An elderly farmer has refused to surrender his land and still tends vegetables on a plot now enclosed by an airport.
He has watched developers gradually surround his fields.
Seventy-three-year-old Takao Shito has faced that change for years.
His family farm sits in Tokyo, on land now known as part of Narita Airport.
Narita is one of two international airports serving the Greater Tokyo Area.
The airport was created in the 1960s.
Last year it handled approximately 15.42 million terminal passengers.
Many travellers likely never learned that building the airport met fierce resistance from farmers forced off their land.
Protests began as the airport was planned and have continued for decades.
Shito still refuses to move, even though his home and fields now sit between two runways.
KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images
Instead of the fresh rural air one expects on a farm, Shito endures constant engine noise and the smell of jet fuel.
He remains steadfast.
“It’s my life,” he told CBS News. “I have no intention of ever leaving.”
Shito’s family has worked this land for nearly a century.
They wanted to buy it after World War II, but military service prevented the purchase.
Instead, the family has leased the plot for generations.
Much of the area Shito farms has been declared government property.
He does own a small section that developers have targeted for airport expansion.
KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images
William Andrews, a Tokyo-based writer and translator, says the Narita protest has become Japan’s longest-running social movement.
He adds the struggle is “not just about an airport.”
“This case of Mr. Shito has come to encapsulate the final gasps of the movement … the very last concrete struggle,” he said.
Some demonstrations turned violent over the years, and deaths occurred among protesters.
In February, riot police clashed with Shito and his supporters again.
Authorities erected tall fences that separate his house and shed from the fields.
Shito still refuses to leave.
“The best outcome would be for the airport to shut down,” he said.
“But what’s important is to keep farming my ancestral land.”