Teach 3.11: Participatory Educational Project Puts the Kanto-Tohoku Disaster into Historical Context

摘要

My first visit to the countryside of Fukushima Prefecture took place in the early autumn of 2008. The occasion was a notable "return" to a historic center of premodern Japanese silkworm egg production for two busloads of members of the silk and seri-culture industy, en route to the annual Silk Summit held at the Fukushima Agricultural Technology Center. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Onaga-san, look there." I looked out the window and saw in the distance a large, white, rectangular building tucked in amid the greenery. "That's a nuclear power plant," the retired scientist told me. "If that explodes, we'll die." At the time, I was unsure what to make of this jolt of information. Wrapped up in my own thoughts about fieldwork and research, I had certainly forgotten that moment until now.