Introduction
©Takezo Takahashi
To date, approximately 30 class action lawsuits have been filed against the Japanese State and TEPCO[1] throughout the country, involving more than 10,000 people. Three appeal judgments have recognized the liability of the State and TEPCO. These are the “Give us back our livelihoods, give us back our region” trial in 2020, the Chiba lawsuit and the Ehime lawsuit in 2021. However, since the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in June 2022 rejecting the State’s liability in four class action lawsuits (the three above plus the Gumma lawsuit[2]), lower courts have delivered successive rulings rejecting the State’s liability.
The Kansai[3] region class action lawsuit, which serves as the “rear guard” among class action lawsuits has come to an end after a long run of more than 12 years since the complaint (first phase) was filed on September 17, 2013. During this period, all 79 plaintiff households were questioned. While in other lawsuits, interrogation of plaintiffs is often conducted only for some of them, the Osaka District Court followed a particularly thorough procedure, which is quite unusual. The interrogation of the plaintiffs took place at a monthly pace from May 2011 to September 2025. While the presiding judge often changes during proceedings, in the case of the Kansai region trial, there was no change and the same presiding judge conducted all the interrogation proceedings.
The trial closed on December 24, and the verdict is scheduled for September 2, 2026.
We are publishing here the closing statements of Akiko Morimatsu, the representative of the group of plaintiffs. Ms. Morimatsu is also a delegate of the federation of groups suing TEPCO and the Japanese State.
[1] Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
[2] Unlike the three appeals, Gumma’s appeal did not obtain recognition of the State’s liability at the Tokyo Court of Appeals in 2021.
[3] The Kansai region includes six prefectures, including Osaka and Kyoto.
The closing statements of Akiko Morimatsu
I am Akiko Morimatsu, plaintiff number 1-1.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present my closing statements in court.
1. Family separation and loss of peaceful life
I left the city of Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture and moved to Osaka with my two children. Even today, we continue to live as evacuees, just me and my children.
My husband stayed in Fukushima, and our family has now been separated for 14 years and 9 months.
My children, who were 0 and 3 years old at the time of the earthquake, are now 15 and 17.
They are currently in their third year of junior high school and second year of high school, a very sensitive time in their lives. Although their father is in good health, he cannot be there to give them advice and answer their questions about life. For 14 years, he has not been able to see his children grow up day by day, and we have not been able to share the joys and sorrows of raising children. They have lost everything that made up a peaceful family life, that is, “moments when all family members gather to spend pleasant times talking and relaxing.” This is an obvious damage caused by the nuclear accident.
2. Sincere desire to avoid radiation exposure
Despite everything, we continue to live in a state of evacuation of mother and children. This is due to the radioactive fallout over a wide area, including the city of Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture, as a result of the accident that occurred on March 11, 2011, at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. We continue to remain evacuated because radioactive contamination “exists” in this region. We continue to live in evacuation because we want to avoid any unnecessary exposure to radiation.
And it was precisely because it was not a “mandatory evacuation” that we made the difficult decision to self-evacuate without my husband, which was the last resort. According to the latest figures available from the Reconstruction Agency on December 5, 2025 – Number of people evacuated nationwide – 26,597 people are still in evacuation, including those who have self-evacuated from areas outside the mandatory evacuation zones. Despite this considerable number, the government has implemented virtually no systems or measures to protect evacuees over the past 14 years.
We were constrained to self-evacuate using our own resources. This was not a voluntary evacuation. It placed us in a very difficult situation. The cause of this situation is clearly the radioactive contamination resulting from the nuclear accident, which is itself the result of national nuclear policy. However, despite this causality obvious to everyone, the authorities have made no effort to establish accurate statistics on the evacuation related to the nuclear accident or to understand the reality of the evacuation of mother and children. And we continue to be exposed to discrimination and harassment.
3. Imposing radiation exposure: violation of the “right of self-determination”
I did not evacuate in a state of panic.
I decided to proceed with the evacuation based on the standards and rules in effect on March 11, 2011, and I declare that I intend to continue the evacuation taking into account the objective facts concerning the contamination.
The radiation exposure limit for the general public was previously set at one millisievert per year, but it was raised to 20 millisieverts per year after March 11, 2011. Although we are told that this is not a problem, it is impossible to accept or tolerate such a measure. Why should Fukushima be the only place to accept high exposure doses, while the limit remains one millisievert for the rest of Japan? This is blatant discrimination.
There is also a misconception regarding voluntary evacuation.
It is believed that those who chose to do so had the choice between leaving or staying. It is believed that their decision to leave was made of their own free will and on their own responsibility, and that they therefore suffered no prejudice since they acted on their own initiative.
This is clearly wrong. We weren’t given a choice between evacuation or not, but were forced to choose between two painful, undesirable options: “continue to be exposed to radiation” or “self-evacuate if we don’t want to be exposed.” This was a sudden, urgent decision disrupting our previously peaceful lives.
I have no intention of resigning myself to suffering the damage imposed by the perpetrators themselves, who not only make no mention of it, but also unilaterally decide on the “acceptable level of exposure” “to be tolerated.”
4. “Public communications” do not tell us the truth.
During the interrogation, the lawyers of the defendant Tokyo Electric Power Company presented the “information leaflet” from the municipality we had left behind and repeated arguments such as “Didn’t you read the information leaflet?” or “It says it’s safe,” as if to make us understand that we should trust the leaflet.
I would like to ask the judges a question.
