Summary and Thoughts on “Rokkashomura Rhapsody” by Kamanaka Hitomi

The film sets in Rokkashomura in Aomori Ken, where they have built a nuclear reprocessing fuel plant. This fuel reprocessing plant built by Nihon Genen is used to recycle nuclear power by removing plutonium from used nuclear power fuel. This has only been attempted in Japan. The documentary shows us the various lives of the people that live in Rokkashomura and how they are coping with the new nuclear reprocessing plant. One of the people that were shown in the film is a lady that had moved into Rokkashomura, taking after her parents’ farm and pursues her activism in order to stop the reprocessing plant. She grows tulips and other plants to help raise awareness of what Rokkashomura still has to offer. She even held a farmers market and told each customer “these maybe the last organic plants you can buy without any radiation”.

This fuel reprocessing plant has divided Rokkashomura into people for and against the building and usage of the plant. One person for the plant is the Mayor of Rokkashomura. He states at a village meeting that “Reprocessing may become the dream energy of Japan” as he believes in the economic wealth the plant would bring into his village. While an opposing village lady speaks out that “radiation is much worse than war”, it seems that the majority of the citizens that are not fighting against the plant is because they believe it is too late to stop the plant. At the time the documentary was being filmed the plant was still in its process of being built. Yet many people already worked for the plant, helping the creation of the plant and believed it was too late to stop the process from reversing.

On dignity and society

Haejoang Chohan, a feminist scholar friend of mine at Yonsei University, gave me a copy of her book “Talking on the Edge” a couple of years ago that I still haven’t read more than ten pages of. It’s a collection of letters published in Japanese and English between her and Japanese feminist intellectual Chizuko Ueno. I tried translating some of it as an exercise, but never got very far.

Anyway, watching the movie last week, this one piece seemed to be very relevant. I’m including two paragraphs I translated last year (assuming she won’t sue me — we’re pretty good friends):