Mr Hiroshi Tada in Iitate

According to Mr Hiroshi Tada, the keeper of a 900-year-old shrine in Iitate, his village is over 2,000 years old. Iitate is located more than 40km from the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Even though it lies outside the 20km exclusion zone, it is still dangerously contaminated. The people of Iitate and surrounding villages have all left, as has Mr Tada’s family, leaving him behind at the shrine to continue his religious duties and help any others who have remained. “The accident has destroyed our community, its population scattered across the region,” he says.