Where did the rafts of the timber storage ponds disappear first? Old photographs of Shinkiba, Ariake, and Toyosu

Published: October 10, 2026 / About 11 min read

The first place in the inner part of Tokyo Bay where the rafts disappeared was the canals of Toyosu. If you step through the aerial photographs by era in the same order, the water of Toyosu is almost empty in the 1987-90 photograph, the waterways of Ariake are still packed with rafts in that era, and the ponds of Yumenoshima / Shinkiba reach their highest density in the same 1987-90 era. The order in which they disappeared is Toyosu, Ariake, Shinkiba. Although the three places are only a few km apart, the water cleared at Toyosu by 1987-90 and at Ariake by 2026, while at Shinkiba rafts remain in some ponds even as of 2026.

A timber storage pond is water where logs are bound into rafts and stored while they float. The storage place is not a warehouse on land but the sea or a canal itself, enclosed by seawalls. In aerial photographs, therefore, it appears as long, narrow brown or black masses covering the water like a grid, and when it falls out of use the same frame returns to empty water.

Toyosu: the canal rafts were the first to withdraw

In the photograph from around 1936-42, Toyosu already appears as a square island surrounded by canals, and after the war it shows up as industrial land with shipbuilding slipways lined along its shores. Its later shift to a town of housing and a market can be followed by stepping through the eras on the location page, so here the focus is narrowed to the increase and decrease of the rafts floating on the canals.

In the 1961-69 photograph, long, narrow lots float on the water in front of the slipways and look like stripes as they catch the light. They look like rafts of bound timber, but in this era it is still only at the stage of looking that way. In 1974-78, when color comes in, the doubt disappears, and brown rafts are lined up densely on the water. In 1979-83, too, the same lots remain covered by a band of rafts.

The change comes in 1984-86. The area of the rafts visibly shrinks, and the empty water spreads. In the 1987-90 photograph, the rafts have almost disappeared. Toward the top of the same frame, a wide stretch of bare ground with nothing built on it appears, and outside the canals, too, the land is waiting for its next use. The outline of the canals has not moved since the photograph from around 1936-42, so the change is only in the things placed on the water.

Ariake: the waterways kept holding rafts beside the grassland

In the 1961-69 photograph of Ariake, the roofs of warehouses and factories cover the upper left of the frame, and dark, rough masses float densely in the narrow waterways between the buildings. While Toyosu in the same era stays at "looks like rafts", the shapes of the masses in Ariake's waterways can be read clearly. From the center to the lower right of the frame, it is still open sea with visible lines of waves.

In 1974-78 that sea is replaced by a wide stretch of ocher bare ground. Land has been made but there are almost no buildings, and rafts keep lining the water at the upper center. In 1979-83 the bare ground is covered with grass and turns a dull green, but the rafts on the water actually increase, forming dark bands in the upper left and center of the frame and along the right edge. Even in 1984-86, when the rafts at Toyosu begin to decrease, the rafts at Ariake are still present.

Even in 1987-90, masses of rafts remain at the right edge and the upper left. This means that in the era when the Toyosu canals were almost empty, the water at Ariake just to the south was still in use. In this photograph, dozens of long, narrow lots line up in parallel in the center of the prepared land, and preparations for the grassland to turn into a town have begun.

Shinkiba: the enclosed ponds stayed full until the end

From 1974-78, when color comes in, the ponds of Shinkiba are covered by a grid of brown rectangles. While the rafts of Toyosu and Ariake appear as bands and masses, here they are arranged so neatly that even the layout of the lots can be read. The location page for Yumenoshima / Shinkiba steps through how each pond filled, era by era; this article gives only the one photograph that is key to setting the three places side by side.

That is the 1987-90 photograph. The rafts cover the water of the ponds without gaps, and the density is the highest in the sequence of photographs. In the era when Toyosu was almost empty, the ponds at Shinkiba were at their most crowded.

As of 2026, three lines gather at Shinkiba Station, and the roofs of warehouses and factories around the ponds continue without a break. Because this land was laid out as a timber town, its way of using the water was kept up the longest of the three places.

