On a small coastal plot in the town of Futaba, located in northeastern Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, an ultramodern textile factory opened just three years ago as the first industrial footprint planted at Ground Zero for the country’s biggest natural disaster of modern times.
Inside, rows of spindles spin yarn into thread nonstop, destined for factories in Portugal, Vietnam and China, where it will become towels, sweaters and denim.
The factory stands almost in isolation; most of the area was swept away by the March 11, 2011 tsunami that followed Japan’s largest-ever recorded earthquake. Waves as high as 15 meters decimated coastal towns, and a catastrophic nuclear meltdown followed at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, forcing local residents in the tens of thousands to evacuate.
As Japan marks the 15th anniversary of a disaster that caused the deaths of an estimated 20,000 people and created nearly half a million refugees, a small but growing number of businesses scattered across Fukushima are steadily setting up operations.
Like the textile company from Gifu prefecture to the south that owns and operates the large mill, they hope to spearhead a local economic revival, one that not only encourages former residents to return but also draws in newcomers.
“There are a lot of businesses that are now showing an interest in coming [to Futaba],” said Masami Asano, CEO of Asano Nenshi, the Gifu textile company. “That is because our presence and our operations here are becoming proof that there are people willing to come to Futaba and work here,” added Asano, a former student at a Fukushima university.
In the shallow hills of neighboring Namie town, local company Rice Resin has in recent years opened a factory that turns inedible rice into bioplastic, which is sold to be turned into everything from plastic cutlery and children’s toys to toothbrushes.
The company claims that its product can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to nearly 60% compared to conventional petrochemical-based plastics.
“I think many people still associate Namie with environmental harm because of the nuclear accident,” said Shohei Iida, sales manager at Rice Resin. “But through our product, we want to spread the image that Namie is a town that makes environmentally friendly products, both in Japan and abroad.”
Futaba and Namie are part of Fukushima’s Hamadori coastal area, considered the social and economic epicenter of the earthquake and tsunami and the nuclear disaster they triggered.
Huge swaths here remain off-limits due to high radiation. In parts of Futaba and neighboring Okuma, large areas now serve as interim storage sites for radioactive soil, which continues to pile up under tarpaulins or has been molded into hills as decontamination progresses.
Government subsidies are being deployed to help attract companies to operate in the still-challenging environment. One scheme covers up to 80% of initial capital expenditures in disaster-affected zones.
Both Asano Nenshi and Rice Resin have benefited from subsidies in one form or another, and admit this played a role in their decision to build factories in Namie and Futaba.
Companies coming to the area also see potential synergies with the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework, a government initiative to build industry clusters in fields such as robotics, energy, medicine, and aerospace. Its flagship project, the yet-to-be-built Fukushima Institute for Research, Education and Innovation (F-REI) in Namie, aims to bring top global researchers to the region.
A short walk from the site of the future F-REI campus is Namie’s train station, which reopened in 2020. Next to it, a black shed houses a land-based aquaculture pilot run by Ark, a company from Kanagawa prefecture south of Tokyo. It is testing whether Kue-tama-a hybrid grouper that is normally a warm-water fish-can be bred in the colder northern climate.
While the small aquafarm can only breed around 100 Kue-tama a year, the company is looking at neighboring sites to build a commercial-scale plant, and aims to produce around 20 to 40 metric tons of the fish annually in the next three to four years, according to Koyo Takenoshita, co-founder and CTO of Ark.
“There’s a fishing port nearby, and the seafood caught in this area originally had strong brand recognition … but the fishing industry was decimated by the disaster,” Takenoshita said. “If we can create a new model for the fisheries industry here, we believe it will generate synergies with local fishers, processors and distributors. That is why we are pursuing this initiative in this location.”
Fukushima’s economic indicators show a prefecture very much in recovery mode. Its real gross domestic product for fiscal 2023 was 20% higher than the year immediately after the disaster. Agricultural exports have surged, and manufacturing output has rebounded.
The Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework claims to have attracted over 442 facilities to the prefecture and created over 5,000 jobs through its initiatives, including subsidies. “Fukushima’s recovery is now entering its final phase,” said Tamotsu Saito, the framework’s president and former CEO of Japanese engineering company IHI, at a Tokyo news conference just days before the 15th anniversary.
However, jobs created represent perhaps only a tenth of those initially lost after the disaster, when nearly 55,000 people were claiming unemployment benefits.
Stages of recovery vary widely across different areas, largely reflecting the severity of exposure to the nuclear disaster and levels of contamination.
The eight-town Futaba district — including Futaba and Namie — remains badly affected. Its combined GDP is still far below pre-quake levels, and manufacturing shipments are down 75%.
The biggest drag on economic recovery has been the lack of people returning. The area was home to 73,000 residents in 2010, but only around 12,000 live there now. The occupancy rate — a gauge of how many people have returned, based on the number of people actually living in the area compared to registered residents — stands at a paltry 3.9% for Futaba, 10.8% for Okuma and 17% for Namie.
The fishing industry has been particularly hard-hit, with not enough workers to land catches. Total landings in fiscal year 2024 were still about 74% below pre-disaster levels.
“The fundamental difference between Fukushima and other disasters is that residents were forced to leave, and many still cannot return,” said Satoru Masuda, a professor specializing in regional planning at Teikyo University.
“There are areas now where people can return once decontamination reduces the radiation levels,” he said. “However, due to costs and other factors, some zones remain designated as ‘difficult-to-return areas.’ Issues such as the availability of workers and usable land are very different here.”
A survey carried out last year by the country’s Reconstruction Agency revealed that more than 50% of respondents displaced from Futaba, Okuma and Namie said they would never return to a place they had once called home and where some had lived for generations.
“There simply aren’t many people here, and even fewer of working age,” said Kenichi Lee, founder of a hydrogen startup, Okuma Tech, set up in Okuma town in 2021. “Competition for newcomers is intense.”
However, a people shortage did not discourage Junichiro Hosokawa from operating a business in Fukushima. He is the manager of viticulture and wine-making at Tomioka Winery and previously spent more than a decade studying at a winery in the city of Koshu in Yamanashi prefecture, one of Japan’s preeminent wine-making areas.
He was lured to Tomioka in 2021 when he met the winery’s owner Shubun Endo, who had been growing a vineyard from scratch in a large area near the Tomioka train station, where the tsunami had swept everything away, including Endo’s home.
“Wine can be made anywhere, but what I found especially appealing was the opportunity to produce wine while simultaneously helping rebuild the town,” Hosokawa said. “I hope that in the future [the area] will be known not as a winery in a disaster-affected area, but as a place where excellent wine is made. I wanted to contribute to that vision.”
The way Fukushima is being rebuilt is not without its critics, however. Kota Kawasaki, a professor at Fukushima University specializing in urban planning, said there was “a gap” between the reconstruction of infrastructure and the rebuilding of people’s lives.
“If a flood, tornado or earthquake occurs in the middle of an uninhabited desert, we do not call that a disaster. When it strikes a place where people’s property exists in a broad sense, and damage is inflicted, then it becomes a disaster,” he said. “In that sense, reconstruction needs to encompass restoring [the economic] damages suffered by the affected people.”
He said that Japan’s conventional reconstruction model, whereby infrastructure is first restored and rebuilt, worked well in previous disasters when residents tended to stay in the affected areas.
“However, in Fukushima’s case, very few people are returning. No matter how much the physical environment is restored, it does not necessarily lead to recovery in affected people’s lives,” he added. “Without that, it cannot truly be called reconstruction.”
Still, Isuke Takakura, a survivor of the tsunami that hit Fubata, says he is optimistic that the businesses can make a positive contribution to the revitalization of the local economy.
“Until 3/11, my whole life had been in Futaba,” Takakura said, referring to the date of the disaster. “My house used to be there,” he added, pointing to a spot where a luxury hotel is currently being built, as part of Fukushima prefecture’s efforts to entice tourists to visit and learn about the disaster.
“Yes, I still feel angry, I still feel helpless, many emotions,” he said. “But I want to see with my own eyes how far the reconstruction can go. That’s how I feel.”