The town of Tomioka lies within the vast and evacuated exclusion zone set up around the Japanese nuclear power plant of Fukushima Daiichi which was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Before the nuclear catastrophe, Tomioka counted nearly 16,000 inhabitants. In this third of his series of reportages from within the exclusion zone, Italian photographer Antonio Pagnotta visited a hurriedly abandoned supermarket in the ghost town, where the chaos and horror that struck with the first quake, at 2.46 p.m. local time on March 11th last year, lies frozen in time. These compelling images were turned down for publication by Japanese media, which Pagnotta sees as an indication of the country’s continuing state of denial about the disaster.

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Devastated by an earthquake and ensuing tsunami that flattened part of the north-east Japanese coastline on March 11th 2011, the Japanese nuclear power plant of Fukushima Daiichi went into meltdown, causing high-level nuclear contamination of a vast surrounding area and the forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands of local inhabitants.

The most contaminated zone, set in a 20-kilometre radius encircling the plant, remains an official restricted area,  in which only temporary access is allowed, mainly for the dangerous and laborious clean-up work.

Beginning in April 2011, just weeks after the catastrophe began, Italian photographer Antonio Pagnotta clandestinely ventured into the exclusion zone (see a map detail here) for a series of photo-reportages which he completed in March this year. His brave work provides a rare and chilling vision of the effects of the cataclysm, the worst civil nuclear disaster since that of Chernobyl in 1986.

Mediapart is publishing a selection of his stunning pictures, brought together in a series of themes (see the first, 'The sole resident of Fukushima ghost town', by clicking here).

In this report, Antonio Pagnotta visits a hurriedly abandoned supermarket in Tomioka, a ghost town that lies within the vast and evacuated exclusion zone, where the chaos and horror that struck on March 11th 2011 lies frozen in time. These compelling images were turned down for publication by Japanese media, which Pagnotta sees as an indication of the country’s continuing state of denial about the disaster.

February 9th 2012. The earthquake, which measured 9.0 on the Richter scale (out of a maximum 10), and its several aftershocks brought goods crashing to the ground, bottles and cans still lying strewn in the Tom Tom supermarket aisles almost one year on.

 

February 9th 2012. The clothing department. Dummies lie broken and amputated, a macabre reminder of the quake and tsunami toll that left almost 16,000 people dead, more than 3,200 others still missing, and another 6,000 injured.

 

February 9th 2012. Tomioka was part of a 20 kilometre-wide area around the doomed Fukushima Daiichi plant evacuated on March 15th, after a nuclear cloud blew over the region. A total of 343,000 people were displaced, and are still living in temporary accomodation.

 

February 9th 2012.  The clothing department.

 

February 9th 2012. While boxes of soda drinks were sent crashing, the contents of the refrigerators stayed miraculously intact.

 

February 9th 2012. Antonio Pagnotta said that upon entering the supermarket he felt as if he were “an archaeologist of current times”.  

 

February 9th 2012. The hurriedly-abandoned supermarket bakery. Bread rolls lie ready for the oven, in appearance as fresh as the day they were left on their baking trays.

 

February 9th 2012. Curiously, the baked bread on display shows no sign of molding.

 

February 9th 2012. The fish stall. Among the boxes, those in the foreground contain squid, now completely dried.

 

February 9th 2012. The vegetable racks. To the right are lines of withered broccoli heads.

 

February 9th 2012.  This is the supermarket’s one and only cash till. It had been forced open.

 

February 9th 2012.  The façade of the supermarket.

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See also Mediapart’s interview with Antonio Pagnotta, in which he talks about about his chilling experiences in the exclusion zone and what he sees as Japan's state of denial about the dark consequences of the disaster. 

• Antonio Pagnotta, 55, is based in Italy. He frequently visits Japan, where he has worked as a photographer for more than two decades, covering a wide variety of stories, including the Aum Shinrikyo sect’s nerve gas attack on the Tokyo underground, and is renowned for his coverage of issues of nuclear safety in the country. He has also produced a series of major feature reports in his native Italy, where his work has been showcased in several exhibitions, including a 17-year reportage of the reconstruction of Basilicata, a quake-destroyed village in the south of the country. A freelance contributor to the Cosmos photo agency in Paris, his portfolio page can be found here.