The 3.11 Portrait Project brings smiles to the victims of the triple-whammy disaster through the power of the photograph

After the magnitude 9.0 earthquake rocked Japan in March 11 last year, as a photographer for a newswire service, I had many chances to document reality, which was often depressing and shocking. However, at times, I would feel rewarded when my work brought positive results by inviting support and compassion from around the world to those who were suffering. However, still, the support was often not directed specifically to the person pictured in my shots, which often made me feel helpless.

Japanese photographer Nobuyuki Kobayashi, 42, had experienced a similar feeling. His main field of photography was mostly to shoot commercial photos but past assignments included regions in conflict, and disasters such as the earthquake which hit off the coast of Sumatra, the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the attacks on 9/11. As what many Japanese photographers did after Japan experienced the worst catastrophe since World War Two, Kobayashi went up north to take photographs after his friend in Iwate prefecture asked him to. He shot pictures of the disaster and rubble in northeastern Japan, but came to question whether that was the role he should play.

His conclusion was no.

“People were striving to move forward despite their difficulty and I hoped by photographing their portrait, it would offer them courage and hope, and possibly give them momentum to take a positive step forward towards the future,” Kobayashi said.

“I met people who had lost their albums and thought maybe I can help them create a new start for them by creating new memories,“ he added.

Soon many photographers from different fields, along with hair and makeup artists, local non-profit organizations, and anyone who wanted to help got together, and their 3.11 Portrait Project was formed. It officially kicked off three months after the disaster.

When I learned about this project from a friend, I was moved by the fact that his project utilized the power of photographs to help the disaster victims and that maybe I could play a part in bringing about something positive through documenting their efforts.

I decided to cover the whole process which was divided into three parts, in a time span of two months.
In late December, 2011, I joined the first part, which was to actually take the portrait photos of the earthquake and tsunami victims.

Kobayashi and his members gathered in the common area of the Midorigaoka temporary housing area in Koriyama, Fukushima where people who had evacuated from Fukushima’s Tomioka town were living. Most of them have lived within a 10-km radius of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The photographers quickly set up an in-house photo studio, with lighting stands, diffusers, and white backdrops. The hair and makeup artists, who normally work on models for fashion magazines, set up their professional kits including hair-curlers, dryers, and makeup sets.

The residents gathered and after signing up, the women had their hair curled and their make-up done by the volunteers, as the men waited.

I could see the women’s faces brighten up as they saw their different look in the mirror.

Katsuko Abe, 71, carrying her dog, “Kaede,” was among the many people who had come out of their houses to have their portrait taken.

When it was her turn, she stood in front of a white backdrop and posed, starting off with a stiff smile. The photographers and the makeup artists told her how she was looking good and how cute the dog was posing with her, and gradually she seemed to laugh from the bottom of her heart.

“We take pictures of these people against a common white backdrop, because I think it allows the person to stand out and helps the person being photographed to reset their past, at least for just the brief moment when they’re being photographed,” Kobayashi said.

“I hope by offering an extraordinary experience and creating a happy mood when we photograph, we can offer some courage to move forward”, he said as he chose words carefully since he knows how difficult it is for the victims of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accidents to overcome their despair and difficulties.
Another couple in their 70’s was suggested by Kenichi Funada, a professional photographer who is one of the core members of the 3.11 Portrait Project.

The wife covered her face as her husband put his arms around her stiffly.

After the photo session, the wife said “I haven’t touched his hands for ages,” as her husband also blushed.

They chose which photograph they liked as the photographer showed the files on Funada’s i-Pad.

Since the photographs were shot in digital SLR camera, it was possible to print them out and give them on the spot. However that was not the point of their project.

The 3.11 Portrait Project’s other mission was to create new bonds with the people being photographed and with the younger generation that will support the future of these people.

The second leg of coverage was held nearly two months after the photo shoot.

Kobayashi brought the printed photographs along with frames and letterset to the sixth graders of a private school called Keimei Gakuen in Akishima, near Tokyo. After explaining the meaning of his project to the students, he distributed a frame and a photo to everyone randomly.

The students carefully put the photographs of the Tomioka town in the frame and wrote a letter in hopes of cheering them up.

“I think your smile is very nice. I assume you have gone through hardships but the fact you are smiling is very admirable,” wrote one student in a letter.

