Japanese Pop Singer AK is Saving Japan with Your Love

Japanease Pop Star AK

Akemi Kakihara is a Japanese pop star who has released 14 albums with EMI Music Japan, one of Japan’s major record labels. Her latest album, Say That You Love Me, came out in August 2010, and her two most recent US singles appear on compilation albums.

But she’d rather talk about the children.

The children are preschoolers in Miyagi and Fukushima, where AK (as she prefers to be called) visited six months after a massive earthquake triggered a tsunami in Northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. When she arrived at the school in Soma, a small town near the coast of Fukushima approximately 30 miles north of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant, she was shocked by what she saw.

“Six months later all of the coastline is completely covered by debris piled ten meters (32 feet) high,” AK says, comparing the scene to the animated movie Wall-E, in which a robot works in a junkyard. “[The children] can see that debris every day . . . I just couldn’t believe it. When the kids go outside every day, they can see that view.”

She was even more surprised when she entered the school. She found a room filled with happy, smiling children, grateful to hear her sing. These children were four and five years old and had survived the worst natural disaster to strike Japan in 140 years. They were living in shelters. Some had lost one or both of their parents to the disaster. Yet they couldn’t have been more attentive or appreciative.

Of the experience, AK says, “It completely changed my life.”

On March 11, 2011, AK was in New York City, where she has called home since 2001, watching in horror as the black waves crashed over the floodwalls and raced inland, eating the shoreline and destroying buildings, cars, and lives. As a native Japanese, AK was heartsick over what was happening to her homeland; as a native of Hiroshima, she felt an even greater connection to Fukushima, where the nuclear power plant had been compromised, triggering a nuclear crisis.

Feeling the need to help, AK immediately rallied her circle of friends – around 15 close-knit Japanese women living in New York – to form the Facebook group JP Girls NYC Save Japan with Your Love.

“I couldn’t stand just sitting around and watching TV; I was so devastated,” AK says. “So I called one of my closest friends, and I said, ‘I want to do a fundraiser tomorrow. Will you join me?’”

They started in Times Square and moved to Grand Central. Then AK and the JP Girls learned about New York’s permit requirements.

“We didn’t [get a permit]. It’s impossible, by the way,” AK says, laughing.

Through the initial help of the Lion’s Club, the JP Girls were able to secure the permits necessary to hold several events and raise money, which they donated to the Lion’s Club, the Red Cross, and Japanese organizations such as Ubdobe, Megumi-Japan, Miyagi Kodomo Network, and Kodomo Fukushima.

Organizing these fundraisers was satisfying for AK, partly because she didn’t expect the overwhelming support from New Yorkers (“I realize that they love Japan,” AK says, “and I’m very happy to know that.”). But she wanted to do more. She decided that she needed to go to Northeastern Japan because she wanted to assess the damage with her own eyes. Watching the stories on the news wasn’t enough; she wanted more detailed reports.

She also wanted to hear directly from the people who had been affected. She wanted to hear the voices of the survivors. (She had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Takeshi Kanno, who saved the lives of dozens of patients at his hospital in Minami Sanriku by taking them to the highest floor as the tsunami reached land. For his heroic efforts, TIME Magazine named him one of the top 100 most influential people in the world.)

AK realized that she could also help people during her two-week stay in Miyagi and Fukushima. “As a singer,” she explains, “I could do concerts for the kids.”

And that’s how she met the preschoolers in Soma.

AK with children from Fukushima

“I don’t know how much they really understand the whole situation around them, but they are not [giving up]. They want to live . . . They are amazingly powerful and active, and they are the energy for hope.”

After the concerts each of the children presented AK with drawings they made themselves as way to thank her for her visit. There were 93 drawings, and all of them had smiling faces.

Touched by this gesture, AK made copies of the drawings and used them to create holiday wrapping paper, which she sold at Kinokuniya, Scribble Press, Kiteya SoHo, Taro’s Origami Studio in Park Slope. Her purpose in selling the wrapping paper was to start conversations about Fukushima and to raise awareness about children living close to a nuclear power plant, whether in Japan or other areas around the world.

As a way to thank the children from the preschool in Soma, AK took the 93 drawings to Times Square and asked random strangers to pose with them. AK took a picture of each person and sent the photos to the preschoolers as Christmas presents.

At the Japanese American Association and the United Nations International School, she presented “Voices of Tohoku,” an exhibition of the drawings and a slideshow of her experience. “I felt a mission,” she says. “I had to spread the word” about the children of Fukushima.

