Places in Nagoya that used to be sea: old photographs of Kinjo-futo and the Port of Nagoya

Published: October 11, 2026 / About 12 min read

Places in Nagoya that used to be sea became land in order from offshore

If you name one place in Nagoya that used to be sea, Kinjo-futo, which juts out in a pentagon off Minato Ward, is the easiest example to understand. In the 1945-50 aerial photograph, the position where the pier should sit is water surface occupying most of the frame, and land appears only slightly at the top edge. By 1961-69 it has become a tidal flat with the tide out, and in 1974-78 pentagonal flat ground appears for the first time. The switch from sea to land fits entirely within three eras of photographs.

The Nagoya Port Authority, which manages the Port of Nagoya, describes it as a port that, since its opening in 1907, has moved its waterline south by repeated reclamation starting from the shore of Atsuta. The straight shores of the port in the photographs are the traces of that accumulated reclamation. Among them, the photographs make it easy to read the order in which shores added for setting down cargo later changed into places where people gather. This article looks at three places in this order: Kinjo-futo offshore, Nagoya Port Garden Pier to its north, and Sasashima Live on the city center side, connected to the port by a canal.

Kinjo-futo in 1945-50: a shallow sea where sand patterns show through

If you open the position of Kinjo-futo in the oldest photograph, from 1945-50, there is only a little land with gridded streets at the top edge of the frame, and the area south of the seawall line is all water. On the water surface to the right there are pale, bright patches like faint swirls, and you can tell first of all that the sea was shallow enough for the sand of the bottom to be seen from above.

The head of Ise Bay is a sea into which rivers flowing from the north carried earth and sand over a long time, and the water hardly gets deeper even as you go offshore. The channels for large ships cannot be kept unless they are dredged continually, and a place to put the dredged earth is also needed. The side that dug and the side that piled up were in the same sea, and this has pushed the land of the Port of Nagoya out to sea.

In the 1961-69 photograph, the same position has changed into a tidal flat, and dark channels branch across the bright sand surface and narrow toward the sea. On the dark water surface to the east, the white shapes of several ships line up diagonally, and water surface already working as a port lies next to shallow sea that has not yet become land.

The tidal flat becomes pentagonal land, and vehicles line the quay

The pentagonal flat ground appears at the position of the tidal flat in 1974-78. The inside is still only ocher bare ground with lot lines drawn, but the roads dividing the blocks have gone through first, long, narrow transit sheds stand diagonally in a row on the west edge, and square cargo is piled on the quay outside them. It is land that began to be used as a place for setting down cargo before buildings filled it. On the water surface to the east, the branching pattern of the tidal flat is still visible.

By 1979-83 the inside of the pentagon is almost filled with paving, and on the west quay small dots stand in orderly rows in numbers beyond comparison with the previous era. The dots appear to be vehicles waiting to be loaded on ships, and they hint at its face as a port that sends out finished automobiles. Only one lot in the southeast keeps the color of soil, showing the place that was graded last.

By 1987-90, an elevated road crossing the water surface straight from the left attaches to the west edge of the pentagon. The land spread south and the road arrived from the west, so stepping through the eras shows that the spread of the land and the arrival of transport advanced from different directions.

Buildings that gather people came into blocks for setting down cargo

In the photograph as of 2026, the appearance of the southern half of the pentagon has changed greatly. Lots where exhibition facilities with large white roofs, box-shaped buildings, and small brightly colored structures gather stand in rows, and part of the blocks that had been used for setting down cargo has become a place that gathers people. Even so, the work of the port has not disappeared, and rows of vehicles and transit sheds remain on the west edge and the southern jetty. The feature of Kinjo-futo is that both fit in the same pentagon: lots where people gather in the southern half, and shores for cargo on the west edge and the southern jetty.

