Japan Former Prime Ministers Call for Nuclear-Free Country During Rock Festival: Reports

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RIA Novosti, PUBLISHED 01.10.2014

Former Japanese Prime Ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Morihiro Hosokawa have taken to the stage as anti-nuclear campaigners during the country's No Nukes 2014 rock festival, the Japan Times reported Tuesday.

"We must create a country where nuclear power generation is zero," Koizumi shouted onstage to some 2,500 people attending the event, according to the newspaper.

"Let's develop our country without nuclear power," he added.

Both former prime ministers expressed their strong opposition to nuclear power generation during the event held on September 29 to September 30, the Japan Times reported.

Koizumi spoke with reporters about the dangers of nuclear power plants particularly in natural disaster-prone Japan stating, "In Japan, earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions could occur in various locations. It's a country that's not allowed to have nuclear power plants," he stressed.

Though Koizumi and Hosokawa do not have any plans to take part in the gubernatorial election in Fukushima Prefecture on October 26, both feel hopeful of the country's anti-nuclear mentality trending.

The rock concert organized by Ryuichi Sakomoto has been held annually since 2012 following the Fukushima No. 1 disaster in 2011.

Japan's most recent brush with nuclear disaster, the largest nuclear accident since Chernobyl, was on March 11, 2011, involving the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant failure that saw a meltdown of three of the plant's six nuclear reactors. The plant was hit by a tsunami triggered by the Tohoku earthquake, causing massive amounts of radioactive material flowing into the ocean.

Topics: Asia, Japan

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