In addition to her work as a singer, AK continues to focus on the children of Northeastern Japan by thinking of creative ways to use the drawings and by participating in events around New York, including Japan Society’s Open House on March 11 of this year, where she’ll display twenty or thirty of the drawings, perform with children, and participate in HappyDoll’s doll-making session. She’s working on collaborations with other local organizations to commemorate the one-year anniversary of 3/11.

She’s also planning another trip to Northeastern Japan in April, visiting more schools and performing more concerts.

With all of the support that AK is giving to Japan, she maintains that she is the one who truly benefits from this outreach. As devastating as the events of 3/11 were – and continue to be – AK says it brought the Japanese community in New York together.

And, of course, connecting with the preschoolers in Tohoku has given her a sense of purpose.

“I just couldn’t believe the kids were so cheerful,” AK says of her visit last summer. “They’ve given me more than I could ever give them.”

On Facebook:
JP Girls NYC Save Japan with Your Love

• AK’s official website:
  www.emimusic.jp/ak/

• To purchase & download AK’s music:
  On iTunes
  On Beatport.com
  On Amazon.com[/callout]

Fukushima City: Six Months Later

In September I had the opportunity to visit Fukushima City, Japan, as a guest of Takayuki Takahashi, Vice President of Fukushima University. I first met Professor Takahashi in June, when he and his team of researchers attended a medical trade show in New York City. Almost as much as he wanted to promote the school’s medical invention, he wanted to promote the resilience of Fukushima residents after the horrific earthquake and tsunami of March 11 set off a nuclear crisis. When I contacted the professor in August to let him know I was going to Japan, he asked me if I would consider spending a day in Fukushima to see the “normal daily life.” This piece is a summary of my ten hours in an area that is anything but normal.

On a warm and humid Friday afternoon in mid-September, I boarded the Tohoku Shinkansen (bullet train) in Tokyo and traveled 148 miles to Fukushima City. When Professor Takayuki Takahashi and two colleagues met me at the train station, he told me the itinerary for the day. Throughout the day I would observe normal life in Fukushima, visit a junior high school and a kindergarten affiliated with Fukushima University, and find myself in the middle of a government-declared nuclear “red zone.”

Then Professor Takahashi pulled a sievert meter from a Godiva chocolate shopping bag. Looking as if it belonged in a Sci-fi movie, this device measures microsieverts (µSv), the units of radiation absorbed by the body. I would soon learn that carefully monitoring radiation levels has become the new normal in communities surrounding the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Professor Takahashi is not a nuclear specialist, but rather he’s a member of Fukushima University’s faculty of Symbiotic Systems Science, where he specializes in the field of robotics. I’m not a scientist, but I wrote a story about the robotic medical invention the professor and his team presented at the Medical Design and Manufacturing East Exposition (MD&M East) at the Javits Center. When Takahashi was in New York, he wanted to show that, three months after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a massive tsunami and unleashed a nuclear crisis in Japan, the area – and even the nation – was moving toward recovery.

Almost six months after March 11, Professor Takahashi is still conveying that message.

I was in Japan to cover and participate in the JapanBall tour, attending five professional baseball games in five different cities. I routinely e-mail friends and colleagues before a visit to Japan, and since I was impressed by Professor Takahashi during our initial meeting, I decided to reach out to him.

“How about visiting Fukushima and feeling the real situation of us?” Professor Takahashi asked in an e-mail to me when I told him I would be in Japan. “ . . . Once you get off the train and exit the station, you will see our quite normal daily life.”

A few of my Japanese friends who live in America had advice ranging from “Don’t go” to “Go, but don’t eat anything” in response Professor Takahashi’s invitation. Considering the offer a special opportunity to see first-hand how things have (or haven’t) changed in the beleaguered prefecture, I accepted with curiosity, enthusiasm, and mild trepidation.

“You can’t really say you have a ‘normal daily life’ when you check radiation levels every day,” I said to Professor Takahashi, gesturing toward the radiation-measuring apparatus.

But in a way he was right; at first glance, things did seem normal in Fukushima City. People were out and about, going to work, riding bicycles, shopping for groceries. I saw no signs of damage from the March 11 earthquake. The train station was pristine, the roads were clear, and the buildings – save for really old ones that bore cracks – looked stable. But Professor Takahashi reminded me, “We didn’t get earthquake damage, just the problem with radiation.”

