“Tepco is being so stupidly unfair with the compensation,” said Yukei Tomitsuka, the mayor of Tamura, the city that administers Miyakoji. “We are the victims. Should we have to go hat in hand to Tepco to ask for more money?”

Experts call Miyakoji a forerunner of the problems that will be faced by the 150,000 people displaced by the accident over all, as additional communities are reopened as a result of a $36 billion government-financed cleanup. They say the evacuees will feel increasing pressure to go back from a government that wants to restore the preaccident status quo as much as possible to limit criticism of the powerful nuclear industry.

“This is inhumane and irresponsible,” said Teruhisa Maruyama, a lawyer who leads the Support Group for Victims of the Nuclear Accident, a Tokyo-based legal organization that helps residents seek increased compensation.

“The national government knows that full compensation could add up to big money, enough to raise public doubts about the wisdom of using nuclear power in Japan.”

Tepco refused to comment, beyond saying that it had so far paid out $36 billion for all types of compensation. “Our company is sincerely listening to the details of each claim,” said Tatsuhiro Yamagishi, a Tepco spokesman. A spokesman for the Education Ministry, which is setting compensation standards, said that the ministry was trying to respond to evacuees’ needs, but that it was hard to meet all the requests. A government committee set up to resolve compensation-related disputes says it has received more than 10,000 requests from disgruntled evacuees.

When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Tamura last month, Mayor Tomitsuka handed him a letter asking that residents be given more compensation for their homes. The prime minister has yet to reply.

Almost 500 residents of Miyakoji have recently joined one of two separate group lawsuits demanding that Tepco pay more compensation, a rare show of rising frustrations in a close-knit Japanese rural community, which usually abhors conflict-causing litigation.