Isahaya is a small city in Nagasaki known for very little. Its claim to fame is the land reclamation project that reduced the size of the bay of its namesake and has led to a handful of landmark legal battles, pitting neighbors against one another, area cities and towns against each other, and the prefecture and city against the Tokyo government. I wrote about the background to this project in this post last year.

This year’s plan followed last year’s quite closely, and the students eagerly engaged city officials, asking questions about their role in the opening of the gates, local wildlife threatened by the land reclamation project, and other points. Interestingly, in April 2011 a group of citizens in Isahaya filed a lawsuit in a Nagasaki prefectural court to demand that the dike gates remain closed. They argue that there is insufficient evidence that opening the gates will result in improved water quality and fish harvests in the Ariake Sea, and they claim that instead opening the gates will unnecessarily threaten their livelihoods and farmlands. They argue that the state has already compensated the fishermen for their trouble, and that the state now has to fulfill its responsibility to the rest of Isahaya’s population by maintaining the integrity of the dike.

After a short lecture at City Hall, we traveled past the newly reclaimed farmland that is now fully in production. We drove past people harvesting onions and cabbages, and it is only May. One major point of contention is the fact that the current farmers’ 5-year leases will expire at the end of March 2012, and many are uncertain whether they should renew, especially since the government is set to open the gates in December 2013, during the next lease term. These are uncertain times for everyone involved, not least the City officials with whom we spoke. They want to protect their citizens, which becomes a desire to protect “land” people over “sea” people. When asked where he would be on the actual day the state opens the dike gates in Dec 2013, our host looked at me dumbfounded and said he didn’t know. It will certainly be a day of a media frenzy, and it is unfair that public servants should get stuck in the middle of the politics of the construction projects that have been so prevalent in postwar Japan.

Orientation at the Isahaya Bay Land Reclamation Project

Climbing to the wetlands overlook

Later - atop the 7km-long dike separating Isahaya Bay from the newly created freshwater reservoir and farmland.

Visiting Isahaya stimulates many questions in students’ minds, mostly by showing the endless complexity of the mundane. They see that there is nothing simple and straightforward about the work of the state, even construction, which is normally a non-issue in Singapore. This project makes them wonder why they are so complacent to all of the changes taking place at home.