After two weeks, Kobayashi and his fellow members revisited the Midorigaoka temporary shelter, with the framed photographs and the letters written by the students, as the finale of their three-step effort.

The residents from Tomioka town, mostly ranging between 60 to 90 years old, gathered in the common area, all looking forward to receiving their photographs and the letters written by a youngster they didn’t know.
“I have been looking forward to this day for the past two months,” Tsugiko Miyajima, 77, said. Miyajima, who lives by herself in a shelter where the insulation is insufficient through an especially cold northern Japanese winter. I could see that she looked as if she had lost energy compared to when I saw her on my last visit. But her eyes twinkled as she united with the 3.11 Portrait Project members.

Kobayashi says, this three-step process takes time, but I think this waiting time is important, since it gives them an opportunity for them to look forward to something.

Today, the project has grown to a team of 50 volunteers, and so far has visited 33 temporary houses and evacuation centers. Over 2,200 youngsters have written letters, which meant 2200 new bonds have also been created, according to Kobayashi.

After Katsuko Abe, who posed with her dog, “Kaede”, received her photograph and letter, she looked at the photograph smiling happily. Soon, she was weeping with happiness.

“In my daily life there is no chance for me to smile, I just talk with Kaede all day. However the other day, I remember that the volunteers were cheering at me, and it was truly fun.“

Abe, who had to move to six different places since the disaster, said, “This photograph means a lot to me, it proves that I am able to smile even after I had gone through the hardships.”

“I will cherish this forever,” she said as kept the framed picture inside a plastic cover.

“I want to protect this photograph from dust, it’s my treasure.”

Seaweed grower Takaaki Watanabe took to the sea in his boat before the massive tsunami roared into the northeastern Japanese town of Minamisanriku, becoming one of a lucky few to save the vessel essential for their livelihood.

But back on shore the raging waters of March 11 swept away his wife, his mother and his house, built on land in his family for 13 generations, though his three teenaged daughters managed to survive.

“At that time, I wasn’t sure whether I could actually resume the cultivation (farming seaweed, scallops and oysters). I had no way of knowing my future,” he said recently.

Now, nearly a year later, the 48-year-old Watanabe has lost 5 kg and four teeth, but is starting to see tentative signs of rebirth as the result of his hard work since the massive wave touched off by the 9.0 magnitude offshore earthquake destroyed a vast swathe of his town, one of the hardest hit.

Much of this is due to the new – and still unusual – measures he and other fishermen have taken to preserve their livelihood: banding together to work in small groups rather than alone or in family units, as was always traditional.

Fishing, a mainstay for many of the communities along the northeastern coast, was hit especially hard by the tsunami. Port facilities, fish processing plants and the frames out in bays used for raising oysters and other seafood were all destroyed.

Only 5.8 percent of fishing boats in the region survived, according to the figures of the municipal office.

Watanabe and fellow survivors from the town’s Shizugawa district worked from May to December to clear rubble from the shoreline and under the water, but even once that was done few had the financial stability to start business for themselves. All had lost the places where they worked and many had lost homes, fishing boats and family members as well.

They decided to create a guild for cooperative farming of various kinds of seafood, including seaweed, oysters and scallops. “By working together, productivity is likely to double and this allows us to cut costs as well,” Tadayoshi Sugawara, a fellow member of the guild said.

There are other benefits as well. “What’s best about this new way of working is that I get to share light moments with them,“ Watanabe said.

DAY OF DISASTER

That kind of relief is badly needed. Haunted by what happened on the day of the disaster, it took Watanabe a long time to be able to speak of it at all.

When the quake hit, he and his wife and mother were preparing to box their seaweed at their working place, situated in front of the ocean. Once the shaking subsided, his wife Yukiko said she wanted to return to their home and make sure all was safe there, while he – suspecting there might be a tsunami – decided to take his boat, worth $250,000, offshore. He fully expected to return in several hours after what he thought would be at most the kind of small, not very harmful, tsunami the region has seen in recent years.

Before he left, he told his mother to tell Yukiko that they should both evacuate to higher ground just in case. But as he waited offshore, it didn’t take long before he knew that this time was very different.

“When I started to see debris such as fishing materials, a refrigerator, a bathtub, I soon realized that scope of the tsunami had been massive,” he said.

Since it was starting to get dark, he decided to wait until the next morning before heading back to shore. He tried to call his family, but his mobile phone didn’t work, and the radio in his boat was broken. With all electricity in the town out, the only visible light was the glow from raging fires in Kesennuma, a city to the north.

