Abstract
Ten years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, the author viewed and analyzed 40 TV documentaries featuring related topics aired on NHK and commercial broadcasters by dividing them into six groups. Programs dealing with “accident handling” highlighted the anxiety about the unpredictable decommissioning schedule as well as the bloated decontamination cost and the reason for it.
While health damages including the impact of radiation exposure were gradually becoming difficult to visualize, one program looked at the death influenced by the nuclear accident, focusing on “death reports” submitted by deprived families of “disaster-related death” victims.
In terms of “reconstruction,” a number of programs delved into individual human relationships from diverse perspectives in municipalities where evacuation orders had been lifted, with some featuring a dialogue between “returnees” and “non-returnees.” Other programs followed “the mind of children” and tried to encourage them to talk about their feelings that they had not be able to do so. In some programs, directors themselves appear on the screen, visiting their home towns or recalling how they felt when hit by the disaster 10 years ago, in an attempt to talk about their experiences as “something that may happen to anyone,” not “somebody else's business” to prevent the memory of the disaster from fading away. Meanwhile, there are not many programs showing the harsh conditions of “voluntary evacuees” from evacuation order zones or examining whether the lessons learnt from the accident have been put into practice by the media and other parties, which suggests a skewed balance in TV reporting.
