Government ministers, foreign press and ambassadors including New Zealand’s Mark Sinclair are sitting in a glitzy conference room in downtown Tokyo, looking at stunning photographs on powerpoint of a northern Japanese city.

The photographs show a 1000-year-old cherry blossom tree, autumn flowers, hot springs hidden in a forest, and a pristine skifield.

Next to the conference room, beneath chandeliers, the city’s local produce is on display. Guests consume fresh strawberries, slivers of tuna sashimi, rare beef, apple-flavoured beer and warm sake with approving nods and murmurs.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida steps on to a stage. “The food is delicious,” he says. “And safe.”

The city in the photographs and the source of the produce is Fukushima. Four years on from the Great East Japan Earthquake, the prefecture is undertaking one of the trickiest PR campaigns in the world - revitalising a region synonymous with nuclear catastrophe.

Struck by three disasters - earthquake, tsunami and a nuclear crisis - over four days in March 2011, Fukushima is beginning to recover. Around 45,000 of the 165,000 people who fled when three of Fukushima Daichi’s nuclear reactors exploded have trickled back to their homes.

Evacuation orders have been lifted 30km away from the stricken power plant, though no one is allowed closer than 20km and decommissioning the plant will take up to 40 years.

But Fukushima is now battling a fourth disaster - fear.

By every measure, the food it produces is safe. But the fear of contamination lingers.

This is despite extreme measures by Fukushima officials to prove their products are radiation-free. Not a single bag of rice or piece of fruit was allowed to leave the region until it met Japan’s stringent standards - around six times stricter than European import standards. This meant food which would be deemed safe in every country in the world never made it to a supermarket shelf over a period of three years.

Last year, 10.7 million bags of rice were checked for traces of contamination. Zero point zero per cent tested positive. To fulfil this task, Fukushima’s officials had to invent a machine which could mass-measure products for radiation, similar to a Geiger counter on a conveyor belt.

Thirteen countries, including New Zealand, have lifted import restrictions on Japanese products which were imposed after the disaster.

Fish stocks such as Pacific cod are slowly recovering off the coast of Fukushima, though fishing is taking place only on a trial basis.

The atmospheric radiation level in Fukushima is now similar to that of New York and London.

The region’s atomic legacy is being dismantled. Last week, officials approved the removal of pro-nuclear signs, one of which read: “Nuclear power: the energy for a bright future.” The prefecture is investing in renewable energy, in particular wind farms.

One of Fukushima’s golden daughters, mountain climber Junko Tabei, has been recruited to remind people that the region was once a thriving rice bowl, fishery and a pretty coastal village. The first woman to climb Mt Everest tells the audience in the Tokyo ballroom that her childhood memories in Fukushima were of plum, cherry and peach orchards.

Pointing to a photograph of a turquoise-blue lake surrounded by flowers, she says: “If Chopin or Mozart were here I always wondered what they would have composed.”

Prince William visited Fukushima two weeks ago and ate its food in front of the TV cameras to allay concerns. Mr Sinclair, who is based in Tokyo, did the same in January. “Please get your Prime Minister to come too,” a senior diplomat urged the Herald at the Tokyo event.

Fukushima’s revitalisation campaign even has a mascot - a round, yellow bird named Kitiban.

Yet still, the fear remains.

“We really need a celebrity or famous actor or actress to come and eat the food,” Reconstruction Minister Wataru Takeshita tells the audience in the Tokyo ballroom, a little deflated.

Rice farmer Noboru Saito, who lives 50km inland from the Fukushima Daichi power plant, says the “rumours” of ongoing contamination is killing his livelihood.
“There is no radiation,” he says. “Zero radiation. But our food cannot be sold. So what should we do?”

Farmers have fled the region, retired, or in some cases, committed suicide.

Mr Saito has a haunted look on his deeply creased face. Holding a picture of his plot of land, he says: “Before the earthquake 50 people were farming here. Now I’m the only one.”

When the great quake came, and the tsunami reared up over Japan’s east coast, Mr Saito said he did not run for the mountains. “It was shaking too much, I thought the mountain would come to me.”

He simply sat on the ground in the middle of a field, helpless. He thought this would be his low point. But overcoming the outside world’s fears has been tougher still.

“Before, we thought if we checked the radiation rate and there wasn’t any radiation people would buy our product. But it wasn’t the case.”