Anti-nuclear protesters march through Tokyo’s Shibuya distric (Oct. 1)

Chants of ‘No Nukes’ Echo in Streets of Tokyo’s Shibuya and Harajuku Districts

(earthfirstjournal.org) With an eye to getting their message out to young people, demonstrators calling for a departure from nuclear power on Sept. 29 changed course from their usual venue and took to the streets in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya and Harajuku districts.

Protesters shouted slogans such as “We’ve got enough electric power” and “No nuke reactors on earthquake-prone islands” as they marched past Marui City Shibuya and other fashionable commercial establishments packed with trend-conscious youths.

Read more: http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2013/10/01/chants-of-no-nukes-echo-in-streets-of-tokyos-shibuya-and-harajuku-districts/

Tokyo – Protest against Fukushima reactor restart – Live Video

Watch it live: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iwakamiyasumi

Occupy Tokyo: Mass demonstrations go unreported by Japanese media

(sott.net) You’ve heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, Los Angeles, London, Toronto, Berlin, Tel Aviv and elsewhere around the world. But did you know that huge demonstrations have been taking place in Tokyo as well? We certainly didn’t until a SOTT forum member sent us the details. The general lack of awareness of the protests in Japan is probably due to the fact that there has been zero coverage of ‘Occupy Tokyo’ – which has grown out of the country’s large (and growing) grassroots anti-nuclear movement – in Japan’s mainstream media.

Several large demonstrations have taken place all over Japan in recent months, especially in Tokyo. The general mood is the same as elsewhere: ordinary people in Japan are fed up with their leaders’ lies, particularly the lies told by TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, and how the government has handled the Fukushima disaster. Or rather, how it has avoided handling it. This should all be eerily familiar to Americans of course; BP’s lies and the US government’s enabling role from the moment the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April 2010 has continued to this day, with the tragedy continuing to unfold in deathly silence. What is happening in Japan is almost a carbon copy; denial, smear campaigns, heavy-handed tactics and, of course, total media blackout. Up to one million people may have died as a result of Chernobyl, although we’ll never really know the true death toll. Fukushima is many orders of magnitude worse…

Read more: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/237704-Occupy-Tokyo-Mass-demonstrations-go-unreported-by-Japanese-media

The Truth About Nuclear Power: Japanese Nuclear Engineer Calls for Abolition

(japanfocus.org) Koide Hiroaki began his career as a nuclear engineer forty years ago drawn to the promise of nuclear power. Quickly, however, he recognized the flaws in Japan’s nuclear power program and emerged as among the best informed of Japan’s nuclear power critic. His cogent public critique of the nuclear village earned him an honourable form of purgatory as a permanent assistant professor at Kyoto University. Koide would pay a price in career terms, continuing his painstaking research on radio nuclide measurement at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute (KURRI) in the shadows. Until 3.11.

Since the earthquake tsunami and nuclear meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, he has emerged as a powerful voice and a central figure in charting Japan’s future energy course in the wake of disaster: in scores of well attended public lectures, in daily media consultations and interviews, in his widely read posts and in three books that have helped to redefine public consciousness and official debate.

On May 23, 2011, the Government Oversight Committee of the House of Councillors (the Upper House) invited four guests to address members of the Diet – Koide, Ishibashi Katsuhiko, a seismologist who has long warned of the reactors’ vulnerability to quakes, Goto Masashi, a former Toshiba nuclear engineer who now defies the industry, and Son Masayoshi, President of telecommunication giant Softbank and, since 3.11, an outspoken proponent of renewable energy. The unprecedented government effort to seek advice from staunch critics of nuclear power policy is indicative of fresh winds blowing at a time when the government is calling for a sharp increase in renewable energy and curbing of nuclear power and the nuclear power giants and their supporters in the bureaucracy are fighting back.

Thousands across the nation and overseas watched Koide’s criticism of the government being webcast, sharing through Twitter the excitement of seeing their best kept secret being unveiled in a grey business suit, at the centre of Japanese politics – the very centre he has exposed throughout his career. At the same time, a human chain was being formed around the building of the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) where Fukushima parents and their supporters rallied to protest against the ministry’s decision to raise the allowable radiation exposure level.² Viewers of the two simultaneous events had one eye on the relentless Koide, and the other on teary and angry Fukushima parents.

Read more, watch the lectures: http://japanfocus.org/-Koide-Hiroaki/3582

Japan Passes Law To Cleanse Internet Of “Bad” Fukushima Radiation News

(examiner.com) Japan has passed a law that will enable the police and contractors to monitor internet activity without restriction to “cleanse” the Internet of any “bad” Fukushima radiation news.