“I knew that my house would be completely gone, but I just hoped that my wife and mother had evacuated and that our daughters were safe as well,” Watanabe said.

The next morning, he maneuvered through a maze of debris to reach the shore, where his home and workplace had completely vanished. He called his wife and mother’s names, but there was no reply.

Later, he would hear from neighbors that Yukiko had last been seen using a forklight to move their fishing equipment to higher ground when she was swept away by the tsunami. It took more than a month to find their bodies.

After much thought, he finally came to the conclusion to continue as a fisherman.

“I asked myself many times if I made the right decision to go offshore and save the boat. But Yukiko worked as hard as she could to save our livelihood. She was very hard-working and had a never-give-up attitude,” he said.

Among Watanabe’s new challenges was taking care of his three daughters – aged 17,14 and 11 — by himself.

Now settled in temporary housing, its walls hung with posters of teenage pop groups, Watanabe’s days are a busy rush of cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, attending school events and shuttling his daughters to a train station 20 minutes away both morning and evening. On top of that, he is working.

“I had never done house chores before, and I still haven’t gotten used to it,” he said, sitting in a room cluttered with his daughters’ clothes. “Still, maybe it’s good that I am busy all the time, because it keeps me from thinking deeply.”

The photograph, taken by Tadashi Okubo at the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, was picked up by Reuters and other agencies around the world, becoming an iconic image of the March 11 disaster that killed 20,000 people.

The woman’s name is Yuko Sugimoto. She is now 29 years old.

When the photo was taken, around 7 a.m. on March 13, she was looking in the direction of her son Raito’s kindergarten, which was partly submerged and surrounded by piles of debris. Nearly two days after the quake she had yet to find the four-year-old.

“At that point, I thought there was only about a 50 percent chance he was alive,” she recalled recently.

“Some people told me the children at the kindergarten were rescued, but others told me that somebody had seen the children all swept away by the tsunami.”

Sugimoto was born and raised in Ishinomaki, a city of 150,000 known for its port and fishing industry before the wall of water unleashed by the 9.0 magnitude offshore quake roared in. Around 3,800 people perished, the highest toll for a single city.

Delivering beverages for her business when the quake struck, she desperately tried to reach the kindergarten, but was forced to flee the tsunami, spending the night in her car.

Reunited with her husband the next day, the two began making the rounds of evacuation centers — first by car, then by bicycle as fuel ran out. Her husband found a boat and paddled his way towards the kindergarten, but found no one there.

It wasn’t until the next day that the couple heard that their son and other children had been rescued by the military from the roof of the kindergarten the morning after the tsunami.

“When I saw Raito in the corner of a room, the next moment I was weeping so hard I couldn’t see anything,” Sugimoto said.

She hugged him and checked his hands, his feet, every bit of his body. She even checked his smell, to be certain it really was him. Holding him tight, she said “Thank goodness, thank goodness,” over and over.

A YEAR LATER

Nearly a year later, Sugimoto stood in the same place, embracing her son and smiling. Behind her, the gently sloping road was clean, with cars and trucks stopped at a traffic light.

Her smile suggests that her life is back on track, but that is not true. Though the debris was cleared much more quickly than she expected, it will take some time for Sugimoto and her family to get on with their lives.

The house they built four years ago was submerged nearly to its second floor and they lost most of their belongings. What remains is a 31-year-mortgage of around 25 million yen ($310,000) they still have to pay.

They now live in a rented house, but the lease expires next year. Returning to the old house would mean razing it and rebuilding from scratch.

“I used to love the ocean, but ever since the disaster, I haven’t been to the ocean even once. I want to stay on in Ishinomaki, but far away from the ocean,” she said.

Despite the financial burdens, Sugimoto’s priorities have changed. Though she once worked even through vacations, she has now quit her job to spend more time with her family.

“Now, every single day is precious to me. I realize that time with my family is what is most important,” she said. “Our bond is even tighter now.” ($1 = 80.6850 Japanese yen)

(Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Ron Popeski)

One photo of a young woman, wrapped in a beige blanket and standing in front of a pile of debris, became one of the iconic images right after Japan’s massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake, which triggered huge tsunamis that devastated a wide swathe of northern Japan.

