Helmeted demonstrators on a grassy bank, armed with flagpoles, c. 1970s. Photo credit Takashi Hamaguchi

On this day in 1966, the Japanese government announced the construction of an airport on farmland in rural Sanrizuka, without permission of displaced locals. The struggle was led by the Sanrizuka-Shibayama United Opposition League against Construction of the Narita Airport, which locals formed under the leadership of opposition parties the Communist Party and Socialist Party. The struggle resulted in significant delays in the opening of the airport, as well as deaths on both sides.

At its height, the union mobilised 17,500 people for a general rally, while thousands of riot police were brought in on several occasions.

The area around Sanrizuka had been farmland since the Middle Ages, and, prior to the 1940s, much of the land had been privately owned by the Japanese Imperial Household.

Many locals were economically reliant on the Imperial estate at Goryō Farm, and local farmers had a strong economic and emotional attachment to the land. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, large tracts of royal land were sold off and subsequently settled by poor rural laborers.

In the 1960s, the Japanese government planned to build a second airport in the Tokyo area to support Japan’s rapid economic development. After meeting resistance from locals on the site’s first chosen location, the rural town of Tomisato, the government was donated remaining land in Sanrizuka by the Imperial Family.

Locals in Sanrizuka were outraged when the government announced its plans. The Sanrizuka-Shibayama United Opposition League Against the Construction of Narita Airport (or Hantai Dōmei) was formed in 1966, and began to engage in a variety of tactics of resistance, including legal buy-ups, sit-ins, and occupations.

Meanwhile, the Japanese radical student movement was growing, and the League soon formed an alliance with active New Left groups; one major factor drawing the groups the together was that, under the US-Japan Security Treaty, the US military had free access to Japanese air facilities. As a result, it was likely the airport would be used for transporting troops and arms in the Vietnam War.

The demonstrators built huts and watchtowers along proposed construction sites. On October 10th, 1967, the government attempted to conduct a land survey, backed by over 2000 riot police. Clashes quickly broke out, and Hantai Domei leader Issaku Tomura was photographed being brutalized by police, further inflaming anti-airport sentiment.

Protests further grew and intensified over the next few years as the state pressed on with attempts to build the airport. Protestors would dig into the ground, build fortifications, and arm themselves against police. Construction was delayed by years, and the conflict would cost the government billions of yen.

On September 16th, 1971, three police officers were killed during an eminent domain expropriation. Four days later, police forcibly removed and destroyed the house of an elderly woman, an incident that became yet another symbol of state oppression to the opposition.

One student committed suicide, saying in his suicide note that “I detest those who brought the airport to this land”. In 1972, the protestors built a 60 meter-high steel tower near the runway in order to disrupt flight tests. Conflict continued through much of the 1970s.

In 1977, the government announced plans to open the airport within the year. In May, police destroyed the tower while demonstrators attempted to cling on to it, provoking a new wave of widespread conflict. One protestor was killed after being struck in the head by a tear gas canister. In March 1978, the first runway was set to open, but a few days prior, a group of saboteurs burrowed into the main control tower, barricaded themselves inside, and proceeded to lay waste to the tower’s equipment and infrastructure, delaying the opening yet again to May 20th, 1978.

Resistance continued after the airport was opened. Although many locals began to accept the airport and leave the land, the focus of Hantai Dōmei shifted to opposing plans for additional terminals and runways, as the airport’s current size still only reflected a fraction of initial plans.

Clashes continued through the 1980s - on October 20th, 1985, members of the communist New Left group Chukaku-ha broke though police lines with logs and flagpoles, successfully attacking infrastructure in one of the last large-scale battles of the resistance campaign. Guerilla actions and bombings continued as late as the 1990s.

Although this campaign of resistance has largely shifted out of public attention in Japan, its presence is still felt: until 2015, all visitors were required to present ID cards for security reasons, and the airport still remains only a third of its initially-planned size. The Sanrizuka Struggle has never completely ended, and the Opposition League still exists and holds rallies.

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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

Theory:

  • Pineal_Eye [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    5 months ago

    By fascists themselves: (CW: Omega Brain Rot)

    -Fourth Political Theory- Aleksandr Dugin • I know liberals exaggerate how much influence he’s had on Putin, but he has legitimately had an influence on the Western far-right.

    -Stalin: The Enduring Legacy- Kerry R. Bolton • If you ever wonder why some fascists like Joseph Stalin (besides brainworms), he basically lays it out here. (Note: this isn’t to indict Stalin or anything, but occasionally you run into some wild-ass opinions (wild even for fascists), and this is one of them)

    -Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy- Thomas Crean • Catholic integralist (Catholic fascist basically) explains what a Catholic (and reactionary) vision of political order would look like.

    -American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition- Andrew J. Bacevich • This guy is not a fascist proper, but he is an anti-war conservative (his books are published by Haymarket Books and he works at the Quincey Institute if I am not mistaken) and in this book, he compiled a collection of writings by mainstream American conservatives. I still think it is important to know what mainstream conservatives think, at least to rebut the talking points that they will throw at you. (Beware: 833 pages long)

    By others (non-fascists):

    • Joseph de Maistre’s Life, Thought, and Influence: Selected Studies o Counter-Enlightenment catholic thinker. This can help you possibly understand how Catholic reactionaries out there think. The reactionaries’ project, in part, is to turn back the Enlightenment and this guy was one the O.G.s in wanting to do this.

    -The Anatomy of Fascism- Robert O. Paxton • Has a definition and analysis of fascism that many leftists like due to the focus on praxiological aspects of fascism

    -The Rhetoric of Reaction- Albert O. Hirschmann • Basically, what the title says. It’s an analysis of the common themes present in the rhetoric of reactionaries. (you’ll see it everywhere after you read this)

    -The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin- Corey Robin • Robin analyzes what reactionaries of various stripes seem to have in common. A bit of a survey work with some analysis.

    -The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right- Enzo Traverso • Lays out what “post-fascism” looks like these days (I doubt people on hexbear would bother with the label of “post-fascism” given that you should treat them the same way as you would treat fascists. Nonetheless, some people do use this label and this is a good analysis of this current.)

    -Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right- Ronald Beiner • A tracing of the ideological roots of right wingers like Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon.

    -The Political Right and Equality: Turning Back the Tide of Egalitarian Modernity- Matthew McManus • Provides a genealogy of the intellectual roots of the political right beyond Nietzsche and Heidegger. Also works as kind of a survey of all the most politically brainwormed philosophers that more progressive forces of history have had to contend with. (on the intellectual plane, at least)

    -Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International- Kevin Coogan • The subject of this book, Francis Parker Yockey, did try to create something like a fascist international and this is his story of how he tried to do it.

    -Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism- George Hawley • A survey of right-wing intellectual movements that differ from mainstream conservatism and each other.

    Let men know if you need more stalin-approval