Oh yes, radiation. It can’t be seen or felt or tasted. But it can be measured, and the professor checked the readings on his sievert meter throughout the day like a businessman checking his smart phone. “Radiation occurs naturally,” Professor Takahashi explains, “and a normal reading is 0.05 µSv.” That day’s reading at the Fukushima City train station: 0.07 µSv.

The first stop on my tour of Fukushima was a junior high school. We were shown around by Eiichi Saito, principal of the junior high school, and Kyoko Hamajima, the director of the adjacent kindergarten. It seemed as if the students had settled into a normal routine of attending classes. Student teachers were being graded on how they conducted their lessons. Shoes occupied their usual spots in cubbyholes placed throughout the buildings. Bulletin boards sprang to life with colorful messages about upcoming activities.

Despite appearances, something extraordinary happened here, and things are not completely normal. Of the 480 students enrolled at the school, eleven withdrew because their families relocated to different cities due to radiation concerns. When cesium-137 was detected in the top five centimeters of soil on school grounds, officials buried the contaminated soil five feet underground.

Cesium-137, a product of the fission of uranium and plutonium, was released into the atmosphere during the accident at Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant on March 11. Particles from the fallout settled in Fukushima City, 50 miles away.

Principal Saito gave us a tour of the grounds and showed us the fenced-in square of land containing the buried soil. During the decontamination process, the affected soil was covered in mid-May with dirt brought in from Shiroishi, a town in Miyagi Prefecture 20 miles to the north, Saito says. Elsewhere at the school, a swimming pool – filled with water – sits unused. The swim team’s training was suspended due to safety concerns from parents.

Eiichi Saito (left) and Takayuki Takahashi on the grounds of a junior high school in Fukushima City

Unlike in the United States, the Japanese school year begins in early April. The Japanese government deemed Fukushima City safe enough for area schools to open on April 8, five days later than schedule and less than one month after the disaster.

When asked if she felt safe with the government’s decision to open the school in April, Hamajima hesitated, saying it was “a difficult question” to answer. “Of course, I agree with the government’s ruling that the school was safe enough to open,” she continues, but in the back of her mind, “I felt concern for the young children.”

It is important to Hamajima to have a consensus among the parents of her kindergarten students where safety issues are concerned. Since the onset of the nuclear crisis, the kindergartners have played in the gymnasium rather than outside. Months later, when Hamajima proposed that it was safe for the children to play outdoors, all but five parents agreed. Since there was no consensus, the children continue to spend recess indoors.

The radiation levels outside the kindergarten that day: 0.20 µSv. (The reading at the train station where I arrived a few miles away was 0.07 µSv.)

Professor Takahashi is an intelligent man whose face shows no signs of stress despite the hardships that have befallen his country. When discussing the nuclear crisis and radiation levels in Fukushima Prefecture, he speaks matter-of-factly and explains the science in layman’s terms. Armed with Fukushima University’s state-of-the-art sievert meter and a scientific background, he admits he has a base knowledge of radiation, which helps him understand the nuclear situation better than the average citizen.

Although he feels that the government’s information about the goings on at the disabled nuclear power plant is enough for him to digest, he acknowledges that it may not be the case for the rest of the general population.

“For me, the information is enough,” says Professor Takahashi, “because I have some basic knowledge about radiation . . . I can understand the explanation of the government. To get the meaning of the explanation, it is important to have some basic knowledge of radiation. For example, the unit of the sievert. So almost all of the people [in Japan] are confused about the new terms. But now, many TV programs and lectures are [being] made so that the knowledge of the people is [increasing].”

Before the disaster, Fukushima City was home to roughly 300,000 people. It is estimated that as many as 12 thousand residents moved to other parts of Japan as a result of the nuclear crisis.

“In Japan, we have almost no education program about radiation,” says Professor Takahashi, speaking of the opening of nuclear power plants in the country in the early ‘60s. “So, the government announced the nuclear power plants are quite safe. If they make such kind of an education program, people would worry about some kind of accident. But the government had no education program about the radiation . . . now there is a problem of panic because the people don’t have enough background information or science background of the radiation.”

Despite a lack of knowledge and a perceived panic, people continue to reside in Fukushima City, which is 50 miles from the nuclear disaster, barely outside of the government’s mandatory evacuation zone.

After leaving the school, we inched closer to that zone, to the village of Iitate. Just 25 miles from the hobbled nuclear power plant, Iitate is a small town that’s technically outside of the exclusion zone. However, due to high radiation readings, residents were asked to evacuate in late April. About half of the population of 6,200 did so.