The order of disappearance overlaps with where the surrounding land went

If you align the photographs of the three places by era, the time when the rafts withdrew from the water seems to overlap closely with the time when the surrounding land got its next use. At Toyosu, the canal rafts almost disappeared in 1987-90, and a wide stretch of bare ground with nothing built on it appeared in the same frame. The preparation for the factory island to move on to becoming a different town and the clearing of the water sit side by side in the same photograph.

At Ariake, the rafts actually grew thicker in 1979-83 and 1984-86, when the prepared land was left as grassland, and even in 1987-90, when the lots that would form the base of the town were lined up, the rafts still remained. The cleared water can be confirmed for the first time in the next photograph, the one as of 2026. Shinkiba was originally laid out for handling timber, and the surrounding land had no reason to move to a different use. This is why the ponds can be read as having stayed full until the end.

The presence of rafts does not seem to have been decided by the volume of the timber trade alone. You can read from the photographs only the difference in timing and the changes on the neighboring land, and the circumstances of each company cannot be known.

Why did the water of the timber storage ponds become empty?

The Ports and Harbours Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism explains that, as the form of transport changed, more timber came to be imported as sawn lumber rather than as raw logs, and some timber storage ponds on the water are falling out of use. Storing logs floating in the water is a method for handling raw logs that have not yet been processed. Timber that arrives already sawn into boards or square lumber does not need to be floated in the water.

In the photographs, this trend did not happen all at once. In 1984-86, when the rafts at Toyosu began to decrease, only one pond at Shinkiba was empty, and the rest were still full. Within the larger shift in which the handling of raw logs dwindled, which water was given up first depended on the circumstances of each place.

The outlines of the ponds that remain in the photograph as of 2026

If you check how the timber storage ponds appear as of 2026, the water itself remains at all three places without disappearing. It was the rafts that disappeared.

At Shinkiba, in the photograph as of 2026, timber is almost no longer visible on the water of the ponds, and only the dashed frames marking the lots remain on the water. The surroundings are filled with the roofs of warehouses and factories, and timber rafts appear here and there only in the lower-left pond. At Ariake, at the right edge of the frame there is an area where long, narrow stretches of water line up like strips, conveying in shape only how the water was divided when rafts floated there. At Toyosu, water that was not filled in remains on the left side of the frame, and a bridge crosses it diagonally.

Within the same "water that remained", Shinkiba kept even the frames of its lots, Ariake kept even the strip-like division, and Toyosu kept only the extent of the water. The earlier the rafts disappeared from a place, the fainter the clues that it was a timber storage pond. You cannot tell from the photographs which ponds are actually in use as of 2026, so only the differences in appearance are recorded here.

Kobe, Ujina, and Toyama Shinko Port: water you cannot say for sure holds rafts

Outside Tokyo, too, there are ports where something lines up on the water, but it cannot be read conclusively as rafts.

You cannot tell whether the square, dark water remaining north of the transit sheds in the 1961-69 photograph of Kobe Harborland, as also mentioned in the article lining up the old shores of ports, is a boat basin or timber storage water. In the 1987-90 photograph of Ujina / Hiroshima Port District, long, narrow orange-brown masses line up densely along the quay of a square stretch of water surrounded by blocks. They look like rafts, but this cannot be stated with certainty from the photograph alone. The 1961-69 photograph of Toyama Shinko Port (Shinminato) shows the Hojozu Lagoon before it became a port, and long, narrow masses line up in groups on its north shore. Here, too, you cannot tell from the photograph whether they are rafts or landing piers.

At all three places, there are not enough clues to follow the presence of rafts era by era. Kobe Harborland has no 1987-90 photograph, Ujina has no 1984-86 photograph, and Toyama Shinko Port has photographs for only two eras. At the three places on Tokyo Bay, the order of disappearance could be followed because photographs of seven eras line up without a gap. For the water of regional ports, use the fact that lots are visible as a clue, and check by stepping through the eras on the location pages.

Go back and forth between two photographs to check the order of disappearance

The increase and decrease of rafts shows up more clearly if you go back and forth between two adjacent eras than if you look at one photograph.

60 years of the Tokyo Bay shore: the changing purposes of reclamation summarizes what the reclaimed land along the bay was assigned to in each era, and the differences in how the photographs of each era look are in the guide to the eras of aerial photographs. After checking the order in which the rafts disappeared, compare in the article on places that used to be sea what kind of towns the land enclosing the water later became.