A tragedy has clouded the history of the New Tokyo International Airport at Narita. The place names Narita and Sanrizuka have been associated with Japan's longest and fiercest political struggle against the government, a struggle that has seen 13 deaths, five of them policemen, and thousands of arrests.
Thirty-nine years after the government's fateful decision to build Tokyo's new international airport in Narita, the airport authority and the government are expected to adopt a new policy by the end of this month that may ostensibly help end the conflict between the government/airport authority and local farmers who have opposed airport construction. Narita International Airport Corp. and the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry will start procedures to extend the airport's provisional 2,180-meter second runway north to its planned full length of 2,500 meters, instead of south as originally planned. The extended second runway will be able to accommodate takeoffs and landings of long-haul jumbo jets.
The new move follows the airport authority's failure to persuade seven owners of 3.8 hectares of land located south of the second runway to sell their land to allow for the original planned extension. The advantage of the northward extension is that there is no further need for land acquisition talks with land owners -- a point that makes some people think that the 39-year-old conflict is about to end.