Abstract
In Iriomote island（Okinawa）, since 1990 to 2001, there was a continual dispute about an agricultural land development project, between the farmers who were beneficiaries of this project, and the local naturalists group who had claimed that this project might cause serious damage to the natural environment.
The local government （the prefecture） intended to solve the dispute in a conference, among those two actors and the prefecture and the town. But the naturalists group rejected to participate in it, because the conference was to make a consensus to progress the development, just reducing the area. The local government expressed its interpretation that the dispute remains unsolved because the conference cannot take place; its interpretation of “problem” with this matter.
While this interpretation was continuously expressed in public, the interpretations by each of the farmers and the group were suppressed. This paper reveals this by analysing their narrative; analysing their interpretations of “problem” with this matter. Such suppression alienated each of them from a “solution” in their own interpretation. This situation was related to the fact that any alternative work was hardly brought up in the dispute.
