In 1966, the Japanese government announced plans to build an international airport near Tokyo, in the rural areas of Sanrizuka and Shibayama. This decision was imposed on local farmers without consultation, with the state assuming it could acquire the land without significant opposition. Instead of passively accepting dispossession, the farmers’ resistance grew into a long-term struggle to defend not only their land but an entire way of life. The resistance in Sanrizuka drew solidarity from radical student movements and other grassroots organisations across Japan to preserve the commons. Over the decades, the struggle evolved through phases of political intensity, pushing back against state abuse. 

The Sanrizuka movement is an enduring model for defending territory and the solidarity this generates. The farmers and their allies viewed resistance as an ongoing process, deeply integrated into everyday life. Their fight was waged not only in confrontations with riot police but also in daily acts of working the land, organizing, and refusing to relinquish ties to the community. This vision of life as struggle shaped the movement and resonated in other conflicts for land including the Larzac movement (1971-1981), the ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes (2008-2018) in France, and the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, USA (2021–ongoing). 

This programme explores Sanrizuka through documentaries, archival footage, and documents spanning four decades, including rushes shot between 1968 and 1977 by Ogawa Productions, a filmmaking collective immersed in the struggle. The programme also includes films such as Sanrizuka Notes #3 – The March of the Earth (1979) by Fukuda Katsuhiko, a former member of Ogawa Pro who continued making films on his own in Sanrizuka; a rare set of slides from 1978; and materials from a project made in 2024 to preserve images of  remaining agricultural fields where the former village of Heta used to be, one of the main focus of resistance in the 1970s and where Ogawa Productions lived, an area soon to be cleared for the airport’s planned expansion.

Programme organised by Ricardo Matos Cabo, with thanks to and in dialogue with Aikawa Yoichi. Materials kindly provided by: Narita Airport and Community Historical Museum, Athénée Français Cultural Centre Tokyo, Hatano Yukie, Postwar Japan Moving Image Archive, PARC (Pacific Asia Resource Centre), Cinémathèque de Toulouse, and ISKRA.