Reuters, along with other major agencies, picked up the photograph run by Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, shot by Tadashi Okubo, a photographer with the paper. The image was published extensively around the world, and many people came to know her as the woman wrapped in a blanket.

(Yomiuri Shimbun)

Her name is Yuko Sugimoto. She is 29 and the mother of a five-year-old boy and was born and raised in Ishinomaki, where the photograph was taken. Around 3,800 people perished in Ishinomaki alone, the highest death toll for any individual city.

When the photograph was taken at 7:00 a.m. on March 13, she was staring in the direction of her son Raito’s kindergarten, which was surrounded by piles of rubble and still partly submerged by seawater. She had been searching for him since the quake hit two days before, but in vain.

“At that point, I thought there was only about a 50 percent chance he was alive,” she recalled.“Some people told me the children at the kindergarten were rescued, but others told me somebody had seen the children swept away by the tsunami.”

Reunited with her husband the day before, they had been making the rounds of evacuation centers – first by car, but then by bicycle, as fuel ran out. Her husband found a boat and made his way towards the kindergarten, but didn’t find anybody there and returned soaking wet.

Somebody handed him a beige blanket as he tried to warm himself in front of a bonfire, the same blanket that Yuko wrapped herself in the morning the photo was taken, as she waited for others to return from searching for their children.

The next day, she and her husband heard the kindergarten children had been rescued by the Japanese military the morning after the tsunami. The head of the kindergarten had evacuated everybody up to the school roof before the tsunami struck, then spent a night up there as the teachers struggled to keep the children from being cold and afraid.

For the first blog on the “invisible snow” of Fukushima, click here.

As Japan approached the one year anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, I revisited Buddhist zen monk Koyu Abe, chief priest of Joenji temple in Fukushima. I covered him six months ago when he was planting and distributing sunflower seedlings in an effort to lighten the impact of the radiation following the nuclear disaster triggered by the earthquake, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986.

Ever since my coverage of Abe and his family, I had kept in touch with them, checking in once in a while to see how they were doing. Despite their hardships and their stoic way of devoting themselves to the community, they were light hearted. One night, Abe called my cell phone in excitement because they had seen me on television when I was covering the world gymnastics championship.

Thanks to this sort of relationship, I was able to be a part of his daily life while covering his latest efforts to counter the radiation amid his normal duties as a monk and as the father of three boys.

When I arrived at the temple in the first week of February, it had a different look. Last time, the grounds were filled with flower seedlings and sunflowers bloomed as cicadas buzzed. But this time, the temple was quiet and colorless under a blanket of snow — with radiation storage tanks piled next to the entrance.

Last year, Abe had described the radiation as “invisible snow.” Now, the invisible snow was covered with visible snow.

“Real snow is cold but it is much better than the invisible snow. The visible snow will eventually melt away.”

In his latest attempts to cleanse the radiation “hot spots” across the region, Abe and his volunteers were removing the snow, digging out the soil, and spraying special detergent solutions with high-pressure sprays to bind with radioactive particles that effectively remove the radiation. At the end of the process, they then store the radioactive contaminants on a part of his temple grounds, located in an area where no one is residing.

Since the government hasn’t been able to decide on a temporary repository for the radioactive waste, he has continued to offer part of his temple grounds until the government comes up with an official solution.

As a photographer, many times I confront the dilemma of whether I should put down my camera once in a while to offer help to those in the photographs. Many times, that is worth it and necessary when I am the only one who can help. But in this case I didn’t have to feel any guilt since Abe would not allow any woman in her 30’s to take part, because there was no way to rule out the possibilities of risk if one has a baby in the future. Therefore it was clear-cut and I could focus on photographing, with a mask on.

On the second day of the two-day volunteer work, Abe and his volunteers worked on cleansing an elementary school, which happened to be where his youngest son Yushin, was enrolled in the 3rd grade. Some 30 students out of 450 had left the school and this included Yushin’s best friend.

Despite the fact that there had already been an official cleaning by the government last year, new hot spots had appeared which measured over six microsieverts and Abe used a high-pressure spray to remove the radiated particles attached mainly in the gutters.

Taking in to consideration that children are more vulnerable to radiation, Yushin has not been playing outside after school, his mother Michiko said. This has been the case with other children in their neighborhood as well.

However, as I shot Yushin playing Nintendo Wii’s virtual bowling game inside, I noticed how he has grown taller and was more confident and willing to smile at me. His mother said he doesn’t cry anymore when there are earthquakes, nor is he frightened by rain or thunder.

