Momochihama before reclamation: where in the town does the line of the bathing beach remain?

Published: October 17, 2026 / About 11 min read

Before reclamation, Momochihama was a sandy beach backed by pine woods

Before reclamation, Momochihama was a white sandy beach facing Hakata Bay, with pine woods continuing as a band on its land side. If you step through the eras of the aerial photographs from the oldest, the last photograph that shows the sandy beach is the 1974-78 one, and in the next, 1987-90, square graded land juts out beyond the beach. According to an explanation by the Fukuoka City Museum, the reclamation of the coast began in 1982. The blank of nearly ten years between the two photographs corresponds exactly to the period in which the beach was taken into the inside of the town.

Then where did the line of the beach go? The same explanation records that the old shoreline turned into a road. The sandy beach did not vanish without a trace; it remains as a single road running through the blocks, and the whole ground on its sea side was added in the 1980s. The profile of the beach of Momochi, loved as a sea bathing beach, is left to the article on places that used to be sea.

A beach planted with pines, and a stone wall piled on the dunes

The seaside where a dark band of pines accompanies the white sand is not in its natural state. According to the Fukuoka City Museum, in 1618 Kuroda Nagamasa, the first lord of the Fukuoka Domain, ordered pines to be planted, and the sandy beach of Momochi gradually changed into pine woods that blocked the sea wind of Hakata Bay. The band of pines in the photographs is a line drawn by human hands at the beginning of the Edo period.

The defensive wall against the Mongol invasions (Genko Borui) shows the position of the beach from an even older time. In the City of Fukuoka's explanation of cultural properties, the Kamakura shogunate had a stone defensive wall (ishitsuiji) built along the coastline of Hakata Bay in 1276, and the wall in the Nishijin district was a structure in which clay was laid on top of the dunes and stones were piled on it. This means the stone wall that remains as a national historic site in Nishijin 7-chome, Sawara Ward, stood along the coastline of the 13th century. The row of the defensive wall, the edge of the sandy beach that appears until the 1970s, and the seawall of the graded land: on this seaside, three lines from different times overlap from inland out to sea.

Follow the line of the beach through four eras

The past photographs you can choose at the Momochihama location cover five eras, and here the four up to 1987-90 are lined up. If you line them up with attention to the line of the beach, the places where change happens are limited to the land side until just before the last photograph. The changes in the rows of houses on the land side can be checked by stepping through the eras on the location page.

For about 30 years from 1945-50 to 1974-78, the line of the beach stays in the same position, and only the built-up area presses closer toward the beach. There are no photographs between the 1974-78 and 1987-90 photographs, so the stage partway through, when the beach was entering the inside, cannot be followed.

The last photograph that shows the shape of the beach

When you look in the photographs for the site of the Momochi sea bathing beach, the last photograph that shows the shape of the beach is the 1974-78 one. The photograph shows the shape of the beach, not the number of people swimming there. The primary sources give no years for the opening and closing of the sea bathing beach, and the way they are written also differs from source to source.

The line of the beach became a road, and the ground on the sea side was finished low

If you remember the position of the edge of the sandy beach in the 1974-78 photograph and then switch to the photograph as of 2026, the area on the sea side of that line has been replaced by the blocks of the graded land. The line of the beach entered the inside of the town as the boundary separating the old town from the graded land.

On the two sides of the boundary, the height of the ground also differs. The center of the Momochihama location is 1.9 m, the inland measuring point to the south is 4.1 m, and the measuring point to the east, on the Jigyohama side, is 3.3 m. There are no values to the north and west. This is because those directions are water even in the photograph as of 2026. The arrangement is that the middle of the graded land is a little more than 2 m lower than the inland measuring point to the south. For assumptions of storm surges and tsunamis, the published materials of the City of Fukuoka are gathered on the Hazard Map Portal Site of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

The beach was also rebuilt outside the town. An artificial sandy beach was made along the northern edge of the graded land and is part of the Fukuoka City Seaside Park. As of 2026, swimming is possible on the east side of the Momochihama district only from early July to early September each year. The new beach that moved offshore has taken over the role of the beach that left the coastline through reclamation.

Ashiyahama added land outside the beach in two steps

As an example of the line of a beach hidden inside a town, Ashiyahama followed the course closest to Momochihama. In the 1945-50 photograph a band of white shining sand draws an arc and forms the coastline, and in 1961-69, although the town presses up to the sea's edge, the shape of the arc hardly changes. In 1974-78 two lots of bare ground jutting into the sea appear, and in 1984-86 a second graded area begins to grow to their south. The course of the grading and the history of the residential buildings are summarized in the article on the Osaka Bay shore.