Does promoting “festivals” and “school entrance ceremonies” in “information leaflets” make the radioactive contamination disappear? In voluntary evacuation zones, there are people who remain for various reasons. As long as there are people living there, festivals are held to admire the cherry blossoms, and fireworks are set off during summer festivities. With slogans such as “Ganbarō Tōhoku” (Let’s go, Tōhoku!) and the huge budgets allocated to reconstruction, it is possible to organize large events and create a festive atmosphere, as if the region had been completely “reconstructed.”
“Public communication” consists of the State and administrations informing the people (citizens) of what they want them to know, using tax money. I am familiar with the terms “propaganda” and “communiqués from imperial headquarters” during the war, and I am aware of the role they played in history. “Public communication,” which consists of the State and administrations conveying only what they want the people to know, has not provided us with any of the truths that we, the evacuees, wanted to know.
Moreover, in the city of Koriyama, which I fled, it was not until 2018 that outdoor school sports days resumed without time restrictions in the morning and afternoon ( that is, 7 years after the nuclear accident).
At the time of the evacuation, it was estimated that thyroid cancer in children affected only one or two people in a million. However, according to the results of a health survey of residents in Fukushima Prefecture, which at the time had only 370,000 children under the age of 18, nearly 400 cases have been recorded to date, which is clearly a significant increase. Radioactivity does not stop at prefectural borders, but Fukushima is the only prefecture where large-scale medical examinations are carried out at the expense of the State. It should be remembered that children who were between the ages of 6 and 16 at the time of the accident filed a class action lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power Company, claiming that their thyroid cancer was caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident. The children’s testimonies show that they were exposed without any protection, whereas children are particularly vulnerable to radiation. Today, they regret not having been protected. They say that they “knew nothing and were exposed without any protection to the rain and wind” and that “their parents told them not to go outside, but they went out to play with their friends anyway.”
5. Questions to the judges
Your Honors, I ask you to imagine the situation as human beings, putting yourselves in the shoes of the people affected in their daily lives. Would you really want to raise your children in a place where it is impossible to hold school sports days outdoors?
I don’t know if you have children. But you too were once children. Do you remember having time limits imposed on outdoor play, including on school sports days? Have you ever thought about the burden of living every day in fear, wondering whether what you touch or eat is harmful to your health, whether there is a risk of radiation?
Furthermore, if you were told that radioactive substances had been detected in the tap water you drink every day, would you be able to continue drinking it? Put yourselves in their shoes, imagine the faces of your parents who raised you, and think about it.
Isn’t it the normal rational feeling of any parent not to want to expose their child to any unnecessary exposure, even in the order of microsievert?
It is not a question of whether the radiation dose is low or high, but rather whether or not one is exposed.
It is up to me to decide whether or not I will be exposed. Isn’t this a situation where one can exercise one’s “right to self-determination” guaranteed by the Constitution?
6. Please put an end to this despair
I am not saying that I want to evacuate blindly, nor that I want to continue evacuating at all costs.
I repeat this again and again.
The right to escape radiation exposure and enjoy good health is nothing less than the most important fundamental right concerning people’s lives and health.
I believe that this right must be recognized equally for all.
It is perfectly natural, as human beings, to want to avoid any radiation exposure, and this should be recognized equally for everyone.
Furthermore, it is perfectly natural, as parents, to want to minimize potential health risks for children who still have their whole future ahead of them. I don’t think there is a single parent who does not want their child to grow up in good health.
There should be no shadow of uncertainty, no fear of radiation exposure, no worry about health.
During the trial, despite all the objective evidence presented regarding the contamination, the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company, both responsible for the accident and wishing to minimize its significance, set the compensation criteria themselves, which influenced the court’s compensation decisions. Under these circumstances, it cannot be said that the court is truly impartial.
Evacuation also involves costs. In the case of mother and children self-evacuation, a typical form of displacement following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, living expenses are doubled because families are separated into two geographically distinct households. The costs associated with family reunification must be borne by the families themselves. Reducing the costs associated with father-children reunification means imposing a heavy psychological burden on children by depriving them of their father’s presence. Without the nuclear accident, no one would have voluntarily chosen to relocate and break up their home. All of this clearly constitutes damage caused by the nuclear accident. For our family, this was the best possible solution—taken involuntarily—to escape radiation exposure, that is to say, it was a radioprotection measure.
On June 17, 2022, the Supreme Court handed down an unjustified and logically unconvincing ruling, refusing to recognize the State’s liability. Since then, lower courts have delivered numerous unjustified judgments minimizing the actual damages. However, regardless of the sentence pronounced by the courts, the damages suffered by the victims of radioactive contamination due to the nuclear accident are not going to disappear. I am still forced to live in exile today, and it is with great pain that I make the decision to continue my exile. In other words, the damages caused by the nuclear accident continues uninterrupted, even as I speak to you now.
Every time an unjust verdict is handed down, I am plunged back into despair by the judicial system itself. And all I feel is a sense of crisis, because humanity is giving up its right to avoid unnecessary exposure.
President Matsumoto Nobuyuki, Judge Terada Kohei on the right, Judge Shimizu Kohei on the left, please do not plunge the victims of the nuclear accident further into despair.
Do not deprive us of the right to be protected from radiation exposure and to enjoy good health.
Is there anything more valuable than human life and health?
I sincerely hope that the decision will confirm the principle that measures to avoid radiation exposure and protect life are paramount, and that this principle will be respected above all else.
Akiko MORIMATSU
Representative, Plaintiff Group of the Kansai Nuclear Disaster Compensation Lawsuit
Representative, Association of Evacuees from the Great East Japan Earthquake “Thanks & Dream”