In late March 2013, the town of Tomioka, situated just five kilometers from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, was opened to the public for the first time since Japan's east coast was shattered by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
In the early months of the town's rehabilitation efforts two years ago, those who once called Tomioka home were forbidden from staying there overnight. Traffic thinned to a trickle as you approached, and government workers wearing white sanitation masks waved cars through at the edge of town. The streets and buildings were deserted, a desolation that was made still more disconcerting by the hush that draped the town like a pall.
There was only the chitchat of a cleanup crew eating lunch by the side of the road; an abrupt announcement over invisible loudspeakers instructing any visitors to leave by three o'clock; the quiet pop of gravel as our car slowly rolled down the abandoned streets; the call of a crow and the heavy flap of its wings. This was Tomioka:
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Bags of irradiated top soil.
(All photos by Ryu Spaeth)
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
