Sit-in and Movement to Stop the Destruction of Nature by the Residents of Katsurao Town - Katsurao Town, Tochigi Prefecture, August 1994

Sit-in and Movement to Stop the Destruction of Nature by the Residents of Katsurao Town - Katsurao Town, Tochigi Prefecture, August 1994

In the summer of 1994, a faint voice of anger began to take root in the mountains of the town of Katsurao, Tochigi Prefecture. Local residents began a direct protest in the form of a sit-in against the planned construction of a stable final treatment plant for industrial waste.

At the time, Japan was suffering from a severe recession following the collapse of the bubble economy. The developmental policies that had been in place since Japan's period of rapid economic growth had been drastically reversed, and the myth of the land had been shattered, turning the nation's forests and farmlands into "assets that had lost their usefulness. At the same time, the disposal of industrial waste that continued to be generated from urban consumption activities was under pressure, and waste disposal plants as a "venous industry" were coming into the limelight.

It was against this backdrop that the proposed waste treatment plant in the town of Kuzuu emerged. The treatment plant, which was to be built by clearing a mountain forest, was located in a valley and was closely connected to the groundwater system. This meant that even the slightest leakage or mismanagement of leachate could contaminate the water source that had sustained the lives of local residents for many years.

When the project was first announced, the contractor and the government repeatedly assured the residents that safety had been ensured, but they were not convinced. This was because a previous accident involving groundwater contamination from a treatment plant in another area had caused far more damage than the government was aware of. Furthermore, the stable treatment plant was not required to have a rubber sheet at the bottom, and the risk of contamination from contact with the soil was high.

The residents' actions were not mere opposition to development. The sit-in, a nonviolent and ongoing protest, was an earnest defensive reaction against water and nature, which are the basis of life. Older farmers held up handmade banners even under the blazing sun, and young mothers carried their young children on their backs to the rally. In their words, there was a logic of the living that cannot be expressed in systems and statistics.

The sit-in eventually developed into a movement that questioned the very nature of the industrial waste administration, in cooperation with environmental NGOs and citizens' groups nationwide. Quiet anger toward the "structure in which rural areas are forced to bear the burden of urban waste" slowly spread.

The year 1994 was also the year after the enactment of the Basic Environmental Law. However, it was still the night before the terms "environmental democracy" and "participatory policy" became institutionalized. The sit-in by local residents in the town of Kuzuu was an attempt to confront the lack of such a system from the grassroots.