is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

Fukushima Prefecture Fukushima Prefecture (; ja, 福島県, Fukushima-ken, ) is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Fukushima Prefecture has a population of 1,810,286 () and has a geographic area of . Fukushima Prefecture borders Miya ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. , the town had an actual population of zero, although as of 2017, the official registered population was 6,093 in 2,301 households. The total area of the town is . As of March 2011, the entire population was evacuated as a result of the

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster The was a nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 and ...

. However in the decade since then, 3% of the town has been open to visitors and residents, with the first residents returning on a permanent basis as of February 2022.

Geography

Futaba is on the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

coastline of central Fukushima. The

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant The is a disabled nuclear power plant located on a site in the towns of Ōkuma and Futaba in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The plant suffered major damage from the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011. The ...

, owned by the

Tokyo Electric Power Company , also known as or TEPCO, is a Japanese electric utility holding company servicing Japan's Kantō region, Yamanashi Prefecture, and the eastern portion of Shizuoka Prefecture. This area includes Tokyo. Its headquarters are located in Uchisaiw ...

, is on the southern border of Futaba in the neighboring town of

Ōkuma Okuma or Ōkuma may refer to: Surname *Ōkuma Shigenobu (大隈重信) (1838 – 1922) 8th and 17th Prime Minister of Japan, founder of Waseda University *Enuka Okuma, Canadian actress of Nigerian descent Other uses *Okuma Corporation, a manufactu ...

Surrounding municipalities

*Fukushima Prefecture ** Namie **

Demographics

Per Japanese census data, the population of Futaba was relatively stable until the nuclear disaster.

Climate

Futaba has a humid climate (

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...

''Cfa''). The average annual temperature in Futaba is . The average annual rainfall is with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around , and lowest in January, at around .

History

The area of present-day Futaba was part of

Mutsu Province was an old province of Japan in the area of Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Aomori Prefectures and the municipalities of Kazuno and Kosaka in Akita Prefecture. Mutsu Province is also known as or . The term is often used to refer to the comb ...

. The remains of

Kofun period The is an era in the history of Japan from about 300 to 538 AD (the date of the introduction of Buddhism), following the Yayoi period. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes collectively called the Yamato period. This period is ...

burial mounds have been found in the area. During the

Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the cap ...

, it was the center of ancient Futaba District in Iwaki Province During the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, it was part of Sōma Domain, ruled by the

Sōma clan The was a Japanese samurai clan who ruled the northern Hamadōri region of southern Mutsu Province in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan for over 700 years, from the Kamakura period through the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The Sōma claimed ...

until the

Meiji restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

. Town records indicate that over 700 residents of the region died due to a tsunami in the 1611 Sanriku earthquake. The area was the site of the

Battle of Iwaki A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force ...

during the

Boshin War The , sometimes known as the Japanese Revolution or Japanese Civil War, was a civil war in Japan fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and a clique seeking to seize political power in the name of the Imperi ...

. On April 1, 1889, with the establishment of the modern municipalities system, the villages of Shinzan and Nagatsuka were created in Shineha District, Fukushima, which subsequently became Futaba District in April 1896. Shinzan was raised to town status on February 1, 1913. Shinzan merged with Nagatsuka on April 1, 1951 becoming the town of Shineha, which changed its name to Futaba on April 1, 1956.

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami

Futaba was severely affected by the

, and the

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami The occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC) on 11 March. The magnitude 9.0–9.1 (M) undersea megathrust earthquake had an epicenter in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region, and lasted approximately six minutes ...

on March 11, 2011. Besides sustaining considerable damage from the earthquake and the

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...

(which devastated the coastal area), the entire population of the town was evacuated en masse on the morning of March 12, as it is well within the exclusion radius around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. On March 28, 2013, the central government rezoned the town into two areas according to level of radiation: in the first, people were free to go in and out but not allowed to stay overnight; in the second, all entry was forbidden because of elevated radiation levels that were not expected to go down within five years after the accident. However, only 4 percent of the town area zone was opened to daytime return of residents, and the town remained uninhabitable. As of 2017, the Japanese government is leading a cleanup of the town, aiming for 11 percent to be livable by spring 2022. In March 2020, the town's

train station A train station, railway station, railroad station or depot is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track and a station building providing suc ...

was reopened as cleanup efforts continued, and an area of habitability of around one square mile was established around the station. Services between Futaba and the neighbouring towns of Namie and Naraha commenced on March 14, 2020. In 2022, resettlement of the town commenced when the first three residents to return on a permanent basis arrived. It is planned to increase Futaba's population to 2,000 over the course of five years.

Economy

The economy of Futaba was heavily dependent on

commercial fishing Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for commercial profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the world, but those who practice it as an industry must often ...

and agriculture. Raising of

carnation ''Dianthus caryophyllus'' (), commonly known as the carnation or clove pink, is a species of ''Dianthus''. It is likely native to the Mediterranean region but its exact range is unknown due to extensive cultivation for the last 2,000 years.Med ...

s was a major industry.

Education

Futaba has two public elementary schools and one public junior high school operated by the town government, and one public high school operated by the Fukushima Prefectural Board of Education. All schools remain closed.

Transportation

Railway

JR East The is a major passenger railway company in Japan and is the largest of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as in Japanese. The company's headquarters are ...

–

Jōban Line The Jōban Line ( ja, 常磐線, ) is a railway line in Japan operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East). The line officially begins at Nippori Station in Arakawa, Tokyo before the line officially ends at Iwanuma Station in Iwanuma, ...

Highway

* - Tomioka Interchange * *

Noted residents

Kazunari Watanabe is a Japanese cyclist. Watanabe has competed in the keirin and other track events at the 2008 Summer Olympics and 2012 Summer Olympics The 2012 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012) wa ...

, Olympic cyclist

Local attractions

* Kiyotosaku Cave Tombs, a National Historic Site with a ''kofun'' burial chamber decorated with murals

References

External links

Official Website
{{2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami Towns in Fukushima Prefecture Populated coastal places in Japan Environmental disaster ghost towns