Pictures from the Bread and Puppet Museum by Karen Ranucci

Elka Schumann runs the print shop of Bread and Puppet, printing banners, posters
and small books.

The Bread and Puppet Farm was owned by the Dopp Family. Daisy Dopp was
a writer for the local paper, doing a column on farm life.

The Women of Fukushima

Over a year since three reactors went into meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, a broad, disparate anti-nuclear movement is growing in Japan. Nowhere is that more apparent, perhaps, than in Fukushima prefecture, where a group of local women boldly protest the deafening silence of the Japanese government over the worst nuclear accident of this century. Largely ignored by their own media, these brave women brush aside their cultural shyness and share their brutally honest views on the state of the cleanup, the cover-ups, the untruths and the stagnant political climate in today’s Japan. Supported with rare footage from inside the exclusion zone, as well as from abandoned neighboring towns, the Women of Fukushima (“Fukushima no Onnatachi”) offers startlingly candid insights, in the women’s own voices, about what has become of their lives, homes, and families in the aftermath of 3/11. 

福島第一原子力発電所で３基の原子炉がメルトダウンを起こしてから１年以上。さまざまな人々による大がかりな反原発運動が日本国内で拡大しつつあります。この運動がもっとも顕著なのは、おそらく福島県でしょう。そこでは地元の女性グループが勇敢にも立ち上がり、今世紀最悪の原発事故に対する日本政府の沈黙に抗議しているのです。国内メディアにほとんど無視されてきたこの勇敢な女性たちは、内気な県民性を脇へ押しやり、現在の日本における汚染除去の現状や隠ぺい、嘘、そして停滞した政治情勢について包み隠さぬ率直な意見を公表しています。立ち入り禁止区域内や周辺の荒れ果てた無人の村々の貴重な映像と共に、「福島の女たち」は3･11によって彼女たちの人生、故郷、家族がどのような影響を受けたのかについての驚くほど率直な見解を、彼女たち自身の声で伝えます。

Women of Fukushima-English subtitles from Paul Johannessen on Vimeo.