介绍:
LEGAL SUPPORT TO FUKUSHIMA MUNICIPALITY: LAW SCHOOL, LAWYERS, AND NUCLEAR DISASTER VICTIMS
I. INTRODUCTION
The Tohuku Region of northern mainland Japan was heavily damaged by the unprecedented earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011. Almost four years later, people in the affected areas are still suffering and striving to regain their normal life back. Within the Tohoku region, Fukushima’s situation is the most serious. Unlike other parts of the region, Fukushima has been widely and terribly contaminated by high-level radioactive substances released into the air by the meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant (hereinafter “Fukushima Nuclear Plant”). Immediately after the meltdown, a group of Japanese professors from the Waseda Law School in Tokyo created the Waseda Project to provide legal assistance to victims. The group legally supports Namie, one of the local governments in the evacuation zone around the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The Waseda project is a test case about how a Japanese law school can assist disaster victims. Through this project, these professors have found a couple of interesting phenomena about the role of law and lawyers in the Japanese society.
This article aims first to explain how Japanese law professors have become involved in assisting the evacuated local government in Fukushima. Secondly, this article examines the issue of damage compensation for nuclear victims. Third, this article analyzes such problems from the viewpoint of the role of lawyers as well as law. Finally, this article makes some general suggestions for professional law schools in Japan based on lessons from the Waseda Project’s. Examination in this article is empirical rather than theoretical, but it will provide insight into understanding the role of the law and lawyers dealing with nuclear disaster victims in Japan.
II. WASEDA UNIVERSITY LEGAL ASSISTANCE PROJECT FOR RESTORATION FROM THE GREAT EAST JAPAN EARTHQUAKE
A. The Birth of Waseda Project
1. Discussion among law professors and the Waseda University’s special fund
Just after the Great East Japan Earthquake hit the Tohoku region in March 2011, several law professors of Waseda Law School started discussing what they could do for victims of this disaster. At the same time, Waseda University decided to establish a special university fund for practical research projects aimed at restoring the damage from this *160 Earthquake, and encouraged all faculty members to apply to this fund. Those law professors applied to the fund in April 2011 and immediately started their legal support project with the financial support they received the next month. This project is very unique in Japan. It is unfortunate that no other Japanese law school has initiated a comparable project for the disaster.
2. Clinical Program in Waseda Law School
Why was such a project born only at Waseda Law School? The birth of the Waseda project was not an accident. It seems that clinical legal education in Waseda Law School has certain relevance to the birth of this project. Among Japanese law schools, Waseda Law School is featured as holding a U.S. style clinical legal education program.1 Before the start of professional law schools in Japan, it was quite rare that law professors did have opportunities to work for real clients, but the experiences of clinical legal education at Waseda Law School from 2004 has changed the mindset of Waseda professors. In fact, answering an appeal of one of the clinical professors, other non-clinical professors immediately made up their minds to actively tackle actual on-going problems in the society. Currently, more than ten law professors have been giving legal assistance mainly to one of the municipalities in Fukushima on various legal issues. Their specialties are very much diverse, such as constitutional law, tort law, administrative law, social security law, family law, agricultural law, sociology of law and international law. If an issue arises that is not within the expertise of current members, the project recruits a new member within the Waseda Law School faculty, who is specialized in a relevant field of law. Waseda Law School students also participate in this project, through making legal research on specific issues and conducting field surveys.
B. Where are Namie people living after the Fukushima Nuclear Plant’s accident?
The major objective of the project is to provide legal assistance to earthquake and/or tsunami victims. Originally, the project targeted all regions affected by the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami.2
*161 In March 2012, about a year later after its inception, the project happened to meet a town mayor of Namie at his temporary town hall in the city of Nihonmatsu, Fukushima. Just after the accident took place, the Japanese Government established the evacuation zone within a radius of 20-kilometers radius from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant, and prohibited any people from entering into that zone. Several towns and villages are included in this zone. According to the website of Namie,3 among these local municipalities around the Fukushima Nuclear Plant, Namie has the largest population, with about 21,000 residents and occupies the land of 223 square kilometers. Namie is located in the eastern part of Fukushima which was underpopulated. The east end of the town faces the Pacific Ocean and the west end belongs to the Abukuma mountain areas. The eastern part of the town is generally flat, and both a railway line and a highway between Tokyo and Sendai pass through this area. Its major industry was agriculture and fishery, and it was also a center of commercial activities in this area. It takes about three hours to go to this area in Namie from Tokyo by a train or car. A majority of the town’s population also concentrated there. While the Fukushima Plant is situated in the towns of Okuma and Futaba, the nearest point of Namie is only 4 kilometers away from the Plant. Therefore, Namie has been seriously contaminated by radiation like Okuma and Futaba. After the nuclear accident, all people in the evacuation zone including Namie people were forced to move to other places throughout Japan in order to escape exposure to high-level radiation from the meltdown of the plant’s nuclear reactors. Many of them are still living in temporary houses in Fukushima and have not returned to their homes in four years. Their temporary houses are makeshift small houses or small apartments. Although the number of them is gradually decreasing, as of February 2015, about 3,800 people still lived in makeshift houses, and on the other hand, about 6,600 people lived in such apartments.4
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