When a major earthquake and tsunami rocked Japan on March11, 2011, three Fukushima nuclear power plants were badly damaged. Although a meltdown is not currently considered imminent, according to Japanese officials, substantial amounts of radiation are leaking from the plants and causing contamination through food, water, and air–and things are only getting worse.
Misashi Kishimoto, the Japanese manga artist who created the world renowned manga and hit anime TV show Naruto, lives in the Okayama Prefecture in the Chūgoku region of Japan, on Honshū island. Okayama is about 423 miles (680 km) from the source of the radiation in Fukushima. Assuming Masashi Kishimoto is still in his home prefecture (and is not traveling), the likelihood of his being in significant danger seems to be slight.
According to an online site for the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH):
“The risk in Tokyo, and most other centers outside the 20-kilometer exclusion zone, remains very low at this stage,” according to the SMH website. But remember–this doesn’t mean other areas of Japan are not experiencing heightened levels of radiation–because they are. They’re just not at the point where it’s thought to be lethal at this point, or even extremely dangerous.
Of course, the situation with Fukushima is extremely volatile, and things could change quickly.
According to the U.S.-based Voice of America website, one American nuclear expert has confirmed that nuclear radiation could travel across the ocean from from Japan to the U.S. West Coast if a complete meltdown occurs at one of the Fukushima nuclear power plants.
Considering Fukushima, Japan is about 6700 miles (10,783 km) from the U.S. and Masashi Kishimoto lives substantially closer than that to Fukushima, it stands to reason that Kishimoto–in addition to everyone else in Japan–is at risk for increased levels of radiation exposure if a nuclear meltdown occurs. The question is how much risk–and that’s something we can’t know until the Fukushima situation is completely under control and the crisis abates. And officials are saying that this could take quite some time.