4 votes

My ex-father-in-law, the Japanese radical who opposed Narita Airport

Posted by Durallet
Tags: koji kitahara, sanrizuka struggle, new left, riots, transport, aviation, airports, japan.tokyo, narita, cities.capital, author.david mcneill
https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/09/27/my-ex-father-in-law-the-japanese-radical/

Link information

This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.

Published
Sep 27 2021
Word count
2297 words

2 comments

  1. [2]
    Durallet
    Link
    Article Excerpt Archive footage and video essays AP Archive historical report: THE BATTLE AGAINST NARITA AIRPORT Professor Jelkington: The Extremely Violent History Behind Tokyo's Narita...

    Article Excerpt

    Years before we met, I learned about my Japanese ex-father-in-law in a foreign newspaper. A story in the late 1990s reviewed the decades-long fight to shut down Japan’s main international airport. My ex-wife’s dad, Koji Kitahara, led the struggle, which was violent and bitter.

    It was waged with bulldozers, truncheons, sickles, and Molotov cocktails. Thousands of people were imprisoned or injured over the years and several–including local activists and policemen–were killed. Inflamed rhetoric and implacable opposition on both sides were features of the fight: if riot police surrounding Narita International Airport once let down their guard, my ex-father-in-law warned an American reporter, “not one single airplane” would take off.

    “Yep, that’s dad,” said my then-wife when I read out the story to her.

    Archive footage and video essays

    AP Archive historical report: THE BATTLE AGAINST NARITA AIRPORT
    Professor Jelkington: The Extremely Violent History Behind Tokyo's Narita International Airport
    MajorSamm: Summer in Sanrizuka - 1968

    1 vote
    1. cfabbro
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Half As Interesting also did a short video about one of the protestors whose family farm still lies in the middle of the airport, and it showcases a bit more of the crazy footage from the protests...

      Half As Interesting also did a short video about one of the protestors whose family farm still lies in the middle of the airport, and it showcases a bit more of the crazy footage from the protests too:
      The Farmer That Lives in the Middle of Tokyo Narita Airport

      1 vote