Yushin’s vitality underscored the monk’s message that “it is hardship that makes us strong and offers us a chance to be grateful for what we already have.”

Near the temple grounds, bright green seedlings of field mustard, which is also believed to absorb the radiation just like sunflowers, was already growing under the blanket of snow, waiting to sprout in spring as if hoping to offer smiles to the people of Fukushima.

But away from the ceremonial drums and the incense swirling around the Joenji temple altar, Abe has undertaken another task, no less harrowing — to search out radioactive “hot spots” and clean them up, storing irradiated earth on temple grounds.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, some 50 km (31 miles) away, suffered a series of explosions and meltdowns after the massive earthquake and tsunami last March 11, setting off the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986 and forcing 80,000 people from their homes.

Radiation, carried on winds and by snow, spread far beyond the 20 km (12 miles) evacuation zone around the plant, nestling in hot spots across the region and contaminating the ground in what remains a largely agricultural region.

Many of those who fled have no idea when, if ever, they can return to land held by their families for generations.

“The damage here in Fukushima is different from the destruction caused by the tsunami,” Abe said.

“You can’t see it. Nothing looks as if it’s changed, but really, radiation is floating through the area. It’s hard for those hit by the tsunami, but it’s hard to live here too.”

Last summer, Abe grew and distributed sunflowers and other plants, such as field mustard and amaranthus, in an effort to lighten the impact of the radiation and cheer local residents.

CHANGE OF FAITH

Now he is trading his ceremonial robes for a protective mask, working with volunteers to track down lingering pockets of radiation and cleaning them up.

One participant is Masataka Aoki, a 65-year-old engineer at nuclear plant maker Hitachi for more than 40 years. None of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors were made by Hitachi.

Aoki had long been a believer in nuclear power, but he had a change of faith after the meltdowns and now seeks to assuage a sense of guilt.

“The thing I’d come to believe was good and useful to society turned out to be useless and caused everybody trouble,” Aoki said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse.”

On a recent weekend volunteers including Aoki looked for radioactive hot spots along a small path which local parents said was mostly used by children on their way to school.

Tests with hand-held Geiger counters yielded results of more than 9 microsieverts per hour, higher than in some areas of the evacuation zone near the plant itself.

Figures from government testing stations within the exclusion zone the same day read between 3.6 microsieverts and 13 microsieverts an hour. A typical chest x-ray is about 20 microsieverts a scan.

Volunteers dig up the earth in any hot spots they find and load the soil into trucks. The surrounding area is then washed down with high-powered hoses.

Abe said he and the other monks are storing the soil on a hill behind the temple as neither the government nor the nuclear plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) are helping with the clean-up.

“No-one else would take the soil. If there’s nobody to take care of it, the decontamination can’t get going because there’s nowhere to get rid of it,” Abe said.

Volunteers have gathered some 400 kg (800 pounds) of radioactive waste.

But it is likely to take years to remove all of the “invisible snow,” as Abe describes the radiation — if that is even possible.

“Real snow is cold but it is much better than the invisible snow. The visible snow will eventually melt away,” he said.

(Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Michael Perry)

Invisible Snow from Reuters Tokyo Pictures on Vimeo.

When the Fukushima nuclear power plant exploded, I was in Fukushima covering people who had evacuated from their houses near the plant, as they underwent radiation checks as authorities isolated those who had showed signs of exposure.

The disaster control center in the prefectural government hall in Fukushima city, situated about 63 km (39 miles) north-west of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, was chaotic. However, once I stepped out the building, everything around me looked the same in the city and it was difficult to comprehend what was actually happening. People in the city were walking their dogs outside and riding their bicycles on the streets, although lights were out and many places were experiencing cuts in water supplies.

Soon after, I received an evacuation order from my bosses and since then, my coverage was carried out from outside of Fukushima city and I didn’t have a chance to go back there until recently. Even five months after the disaster, it seemed like fresh and shocking news of radiation had been floating up incessantly. Not just reading or hearing about the situation but imagining the amount of pain and stress the people in Fukushima were going through had made me feel depressed.

When I found about a Buddhist zen monk Koyu Abe, who aimed to revive Fukushima by planting sunflowers, amaranthus, field mustard and cockscomb, which are believed to absorb cesium, it occurred to me that I should go and cover his story. Before I even realized, I picked up the phone and shortly afterward I was on a bullet train heading for Fukushima.

