Katsumi Yamauchi’s strawberries didn’t look radioactive. Nor did his tomatoes, or the waxy-skinned turnips nearby, or any of the fresh fruit and vegetables that customers perused on a busy sidewalk in central Tokyo last week. But this was the first shred of business Yamauchi, a farmer from Ibaraki prefecture just south of Fukushima, had seen in weeks, since people started worrying that produce grown anywhere near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant was irradiated. “Because of the rumors we can’t sell anything,” said Yamauchi. “I’m happy people are buying this stuff.” Since April 1, Tokyoites have been flocking to this impromptu farmer’s market set up to help quake-affected vendors like Yamauchi. “I’m buying vegetables here to support the farmers,” says Mina Sudo, her 2- and 4-year-old boys in tow. “I’m not sure if all produce is completely safe right now. But I trust the government.”
One month ago, that was hardly a radical thing to say in Japan. But one month ago, Japan was a different place. On March 11, millions of people’s lives were thrown into a tailspin after the largest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history struck off the northeast coast, triggering a tsunami that swallowed swaths of the rugged shoreline and set off a nuclear crisis that is still unfolding. Four weeks and over 400 aftershocks later, the official tally of those who have died is nearly 13,000. Each day, thousands of Japanese and American troops set out to look for the 15,000 people who are still formally categorized as missing. As their search, and time, wears on, questions mount. Why have officials waited so long to finalize the death toll? Why did Prime Minister Naoto Kan wait over three weeks to visit the disaster zone? What’s next?
That does not bode well for the farmers or fishermen in the northeast who, like Yamauchi at the farmer’s market, have come under huge strain. Along the coast, rice crops were wiped out by the waves, and the infrastructure of key fishing ports like Mizuma and Kessenuma has been decimated. Even the fisherman who did not lose their boats say it will be months before they are able to start selling fish again. In Fukushima, soil around the power plant, including outside the recommended evacuation zone, has been found to have doses of radiation hundreds of times higher than normal. On Friday, the government announced that farmers would be prohibited from planting in soil given the current levels of cesium, the longest lasting radioactive material leaking from Fukushima.
See Japan’s nuclear crisis explained in four minutes.
See TIME”s full coverage of the Japan quake.
