The Battle for Narita Airport | Narita, Japan’s busiest airport, was once the site of a titanic civil struggle that pitted thousands of armed activists and farmers against the state

9 comments

1. It’s an interesting place to explore on google maps. There is still a road with a farm and a small shrine in the middle of the runways, even has [street view.](https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7849629,140.3934106,3a,60y,259.25h,81.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sR0yngvSUlr6c0RWaZg2BNw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

2. I remember as a kid arriving in the mid80’s being astonished at the amount of riot police around. Always just assumed they took security seriously. Never knew about the history till much later.

3. One thing the author doesn’t seem to have gotten right is that most of the farmers in the area, the ones who actually owned their land, roundly supported the airport and were not part of this union of the Leftist activists and people of the land, because a) they were all solidly LDP, over 80% in support of the airport and b) ¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥

   It is really a kind of pathetic story. Japan is the land where Communism truly came to die.

4. Wow fascinating, I’ll never look at Narita the same

5. I thought everybody knew this already….

6. Fascinating read! Thanks for posting that.

7. The History of Japan podcast has a really good [episode](http://isaacmeyer.net/2019/10/episode_309/) on it, if you want to listen to it in audio form.

8. Another big issue that is shockingly unknown these days.

   The mere existence of a heavy far left presence in Japan in the mid 20th century seems to have just had the 1984 treatment.

9. I have a documentary about this, its fascinating, though its hard to follow and lots of raw footage of the towns people building crazy forts and fighting with the construction crews, its always the airport I have flown into and now when I fly back Ill feel a bit guilty