Fukushima’s ‘Singing’ Potter, Toshiharu Onoda, returns home 10 years after major earthquake struck. Onada lived in the town nearby the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The following written content by Elaine Lies and Akira Tomoshige
NAMIE, Japan (Reuters) – Toshiharu Onoda, a thirteenth-generation potter living in a town close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, had just finished loading his kiln on March 11, 2011, when the massive earthquake struck.
Clinging to a wall as the room filled with choking dust, Onoda watched stunned as his two-tonne kiln began to move across the floor.
“Things were smashing all over the place, the kiln was clattering, everything inside just shattered,” he said in the dusty ruins of his studio in Namie, built roughly a century ago.
Even in that dramatic moment, Onoda thought the danger would pass and he would continue at his studio.
“I didn’t imagine I’d never work there again. I expected to start cleaning up the next morning,” he said ruefully.
Instead, Onoda and nearly two dozen other potters were forced to evacuate within hours after reactor buildings at the plant owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) exploded, spewing radiation across the area where they’d lived and worked for over 300 years.
Now, with restrictions relaxed, Onoda and the potters in the group he heads have been able to come back to downtown Namie to a new showroom and workspace complete with kilns, which opens in 10 days. Read more from US News & World Report.