Fukushima Prefecture is an agricultural area known for rice production. It is also one of Japan’s top producers of fruit (peaches, apples, pears), tomatoes, and cucumbers. Iitate is a village of farmland, and I noticed lush green fields – crops that are not safe to eat – as I stared out of the window of the car. I also noticed overgrown crops, a grim reminder of the farmers’ evacuation.

As we approached the town limits, the radiation levels rose from 0.7 µSv to 1.21 µSv, about the same amount of radiation you would receive if you had an arm X-ray.

When we arrived at the Iitate village hall, the radiation levels in the parking lot read above 4.00 µSv, slightly lower than a dental X-ray (5.00 µSv). Inside the government building, however, the level dropped below 1 µSv.

Tomeji Honda of the local Iitate government informed us that soil decontamination was taking place on that day, and we were allowed to observe.

Decontamination process in Iitate

We met Ichiro Taniyama, the director of the Natural Resources Inventory Center at the National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, in an open field as he and his team decontaminated a small patch of soil. We weren’t the only ones interested in watching; NHK sent a two-man crew to videotape the process.

The radiation level at the field: 6.00 µSv, the highest of the day.

As the late-morning sun beat down, men in coveralls, rubber boots, masks, and gloves were busy testing the pH balance of the soil that they were siphoning from land 100 feet away. A system of hoses brought the soil to a vat where the cesium was removed. The remaining soil was then mixed with water and returned to the land.

“So what happens to the cesium once it’s extracted from the soil?” I ask Taniyama. There is an awkward pause before Professor Takahashi answers for him. “That’s another problem,” says Takahashi, “That’s one of the things he’s trying to solve.”

“Right now we have it in that container,” says Taniyama, pointing to a round concrete vat. The vat was sitting against the edge of the road, covered only by a blue tarp.

Testing soil in Iitate

Lunchtime. A moment I’d been dreading. Professor Takahashi was enthusiastic about introducing me to the regional dishes of the prefecture. I was less than enthusiastic about the possibility of consuming irradiated food.

“When I say ‘regional dishes,’ I mean the way the food is prepared,” says Professor Takahashi, trying to calm my fears. “The regional dishes do not mean using only local food, but we use food from many prefectures and countries to make them. They are tested for radiation every day.”

As the car descended the hills toward Fukushima City, so did the reading on Professor Takahashi’s sievert meter. As the level dropped from 6 µSv in Iitate to the less stressful reading of 1 µSv, I began to feel more comfortable in my surroundings. And hungry.

We arrived at a beautiful traditional Japanese restaurant, where we met two more of Professor Takahashi’s colleagues and sat in a tatami mat room to enjoy a multi-course meal. It was exquisitely prepared and presented in the aesthetically pleasing way that the Japanese do best. As I sampled the bounty of delicious cuisine from Aizu in western Fukushima Prefecture, I took into account that my hosts eat in Fukushima every day. I let go of my initial fears of eating contaminated food and I savored the meal, thankful for the opportunity to share it with these people.

I ended my day in Fukushima City where it began: At the train station. Masako Tai, a secretary in the office of Professor Takahashi’s department who was kind enough to drive us to all of our appointments, kept me company until it was time to board.

Once on the train to Tokyo, my mind was racing from the events of the day. I’d learned many things about and come close – perhaps too close – to an area that is in the midst of a nuclear calamity. Japan is no stranger to recovering from nuclear disaster, having suffered the dropping of two atomic bombs during World War II. As a demonstration of their resolve, the Japanese typically respond to such crises by picking up the pieces and living life. The people of Fukushima are doing just that.

But the current situation is as unique as it is familiar. The people of Fukushima – and all of Japan, for that matter – will be recovering from this three-pronged challenge of earthquake/tsunami/nuclear dilemma for decades to come.

As the bullet train sped away from the hard-hit region, I thought of Professor Takahashi’s neutral statements that neither criticized nor praised the Japanese government’s handling of the country’s nuclear crisis. I thought of the drained look on Ichiro Taniyama’s face in his attempt to decontaminate northeastern Japan a few acres at a time.

One comment in particular resonated with me. When I told Masako Tai that Professor Takahashi’s intention was to show me Fukushima City’s “normal daily life,” she scoffed, “Normal? I wouldn’t call it normal. I’d say we have an ordinary life.”

An ordinary life led under extraordinary circumstances.