As I previous reported, Japan has officially ordered the censorship of any reporting of the truth about the Fukushima nuclear radiation fallout by  ordering telecommunications companies and web masters to scrub any stories negative stories from the about the disaster.

Continue reading on Examiner.com Japan Passes Law To Cleanse Internet Of “Bad” Fukushima Radiation News – Jersey City Civil Rights | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in-jersey-city/japan-passes-law-to-cleanse-internet-of-bad-fukushima-radiation-news#ixzz1TAYrjoTg

Japan: Scale of nuclear disaster, cover-up exposed

(greenleft.org.au) Three months after the earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear disaster in Japan, new radiation “hot spots” may require the evacuation of more areas further from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility.

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has now admitted for the first time that full nuclear meltdowns occurred at three of the plant’s reactors, and more than doubled its estimate for the amount of radiation that leaked from the plant in the first week of the disaster in March.

‘Fukushima media cover-up – PR success, public health disaster’

Japan Admits 3 Nuclear Meltdowns, More Radiation Leaked into Sea; U.S. Nuclear Waste Poses Deadly Risks

(democracynow.org) Almost three months after the earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear disaster in Japan, new radiation “hot spots” may require the evacuation of more areas further from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency recently admitted for the first time that full nuclear meltdowns occurred at three of the plant’s reactors, and more than doubled its estimate for the amount of radiation that leaked from the plant in the first week of the disaster in March. “What they failed to mention is that they discharged an equally large amount into the ocean,” says our guest Robert Alvarez, former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. “As [the radiation] goes up the food chain, it accumulates. By the time it reaches people who consume this food, the levels are higher than they originally were when they entered the environment.” Alvarez also discusses his new report on the vulnerabilities and hazards of stored spent fuel at U.S. reactors in the United States. Then we go to Tokyo to speak with Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of the group Green Action. She says citizens leading their own monitoring efforts are calling for additional evacuations, especially for young children and pregnant women.

Watch video: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/10/as_japan_nuclear_crisis_worsens_citizen

Thousands Rally in Japan Against Nuclear Power

(AFP) TOKYO — Thousands of people rallied in Japan Saturday to demand a shift away from nuclear power after an earthquake and tsunami sparked the world’s worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl a quarter-century ago.

Braving spring drizzle, thousands of demonstrators gathered at a park in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, many holding hand-made banners reading: “Nuclear is old!” and “We want a shift in energy policy!”

The protest came a day after Prime Minister Naoto Kan called a halt to operations at a nuclear plant southwest of Tokyo because it is near a tectonic faultline, fearing a disaster like that which hit the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March.

“I’m happy to see the prime minister finally taking action,” said protester Manami Inoue, 28, who had a black and yellow “No” sign around her neck. “But I want to know when the plant will really stop operations,” she said.

Quake reconstruction panel member says Fukushima should abandon nuclear power

(mainichi.jp) A member of a panel advising the government on reconstruction plans in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake told the Mainichi in an interview that he wants Fukushima Prefecture to abandon nuclear power generation.

“I want Fukushima to make the decision to abandon nuclear power, independent from government policy discussion,” the 57-year-old panel member, Norio Akasaka, told the Mainichi.

Akasaka, who also serves as curator of the Fukushima Museum, said that the prefecture has been left behind in efforts to recover from the March 11 quake and tsunami as it struggles with the continuing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant.

“The wounds inflicted by the nuclear power plant accident have left us a problem on a completely different level from that of the natural disasters,” he said.

Akasaka quoted an acquaintance working at a shelter in the Fukushima Prefecture city of Minami-Soma, which lies near the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, as telling him, “To us, the idea of restoration to the old Fukushima seems very wrong. If we have anything, it will be a rebirth into a new Fukushima.”

Akasaka said the nuclear plant crisis had inflicted a damaging blow on the prefecture, but measures could be taken to turn the situation around.

“The agriculture, forestry and fisheries industries and the manufacturing industry have been hit at their roots. Prefectural residents have been the victims of discriminatory rumors while living in fear of radiation contamination. But only responding to that with criticism will cause a negative atmosphere to set in, and it takes time to clear that away.

“Instead, we can take a more positive approach, establishing research facilities to collect data related to radiation decontamination and people’s health over the long-term and to come up with practical responses to our problems. Furthermore, by positively investing in renewable energy research facilities for power and hospitals that specialize in radiation treatment as we work heal the wounds that the nuclear power plant inflicted, we will surely receive the world’s support, and others will help us.

“The Tohoku region has continued to serve as a base supplying Tokyo with food, human resources and electricity, but from now on we need to switch to a more independent model, and the people of the Tohoku region need to consider what kind of picture will be painted for the future.”

Source: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110430p2a00m0na003000c.html