A young community activist is endeavoring to achieve the double feat of giving a new lease on life to people displaced by the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and rejuvenating a withering traditional local industry.
Three years ago, Takuro Yazu, 29, founded the company IIE, building on his volunteer initiative to support people who had been forced to leave hometowns contaminated by radiation.
The company, located in the Aizu region of Fukushima Prefecture, employs around 20 women ranging in age from their 20s to 70s, who make stoles by hand from Aizu cotton cloth. The region is not within the zones regarded as dangerous.