When the fully packed train stopped at Fukushima station, I got off and realized not many people got off with me. However, everything looked strangely normal as the cicadas were buzzing lively under the sun. Just like a normal hot summer day. As I looked outside the window of a taxi on my way to the temple, the rice paddies glistened like a sea of green waves and the flowers planted alongside the road seemed heavenly. I still could not comprehend that many places were tainted with radiation.

My dosimeter showed around 1.3-1.5 microsiverts per hour, which is about 6.5 times natural background radiation levels. Soon after I arrived at the temple, with a history of 420 years, the monk and his wife greeted me and served me green tea. Soon afterward, he told me to come with him to a different part of the temple.

The monk showed me a pile of cedars and pine leaves in the corner of the temple grounds, which he said had originally been scattered in the temple garden. He had two dosimeters covered in plastic bags to avoid the radiation particles from getting attached, and placed them near the pile. Suddenly they started beeping. The reading quickly jumped to over 20 microsieverts/hour. I tried with mine as well, and it did the same.

I was shocked to experience high radiation and realized the graveness of the situation faced by people living in Fukushima. The radiation was not visible, but it was clearly there.

Abe described the radiation particles as an “invisible snow”, “A snow you can’t see has covered the area, and has brought a long, long winter to Fukushima,” he said. Abe’s organization called, “Make a wish upon flowers,” aimed to reduce the volume of radiation in Fukushima by using certain plants’ natural ability to reduce toxic materials in the ground. With his volunteer group, comprised of about 100 members, he planted sunflowers where radiation levels were high. Abe hoped to lower the level of radiation and through that ease stress and anxiety experienced by the residents. He also strongly believed that his actions will tackle the prevalent sense of stagnation and help cultivate a sense of hope.

The monk is also a father of three boys, each in high school, junior high and elementary school. Two of the boys have already decided to become monks and the youngest will likely follow suit in the near future. Abe said, ”I worry that I have to bring up my children in this sort of environment… but if he also decides to take this path, even though he is a child, he should stay in this neighborhood and listen to the people’s anguish, rooting himself in the community. “ “But I leave the final decision to him”, he added.

His wife, Michiko, 42, told me that she was indeed worried about her children, but at the same time, after all, this was their home. That is why she decided to cope with the situation in the long term and protect her family as best as she could by herself. She said their 8-year old son was very anxious for a few months following the disaster, but finally seems like he is starting to find his ways to deal with his stress. She recalls that he would cry when he heard noise of a strong wind and rain. One day he came back from school crying after he got soaked wet in the rain. The son shouted at her, ”why didn’t you pick me up from school?!” as balls of tears rolled down his cheeks. He told her that his friend had told him that he would die if he gets wet in radiated rain.

I asked the boy directly about his concerns about radiation. “I am scared,” said the boy. “But I try not to think about it, since it keeps me from doing anything else.” Even a small child was trying to find ways to cope with his fear and adapt to the new environment. But I saw a glimpse of bright future in his eyes when he told me “I hope to become like my father when I grow up. I admire him because he gives energy to the people of Fukushima.”

What moved me most was to see the residents not give up their hopes and strive to overcome their predicament. The three days that I spent with the monk’s family were very moving. They were like a blessing to me. The monk also had his motives to tell me his story. He looked into my eyes and said: “Media outlets have the obligation to reveal and bring everything into the light, so that the people can make their decisions.” By making everything clear, the media can help stop the spread of bad rumors and lower the anxiety while speeding up the recovery process, he said.

As I took the train back from Fukushima to Tokyo, I thought about his family and especially about the boy. How old will he be by the time the “invisible snow” in Fukushima melts and disappears? I imagined him become like his father, smiling in the middle of a sunflower field, free from the fear of radiation.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant some 50 km away suffered a series of core meltdowns and explosions after the massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, setting off the world’s worst nuclear accident in 25 years and forcing tens of thousands from their homes.

“It is as if an invisible snow had fallen on Fukushima and continued to fall, covering the area,” said Koyu Abe, chief monk at the Buddhist Joenji temple.

“This snow, which doesn’t melt, brought a long, long winter to Fukushima.”

