Reversing the government's stance on a decades-old reclamation project, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Wednesday he won't appeal a court order to open two floodgates in the Isahaya Bay dike in Nagasaki Prefecture for five years.
Kan, who attacked what he deemed was a wasteful public works project long before his Democratic Party of Japan came to power, made the decision despite a plan by the agriculture ministry, which oversees the project to enclose part of the Ariake Sea, to appeal last week's Fukuoka High Court ruling.
"I made the ultimate decision not to appeal the ruling," Kan said. "I have personally visited the site since 1997 when the gates in the dike, nicknamed the 'guillotine,' were closed."