The order of ground heights differs from Momochihama. The center of the Ashiyahama location is 4.2 m, the east 4.4 m, the west 3.7 m, and the south 3.5 m, and the lowest is the north, on the side of the old town, at 2.1 m. The graded land was finished higher than the original land. At Momochihama the middle of the graded land is lower than inland, and at Ashiyahama it is the reverse. The order of the two sets of figures shows that even in the same work of "adding land outside the beach", the height of the piled soil is decided separately for each project.

The rebuilding of the beach also happened one step further offshore at Ashiyahama. Along the edge of the second graded area there is a white sandy beach shaped into a fan, next to a water surface where yachts line up at landing piers. Whereas Momochihama drew one beach along the edge of the graded land, Ashiyahama stacked the land in two steps and placed a beach on the outer edge.

At Rinku Town the beach stays the coastline in all four photographs

The past photographs of Rinku Town cover four eras, 1961-69, 1974-78, 1979-83, and 1984-86, and in every one of them it is a white sandy beach that separates sea and land. The line of the beach extends straight from northeast to southwest and appears not as the straight line of a seawall but as the edge of a beach where waves come in. Offshore, rows of dots that seem to be aquaculture facilities increase with the eras, but the outline of the land does not move.

Land appears outside the beach only in the photograph as of 2026. The edge facing the sea changes to a seawall of connected straight segments. Momochihama has the 1987-90 photograph just after grading, where you can check the look right after the beach entered the inside, but Rinku Town has no photograph in between. You jump from the era in which the line of the beach last appears as the coastline straight to the completed town.

Wakayama Marina City kept the beach and placed an island offshore

In contrast to Momochihama, which took the beach into the inside of the town, Wakayama Marina City left the line of the beach as the coastline. On the mainland side, the sandy beach remains even in the photograph as of 2026. However, straight structures have been placed offshore of the beach, and the shape of the water's edge is not the same as in the black-and-white 1961-69 photograph.

Kasumigaura kept the name of the beach in a town name and a station name

Even when the line of a beach disappears from the terrain, the name of the beach may remain on the map. The Kasumigaura District of Yokkaichi was a seaside where a sandy beach continued along a shallow sea, known as a place for sea bathing. The town name of the reclaimed land is Kasumi, and the official land price point is also in Kasumi 1-chome. The station on the Kintetsu Nagoya Line, which runs on the mainland side, is Kasumigaura Station. The characters of the name from the days of the sandy beach were carried over into both the address of the reclaimed land and the name of the station. The situation is the same at Momochihama: the town names of the graded land are Momochihama in Sawara Ward and Jigyohama in Chuo Ward, both carrying on the names of the original beach. Even after the line of the beach disappeared from the photographs, the place names keep pointing in the direction where the beach was.

Do the official land price records match where the beach went?

The official land price records (Chika Koji) near the five locations are lined up here within the range available as of October 2026 (up to the 2026 publication). All amounts are per square meter.

The Momochihama point fell from 240,000 yen in 1999 to 217,000 yen in 2011 and 2012, and in 2026 it reached 441,000 yen, far above the first record. Of the five locations, Momochihama is the only one whose 2026 amount is above that of the first year of the record. Wakayama Marina City is the opposite: up to the 2026 publication its lowest year is the latest, 2026, and from 130,000 yen in 1995 to 42,300 yen in 2026, no year in the record is above the previous year.

The official land price points are in neighboring Jigyohama for Momochihama, Matsuhama-cho for Ashiyahama, and Kemi on the mainland side for Wakayama Marina City, and none of them is the featured location itself. Land prices are also affected by the distance from stations and city centers, the zoning district, and the surrounding facilities, so lining them up shows only the fact that the paths of the five locations up to 2026 divided widely.

Remember the edge of the sandy beach and go back and forth between two eras

On the location page of Momochihama, going back and forth between 1974-78 and 1987-90 lets you grasp where the line of the beach went. If you remember the edge of the sandy beach as a single line and switch straight to the photograph as of 2026, you can see at a glance how much town was placed on the sea side of the line. If you then open, by the same steps, 1945-50 and 1984-86 at Ashiyahama, 1984-86 at Rinku Town, and 1984-86 at Wakayama Marina City, you can tell apart land where the line of the beach entered the inside of the town and land that kept the beach as the coastline and placed an island offshore.

For how the line of the beach shows up in the elevation cross-section, the article comparing elevations is a guide. The difference in height between the graded land and the old town ran in opposite directions at Momochihama and Ashiyahama. If you check the position of the beach in the photographs and then look at the cross-section, you can read in which direction the difference in height on the two sides of the line appears.

The prices in this article are actual examples at each point in time and do not reflect market prices after the article was written.