Laid waste by a nuclear disaster a decade ago, Fukushima Prefecture is still struggling to recover, even as the government tries to bring people and jobs back to former ghost towns by pouring in trillions of yen to decontaminate and rebuild.
But reconstruction efforts, from the mundane — supermarkets and transport infrastructure — to a cutting-edge hydrogen energy plant, have yet to entice more than a small fraction of the former population to return.
As the country marks the 10th anniversary of the March 11, 2011, earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, parts of the prefecture are still off limits, and it remains a laggard in recovery. Its future is clouded by the 30 to 40 years it may take to decommission the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, near which massive amounts of treated radioactive water are in storage.