Home » About Yogan

What brought him here?

Well, the train, mainly. In 1984, Yogan Baum travelled from Moscow to Beijing on the Moscow–Peking Express. He crossed China, continued to Hong Kong and then flew onto the Philippines. From there, his journey eventually brought him to Japan. At Narita Airport, a Japanese immigration officer stamped his passport: “Welcome to Japan!”

It was an encounter with a very different world. Even the simplest things left an impression — from the cheerful “moshi moshi” of the young woman at the airport information desk to the fresh scent of green tatami in his first Japanese home. Japan was beginning to feel like a place where he could stay.

What made Yogan leave his own country, then?

Did he find that hillside, then? That peace?

As for the hillside, Yogan has not found it yet. Perhaps his present state of being in limbo, somewhere between loss and hope, will eventually lead him towards the light he once glimpsed in a lost world far, far west of here.

Not a hillside in autumn – a family was what he found in Japan!

A wife. Children. A whole, new, unexpected, wonderful life.

Yogan worked hard and learned to be a husband and a father. Their life in the small fishing port of Yotsukura, Iwaki City, was as happy as could be. People were good to them, and they did their best to be responsible.

Being a foreigner meant being an outsider, yes, but being on the outside of things has its advantages, too.

Opening his soul to the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and the night stars high above gave him space to breathe. There was not much he missed.

What happened on March 11, 2011?

And although the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant suffered a catastrophic failure, Yogan and his family were spared the immediate effects of the nuclear disaster.

For Yogan, the courage and determination of those who fought to contain the unfolding crisis — including Prime Minister Naoto Kan — became part of the story. Yet the consequences of the disaster did not simply disappear.

What would become of the damaged plant, and how Japan would deal with the long-term consequences, remained unresolved questions.

For Yogan, Fukushima became the black heart of a tragedy whose consequences would reach far beyond the coast.

Life changed all the more as the years went on, as if nothing had happened.

For Yogan, this became the second catastrophe — perhaps the more painful one. He came to believe that Japan had been given a chance to rise from the ashes of Fukushima, but had squandered it. In his view, the old guard had been too strong, and the opportunity for change was lost.

Japan continues to suffer, he believes, while the lessons of Fukushima remain unresolved. The country could have contributed to a better world. It did not.

For Yogan, Fukushima’s tears could have watered the seeds of a better future. Japan was not allowed to do so.

This is bitter.

Yogan tells the story of defeat as it unfolds through the struggle of one man and one family. He tells it to honour those who suffer in silence: the old, the children, the uninformed and the victims.

He makes no claim to be an impartial observer. He was living just twenty miles from what he came to regard as Ground Zero. And while the events of March 11, 2011, may be described as an accident, Yogan believes that the human decisions behind them cannot simply be dismissed as such.

His account is an attempt to confront the hubris behind the dream of “unlimited energy, for free!” and the consequences it had for those living so close to the shore.

Life is precious. It is fragile. We have to treasure it if we want to survive.

“Life is an ocean,” a song says, “but it ends,” too.

We are stewards, not kings.