 2010, Fukushima Prefecture was Japan's third-largest producer of these logs, shipping some 4.78 million of them.

But the nuclear disaster changed all that, and even now the prefecture produces only about 140,000 of the cultivation logs annually.

According to the Forestry Agency, as of the end of 2020, log-grown shiitake shipments were restricted in 93 municipalities across Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, Ibaraki, Tochigi, and Chiba prefectures due to cesium contamination. Along with Fukushima Prefecture, Miyagi Prefecture and other jurisdictions are voluntarily limiting shipments of the logs as well.

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