Some 80,000 people were forced to evacuate from a vast swathe of land around the reactor as engineers battled radiation leaks, hydrogen explosions and overheating fuel rods — and have no idea when, if ever, they can return to homes that have been in their families for generations.

Worse still, radiation spread well outside the mandatory evacuation zone, nestling in “hot spots” and contaminating the ground in what remains a largely agricultural region.

Rice, still a significant staple, has not been planted in many areas. Others face stringent tests and potentially harmful shipping bans after radioactive cesium was found in rice straw.

Excessive radiation levels have also been found in beef, vegetables, milk, seafood and water and, in hot spots more than 100 km from the plant, tea.

In an effort to lift the spirits of area residents as well as lighten the impact of the radiation, Abe began growing and distributing sunflowers and other plants.

“We plant sunflowers, field mustard, amaranthus and cockscomb, which are all believed to absorb radiation,” said the monk.

“So far we have grown at least 200,000 flowers (at this temple) and distributed many more seeds. At least 8 million sunflowers blooming in Fukushima originated from here.”

Some of the 100 volunteers helping him with his project bustled around lighting candles in preparation for Obon, a festival honoring the spirits of the dead.

Later, Buddhist chants echoed the buzz of cicadas from nearby trees as Abe burned paper inscribed with the names of the dead, a ritual in which their spirits are symbolically “reunited” with their neighborhood, and encouraged temple visitors to take home flowers and seeds of their own.

Sunflowers were used near Chernobyl after the 1986 nuclear accident there to extract radioactive cesium from contaminated ponds nearby. Japanese scientists are also carrying out tests to prove their usefulness in fighting radiation.

HOPE FROM STAGNATION

But Abe decided not to wait for the results of the tests, believing that by taking action his team could help battered local towns shake off a sense of stagnation and give them hope.

His plan seems to be working.

“We’ve been so busy with hundreds of locals coming to collect the flowers. It helps me forget about radiation too,” said Tomoe, a 38-year-old volunteer who declined to give her last name.

Cheerful fields of sunflowers in unusual locations, such as unused paddy fields, can now be seen across the area, tucked between deep green hills and lush forests.

“I planted the sunflowers from the temple alongside other vegetables, hoping they would suck up radiation,” said Mura Akiba, a local villager weeding her garden.

A dosimeter placed next to her registered radiation levels of more than 5 microsieverts per hour, far exceeding government safety levels. Her house is located near a radioactive hot spot.

“I’m so ashamed to go to a shop to buy fruit and vegetables — I have never done this before in my life,” she added.

“But now I just stare at my blueberries and blackberries as they grow in my garden, thinking I won’t be able to eat them this year.”

As more people came to collect flowers at the temple, they confided to Abe their worries about radioactive contamination of the soil in their gardens. With the government still far from a decision on how to handle such soil, Abe decided to take it himself, storing it on the vast temple grounds.

“We accept up to 3 bags of up to 30 kg per bag per household. Right now we have received over 200 bags,” he said.

“To overcome this disaster, we should accept that it has already happened and face the reality. Then we should pursue what we can do at this very moment, what impact can we make and how each and one of us can diligently work to improve the situation.”

(Editing by Elaine Lies)

Starting with shocking scenes of people who were actually contaminated with radiation being cleansed and scenes of people being isolated into a building.

I covered many people who had possibly been exposed after their evacuation from areas near the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Imagining what it would be like to be in their shoes it was difficult to ask for permission but surprisingly, almost all the people allowed me to take pictures as a Geiger counter ticked beside them.

However, being friendly to the media didn’t mean that they were not worried.

I clearly remember one girl in her early 20s collapsing into tears after finding out that she was clear of radiation. As tears rolled down her cheeks, she slowly told me that the moment when there was an explosion at the nuclear plant, she was playing with children at a nursery school in Iitate town (about 40 km from the nuclear plant) and that she had been extremely worried that the children might have been exposed to radiation. But after finally discovering that she was safe, it meant that the children were safe as well and as a result her selfless fear burst into tears.

Compared to covering the radiation checks on concerned evacuees, the recent radiation related assignments have been much easier on me mentally. This is because the checks were conducted on inanimate objects to quell radiation fears for customers. So far, I have photographed radiation checks on vehicles, cargo containers (both to be exported) and most recently domestic beef.

