Imagine waking up one morning only to be told that the farmland you are living and working on would be expropriated.

Some nightmares seem to never disappear. Back in the ‘60s the government must have thought it was a good idea to choose the middle of nowhere in Chiba for the site of the New Tokyo International Airport (aka Narita). Faced immediately with strong resistance from the local farming community, the project got off to a bad start even before the first slab of concrete materialized. When it finally opened in 1978, eight years late, it didn’t even have a train station. For the next twelve years travelers had to change onto a bus for the final journey to the terminal — a short but scary ride that took them through a maze of high walls, barb-wire fences and gates manned by riot police with more armor than your average samurai. Quite a way to enter and leave Japan! In December 1990 they finally managed to complete the underground tracks linking the terminal to the rail network.

Today a total of 45,000 people work for the airport, which provides ¥10 billion in tax revenue and 40% of the total budget of the Narita municipality. A second terminal has since been added and a second runway is planned. But let’s look at the sequence of events in more detail.

When selection of the site near Sanrizuka in Narita City and the northern part of Shibayama Township was announced on July 4, 1966, it came out of the blue. In choosing this site for the New Tokyo International Airport, the government had failed to consult with local residents about the project. Until then, the primary candidate for the airport had been neighboring Tomisato Village, but farmers there learned about the project and promptly organized to oppose it, forcing the government to revise its plans and adopt a less honest approach.

Afraid of another rebuff, the government purposely avoided prior consultation and without any warning announced the selection of the Narita-Shibayama site following a cabinet meeting. No attempt whatsoever was made to obtain the consent of local residents beforehand, although, after the decision had been made, a public hearing on the airport was held in Chiba City. At that time, people were allowed to air their views and let off steam, but the hearing was primarily for public consumption as the government refused point blank to reconsider its decision.

To make their voices heard, the effected people formed the “League of Sanrizuka and Shibayama Farmers Against Narita Airport,” drawing up the front line for the battle that was to follow. In October 1967, the government mobilized riot police to forcibly restrain local farmers angered by a survey of the outer site. In 1971, the government and the farmers clashed violently on two occasions as authorities forcibly confiscated land inside the site designated for Phase I construction. In September that year, during the second round of expropriations, an elderly woman, Koizumi Yone, was evicted from her home. Her house, the land around it and a rice field were confiscated. To resist, the farmers (their ranks swelled with supporters from the student movement) built underground strongholds on their land, chained themselves to trees and defended themselves with their bare hands. Images of this fighting flashed around the world, and Sanrizuka earned the unflattering sobriquet of “Japan’s Vietnam.” During stage-two expropriations, three riot police were killed in the fighting, and one of the farmer’s friends took his own life in despair. Tragically, the loss of life on both sides did not stop there.

The government originally set completion of the first 4000-meter runway for April 1971. Because of widespread local protests and problems building a fuel pipeline, however, Narita's Phase I was postponed numerous times. In March 1978, just days before the airport was scheduled to open, supporters of the farmers occupied the control tower, causing damage that resulted in a two-month delay. A single runway was finally inaugurated on May 20, 1978.

In the early 1990s, a group of opposition farmers began seeking a peaceful solution to the airport problem. From November 1991 to May 1993, they sat down with local and national government officials as well as airport representatives in an attempt to analyze the underlying causes of the airport dispute and find an alternative to physical confrontation. The “Symposium on the Narita Airport Problem” met 15 times. When it ended, farmers and officials convened the “Narita Round Table Talks,” which were held 12 times between September 1993 and October 1994. Through these face-to-face discussions both sides agreed to renounce the use of force and negotiate in good faith.

In July 1991, the Narita Airport Corporation began building a second runway inside Toho Hamlet. However, protests forced the Corporation to cease work. Then, in December 1996, the Transport Ministry announced it would complete the project by the year 2000, a date it subsequently revised to March 2001. In May 1999, ignoring the wishes of Toho residents, it suddenly announced it would finish the second runway by June 2002. This is the same attitude the authorities displayed over 33 years ago when they dropped their original bombshell. Once again, they failed to obtain the consent of local residents. Their current attitude seems to be: If you don’t sell up, we’ll build a runway right up to your front door. Having been bullied for over 33 years the residents of Toho Hamlet are unlikely to give in to this latest round of intimidation.

The second runway will effect eight families, or a total of 36 people, that live and work in the Toho hamlet. In addition, 14 employees commute to the hamlet every day from nearby villages. Five dogs and eight cats complete the community, not to forget 6,000 hens and 40 ducks. Toho Hamlet has a vegetable packing center, chicken farms, a pickle factory, an organic compost center, a lodging house, a hamlet shrine, and a cemetery. An old unpaved road runs through the hamlet, built by the farmers who first homesteaded the land here after World War II.

Due to resistance from the inhabitants of Toho Hamlet and their refusal to sell their land, the project to build a second Narita runway has had to be repeatedly revised. Originally aiming for a 2,500-meter runway with completion by March 2001, the airport will now have to make do with a runway shortened to 2,180 meters with the whole site shifted by some 800 meters. But worse than this, if the runway is actually built, its southern end will abut on three homes, three chicken farms, the vegetable packing center, the pickle factory, the lodging house, and some fields.

Airplanes continually taking off and landing at very low altitudes directly above the homes and farms — with the accompanying noise, high-intensity vibrations, jet exhaust fumes, and the constant threat of falling debris — will make life in the hamlet intolerable. Even before the first airplane takes off, however, the building of access roads and related prefectural projects will bring the disrupting influence of heavy construction right to the eaves of the hamlet’s houses and the edge of their fields. In short, the new runway is nothing less than a threat to the continued existence of the Toho community.

People may ask why the farmers don’t just sell their land and move to a different location. Or perhaps, why the farmers can’t just step aside in the interests of smooth travel for the legions of passengers who use Narita yearly. To find out about the deeply entrenched views of the farmers, Tokyo Journal sat down with Noriko Ishii, one of 10 female supporters who married into the Toho community some 25 years ago. Ms. Ishii was a student when the fight against the airport was at its height. In the ‘70s a lot of students sympathized with the plight of the farmers and showed their support by helping to protect the land.