Photo/Illutration Land reclamation work is under way in an area south of U.S. Marine Corps Camp Schwab in the Henoko district of Nago, Okinawa Prefecture. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki has come under pressure to reverse his rejection of the central government's proposed changes to land reclamation work for the relocation of a U.S. military base within his prefecture under a Supreme Court ruling on Sept. 4.

The top court upheld a high court ruling, which obligates Tamaki to approve the solidifying work of the soft seabed off the Henoko district of Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, where a replacement facility for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, also in the prefecture, is planned. 

If Tamaki, who won two gubernatorial elections on a promise to block the base relocation, again refuses to approve the design changes, the central government could take a series of steps to do so by proxy, including another lawsuit.

In the lawsuit, the prefectural government argued that the land minister’s directive to the prefecture to approve the changes is illegal and should be canceled.

But Presiding Judge Masaaki Oka of the top court’s First Petty Bench rejected an appeal from Okinawa Prefecture, finalizing the decision by the Fukuoka High Court’s Naha branch in March that ruled against the prefectural government.

The central government started the landfill work off Henoko in 2018. 

In April 2020, the Defense Ministry applied to make changes to the land reclamation work with the prefectural government to shore up the soft ground discovered in an area north of U.S. Marine Corps Camp Schwab in Oura Bay where the landfill work has yet to begin. 

The prefectural government rejected the changes, which include driving more than 70,000 piles into the seabed 70 meters below the surface of the sea, on grounds of insufficient studies on the stability of the ground in November 2021.

However, the land minister, who is in charge of a law regulating land reclamation, canceled the prefecture’s disapproval based on the Local Autonomy Law and issued the directive to the prefecture to approve the changes in April 2022.

The prefectural government filed a lawsuit with the Fukuoka High Court’s Naha branch in August 2022 after the Central and Local Government Dispute Management Council, a third-party organ of the internal affairs ministry, rejected its challenge.

The prefectural government argued that the directive is illegal, but the high court concluded in its March ruling that it was legal, saying that the prefectural government abused its discretionary power, and rejected the prefecture’s arguments.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the prefectural government said the high court erred in interpretations of the law as the prefectural governor has broad discretion over approval of changes to construction work.

However, the top court’s First Petty Bench dismissed the prefecture’s claims on Sept. 4

The prefectural government is seeking to nullify the central government’s countermeasures in another lawsuit, but legal precedents indicate that it will be difficult to win the lawsuit.

The prefectural government had challenged the land minister’s decision to cancel the prefectural government’s disapproval of the changes to land reclamation work, but the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the prefectural government in August.

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