At several points near Mr. Hasegawa’s empty home and barns, government inspectors have tied pink ribbons around hot spots where radioactivity remains particularly high. Inside one of the barns, a white board hangs with the names of his herd of 50 cows before the accident. About two-thirds of the names have red circles around them, meaning those cows were sold off after the accident. However, the other third have been crossed off in red ink, meaning those cows were killed on government orders after abandoned cows at other farms started starving to death.

Nearby stood a small wooden tablet with a handwritten Buddhist prayer for the dead animals.

“Sending us back is just another ploy by officials to avoid taking responsibility for what happened,” said Mr. Hasegawa, who now lives with his aging parents in a cramped, prefabricated apartment an hour from the evacuation zone.

Mr. Hasegawa’s opposition has had a personal cost, ending his lifelong friendship with the mayor of Iitate, Norio Kanno, one of the return plan’s most fervent supporters.

Mr. Kanno is the leading voice of the minority of villagers who feel the fears of radiation are overblown, and who want to return to their ancestral homes as soon as possible. While Mr. Kanno admits that farmers will probably not be allowed to grow food in Iitate for many years to come, he said the village was drawing up plans to help them switch to flowers and other crops not for human consumption.

He said he wanted to lead about 1,000 of the villagers most determined to go back. Once they show that the radiation levels are not so harmful, he said, other residents will follow.

He said a quick return was the only way to save the village, more and more of whose residents either die or move away with each year that passes.

“Our village’s fight is against the threat of radiation, and everyone reacts differently to that,” said Mr. Kanno, 68, also a former dairy farmer. “Let’s let people decide for themselves whether to go back. This is the way to make Japan a model for how to recover from a nuclear accident.”