Japanese Farmers Declared War on the Government — and Nearly Won

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]In 1966, the Japanese government announced it would build a new international airport and simply assumed the farmers living there would leave. They were wrong. What followed was a 40-year conflict that baffled politicians, shook the nation, and still has no clean resolution. Why did ordinary rice farmers hold off one of the world's most powerful bureaucracies for decades? When Tokyo selected Sanrizuka [music] in Chiba Prefecture as the site for what would become Narita International Airport, officials expected compliance.

[00:00:35]Instead, local farming families formed the Hantai Domei, the opposition alliance. They built steel watchtowers, dug underground bunkers, and trained alongside radical student groups. Riot police stormed the fields. Farmers fought back with bamboo spears. Three officers and several protesters lost their lives in clashes through the 1970s. The airport finally opened in 1978, [music] but on only one runway because a core of families simply refused to move. Some holdouts remained on their land well into the 2000s, surrounded by one of Asia's [music] busiest airports. The question that haunts historians is this: The government had every legal tool available.

[00:01:21]>> [music] >> So, why couldn't it finish what it started? Was it guilt? Political miscalculation? Or did [music] these farmers reveal something about Japan that the state couldn't afford to admit?

[00:01:32]Follow for more unsolved mysteries from [music] Japan.