After reports of more than 1,000 beef cattle that ate feed contaminated with radioactive cesium being shipped all over Japan from Fukushima and other prefectures, concerns regarding beef were added to the already long list of Japan’s anxiety over food safety following cases of contaminated vegetables, tea, milk, seafood and water due to radiation leaks at the tsunami-hit nuclear plant in Fukushima, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

I covered radiation checks on domestic beef at a restaurant operator’s central research center, and requested permission to shoot consumers who would be eating the beef.

Amid the beef scare on top of an already chilled economy after the March 11 disasters, the PR person didn’t expect that we would find any customers after lunch time, but luckily there was a couple of groups enjoying a late meal. I started chatting with a mother and her 23-year-old daughter eating barbecue to celebrate the daughter receiving a job offer as a nurse.

They allowed me to take pictures of them eating imported meat along with domestic meat which had gone through radiation checks at the company’s central research center. I asked them whether they had any anxiety about the general situation of possible radiation contamination of beef. The answer I got from the daughter was quite surprising.

“I love meat so much that I think I would keep on eating even though there are worries about radiation.”
Her mother continued, “Eating delicious meat and feeling happiness is much better than worrying about radiation all the time. On top of the delicious taste, if the meat is completely radiation free, what more can you ask for?”

Their comments may not be in the majority, but the big contented smile on the daughter’s face as she ate radiation-free meat was hard to miss, since it seemed to symbolize what Japan needs to beef up its damaged economy.

When I was first told that I would be covering the Australian Open tennis tournament, I was very excited as it is a major global sporting event and I would get to fly out from Japan where it was cold, to a hot and sunny down under.

At the same time, frankly speaking, I had a feeling of fear and worry, since I had heard scary tales about shooting the event from a photographer who had covered it multiple times. Dreadful stories of heat, the scorching sun, cameras getting too hot to function and sometimes so hot that I wouldn’t even be able to touch it. I was told that one photographer’s computer had broken because of the extreme heat, and that sometimes the photographers’ chairs at the courtside got so hot that it was unbearable.

Another worrisome issue was the physical intensity of the coverage, especially the first few days, as I was told I’d be busy as there are nearly 130 preliminary matches in total. It would be so demanding with no time to rest and eat. When I heard about this, I wasn’t sure whether I could survive what sounded like a major ordeal. So the advice was to never wear short sleeves but instead, wear a white long-sleeved shirt, a hat, put on sun block, drink water constantly, cover up the gear with towels to block the heat and don’t over pace. Everything is a build up to the Men’s final, the finale of the two-week-long tournament.

After arriving in Melbourne’s Rod Laver arena I met my team which consisted of an editor, a processor and six photographers, including myself. Working as part of a team was an extremely valuable chance to learn from them and get feedback and tips from the more experienced tennis shooters. At the beginning, I tended to think the key picture was the classic shot of the player with the tennis ball smacked right on the racket. Soon, I learned that tennis pictures are not just about the player in action, but the reaction and the moments between the action, capturing the beauty of the body motion, the scenery in which the match was fought out in, the reactions of the coach, team members and the fans. Every one of these pictures is as important as each other, creating depth to the story.

There were also pleasant surprises to find out that the strong sunlight was not just literally a pain-in the butt, but you can use it to your advantage when shooting tennis pictures. A good example is this picture of David Ferrer of Spain serving in shadow that was taken from the roof at Hisense court. It was shot with a Canon 70-200 mm, at 1/3200, F2.8, ISO100. I needed to take extra care so that the subject would not be over exposed. The “magical moment” only lasted about half an hour past 5 o’clock in which the setting sun lit the players against a backdrop of the dark shadows which moved across the court gradually from right to left.

Regarding the physically intense elements where I would carry a laptop, a 400mm lens, 300mm, 70-200mm, 24mm-70mm, 16-35mm along with two camera bodies and sometimes three, and a bottle of water, was solved by stretching my tense muscles every morning and night for nearly an hour in total even though I was about to collapse in to bed. Also eating a big breakfast every morning, sometimes more than what the fellow male photographers ate, helped me through the day since there were times we were so busy that we could not eat lunch or dinner.

By the time I felt I had just started to get the hang of it, the tournament had seemed to whisk through to the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and final and finally it had ended.

I will surely miss the sound of smashing balls, roaring crowds, sweat and pain, and the tense feeling when the umpire says, “advantage” right before the player’s junction between victory and defeat. With the same feeling as if I am actually the tennis player, all ready to hit the shutter button to catch the moment.