Who Takes Part in Anti-Nuclear Actions? a Case Study of the Organizations of Evacuated People from Fukushima Plant Area and Their Attitudes Concerning Nuclear Energy

It is often assumed that the people of Fukushima, especially those who lived near the nuclear plants, are increasingly aware of the impracticality of Japan’s nuclear energy policy as they have been replaced from the 20km or larger evacuation zones.

In this paper, the author asks whether the assumption is valid in any case, and if it isn’t, what are the reasons for the cases that goes against the assumptions. The author will examine some of the responses of the recently formed organizations based on the areas bordering the Fukushima prefecture and other prefectures in the more distance.

First it is shown that, as long as each organization represents the people who lived in the same municipality before the devastating event of March 2011, the extremes of both now passionate “anti-” or “pro-” opinions concerning the nuclear energy policy have been embraced by some of these organizations.

Second, it is demonstrated why these people have taken either “pro-” or “anti-” stances in the process of the disaster followed by the nuclear accident, and the author points out that these attitudes are affected not only by their experiences after the beginning of the disaster, but also by their life-styles before the disaster and their memories of these life-styles.

Third, the question of whether these organizations have simply endorsed or excluded some of these “anti-” attitudes or the “pro-” attitudes is discussed; rather, here we see the unexpected effect of the “anti-nuclear” discourse on the formation of these very people’s doubts about the discourse; but even this adverse effect has not resulted in showing anti- “anti-nuclear” discourse.

Hence scholars may expect that time would ease the unfortunate misunderstanding about the anti-nuclear opinions; however, this could take a generation, which may be too long a time for some witnesses.