Kyusuke Sasaki, 63-year-old shiitake farmer in Iwate Prefecture, nearly quit after his mushroom business was knocked out by the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

But letters of support from junior high school students expressing the hope to see a resurgence in shiitake farming lifted his spirits and encouraged him to press on, resulting in the resumption of shiitake shipments this spring — the first time in six years.

Sasaki, whose father had passed down his shiitake business in Ichinoseki, 150 km north of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant, is determined to revive Iwate as a major mushroom producer, even though his own production capacity has dropped to less than one-tenth of its pre-disaster peak.