Narita Airport Riots

[AG]

I thought this may be of interest to some members here. During the 1970s there were some very violent protests that resulted from plans by the Japanese Government to construct Narita Airport, some 65km east of Tokyo. The airport was planned to provide extra flight capacity to complement Haneda Airport, which was a lot closer to central Tokyo but was beyond capacity at the time. The plan involved acquiring and forcing the relocation of hundreds of people in the lands around the town of Narita. This is what happens when there's a lack of proper communication and consultation with the affected community:



A good airport is one that is easily accessible to the locations it is serving and has sufficient capacity to cope with passenger numbers and expansion. Narita meets neither of these conditions. Narita Airport is barely half the size it was originally planned to be and the fastest trip into central Tokyo still takes almost an hour (although it will drop to about 40 minutes when the Narita Rapid Line opens). What's amazing is that security at Narita Airport to this day is still incredibly tight due to the protests which still occur on a regular basis, but not to the extremes shown in the video.