Genpatsu to Minshushugi – Hoshano Osen soshite Kokusaku to Tatakau Hitotachi (Nuclear Energy and Democracy: Fukushima’s Radioactive Contamination and the People’s Struggle Against National Policy) (Kaihoshuppansha, 2024) is a collection of interviews Hirano has conducted over the past 12 years on the Fukushima nuclear disaster.  The interviews reveal how nuclear power, promoted globally as a state-led policy, has essentially ignored or trampled on the democratic process, and has been a form of “enclosure movement” rationalized as a linchpin of national and local economic growth through the collaboration of giant capital and government. They interrogate these issues from the perspectives of local community, self-governance, medicine, nuclear science, media, and activism. Interviewees include farmers, documentarians, activists, local officials, village chiefs, local innkeepers, scientists, and environmentalists. The book proposes new visions of democracy and self-determination.