Samurai Return to Fukushima
Samurai in Fukushima Guard a 1,000-Year-Old Tradition
Shingo, 34, used to live in Odaka-ku with his family. Their "favorite house" with an ocean view was washed away 20 meters inland by the tsunami. Where he stands was once a stable on the side of the house, now nothing is left but the foundation. "We enjoyed watching the ocean from this point," Shingo says, "All the belongings including armor for Soma Nomaoi and two horses that we had taken care of as family were washed away."
For more than 1,000 years people of Fukushima Prefecture in Japan have gathered every summer to celebrate an ancient tradition of the samurai. The Soma Namaoi festival is as much a part of their heritage as the warrior and equestrian culture it reenacts and honors, and in the face of radiation from the nearby Daiichi nuclear reactor, they’ve decided the show must go on.
Tokyo photographer Noriki Takasugi’s series Fukushima Samurai — The Story of Identity captures the samurai of the Soma Nomaoi festival as they risk their own health to sustain a tradition that largely defines them.
Many of the men in Takasugi’s photos are from the hard-hit town of Odaka-ku, who along with thousands of others in Fukushima were displaced or saw their homes destroyed when its residential coastlines were swept away in the tsunami of 2011. Along with the houses went the accoutrements of Soma Nomaoi — their weapons, their ceremonial Jinbaori clothing, and, sadly, their horses. Much of what they’ve worn for the festival since the tsunami is borrowed or otherwise cobbled together, and after spending months in the vicinity of the Daiichi plant before daytime visits were again allowed, many of the clothes they did retrieve were likely irradiated. In the Odaku-ku area, Takasugi says her geiger counter measures radiation between five and 50 times the levels registered in her Tokyo neighborhood.
“None of the people I asked cared about the irradiated clothes,” says Takasugi. “It was my impression that it was more important for them to have their weapons and their ceremonial costumes.”
http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2013/12/samurai-keep-a-thousand-year-old-festival-alive-in-fukushima/?w12#slideid-107131
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