A newspaper article that called attention to the May 1981 opening of the Aoi Mugi No Ie workshop for the mentally ill, mainly schizophrenics, in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, sparked a 15-year campaign by local residents to drive the facility away.
The article in the Asahi Shimbun, which hailed the opening of the publicly subsidized workshop as a triumph for parents of the mentally ill in the area, stirred other residents' concerns over having the facility nearby, the second such workshop in the prefecture.
"I didn't feel safe living next to someone whose thoughts are hard to guess and whose actions are hard to predict," said a 77-year-old housewife who lived next door to the workshop and led the residents' protest until it relocated in 1996.