
OVER ALLs was founded in 2016 by Akazawa, 38, who is in charge of planning, and Yuki Yamamoto, 40, a painter responsible for production.Īkazawa was talking with an acquaintance about how a run-down section in Los Angeles was transformed into a showcase of murals. One of the patrons at the counter of his Joe's Man Nigo happened to be Takato Akazawa, president of OVER ALLs Co., a mural production company whose creations include designs at three Starbucks stores in Tokyo and Yokohama. In June 2019, a fortuitous thing happened at the “izakaya” pub he runs in Tokyo's Sangenjaya district.

He imagined it would be a great way to revitalize Futaba, which seems frozen in time. Takasaki, 39, learned last year about a project that transformed a disused shipyard in Amsterdam into a gathering site with the help of art.

Inspiration for the hand graffiti came from Jo Takasaki, who evacuated to Tokyo after the nuclear disaster. While almost all of the town is still designated as off-limits due to high radiation levels, evacuation orders were lifted for some areas this past spring, including around the new station, allowing people to visit without a permit. The striking graffiti art boasts an index finger pointing at the first word of a slogan, "Here We Go!!!," in front of the east exit of JR Futaba Station as if to say the town is ready to make a fresh start.

FUTABA, Fukushima Prefecture-A large hand-painted image on a wall in a vacant lot jumps out at visitors exiting a train station in Futaba, which was transformed into a ghost town after 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima No.