The means of carrying people arrived quite a long time after the land was made. According to Nagoya Rinkai Rapid Transit, the Nishi-Nagoyako Line, known by its nickname the Aonami Line, began operating as a freight line in 1950, and its opening as a passenger line was in October 2004. By this count, about 30 years passed from the appearance of the pentagon in the 1974-78 photograph until passenger trains entered Kinjo-futo Station at the end of the line. The tracks for freight changed into tracks carrying people to the port.

If you go back along this line toward Nagoya Station, the third place, Sasashima Live, is one stop before it.

Garden Pier: shores that filled the gaps between jetties

Garden Pier, back north from Kinjo-futo, was already on the land side at the time of the 1945-50 photograph, with narrow jetties carrying transit sheds sticking out into the sea like the teeth of a comb. While Kinjo-futo added land offshore by turning a tidal flat into land, Garden Pier is a shore that widened its surface on the inside by filling the gaps between the jetties. Its appearance in each era as it changed from rows of transit sheds into a shore where people gather is followed in old photographs of ports and the replacement of their shores.

The square water surface at the dead end of the canal has stayed in the same position for more than 70 years

The area spreading just south of Nagoya Station is the location of Sasashima Live. This is not a place that used to be sea. At the time of the 1945-50 photograph, a bundle of tracks opening south from Nagoya Station like a fan occupies the frame, and the surroundings are filled with a town of small lots. Even so, the connection with the port is clearly visible: at the southern end of the yard the water surface dead-ends in a square, and from there a waterway extends southwest. It is the junction where ships that had come up the canal from the port handed cargo to freight cars.

In the 1987-90 photograph the shining lines of the tracks have almost vanished, and the yard becomes brown cleared land. In the photograph as of 2026, clusters of large buildings stand in rows inside the fan, and the tracks have become only a thin bundle passing out to the southwest. Among them, only the dead-end water surface remains between the blocks with its square outline. At this location, it was the water surface that kept its position from 1945-50 to 2026. Examples in other cities where the sites of freight stations changed into towns are lined up in former rail yards.

If you look at the elevation values, one more character of this location comes into view. The measuring point at the center is 5.7 m, but the north is 1.5 m, the south 1.3 m, the east 2.0 m, and the west 1.0 m, and all four directions are 2 m or less. This means that the cargo junction was placed on low land deep inland, up the canal from the port.

Elevations compared: the center value and the range in four directions

If you compare by the range of the measuring points in four directions, Kinjo-futo offshore is 4.1-6.2 m and Garden Pier, which was already a shore at the time of the 1945-50 photograph, is 2.1-3.8 m, so Kinjo-futo sits at the higher position. The 1.8 m at the center of Garden Pier is lower than any value in the four directions, so if you compare center with center, the difference looks larger than it really is. Also, even though it is new land that appeared in 1974-78, the four directions of the Yokkaichi Kasumigaura District are 2.4-3.2 m, lower than Kinjo-futo, so the order of height is not decided by when the land was made alone.

The highs and lows of the figures reflect how the land was formed, but the assumptions of flooding cannot be read from this table. For the assumptions at each place, the published materials of each municipality are gathered on the Hazard Map Portal Site of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Official land price records: points inland, not on the piers

The official land price records (Chika Koji) were all measured a little way inland, not on the piers or in the yard. The record for Kinjo-futo is a point for office and factory use in Sorami-cho, about 2.1 km away, and the one for Sasashima Live is a residential area in Fukagawa-cho, about 600 m away. The records behind Garden Pier are lined up in old photographs of ports and the replacement of their shores.

If you compare the start of the record with 2026, the point for Sasashima Live is at about 1.4 times its starting value, and the point for Kinjo-futo is just slightly above the starting 50,000 yen.

A comparison on the west shore of Ise Bay: the pentagon of Yokkaichi appeared in the same era

It is outside the City of Nagoya, but as a comparison on the west shore of Ise Bay, the Yokkaichi Kasumigaura District in Mie Prefecture is set beside the three places. Here too, in the 1961-69 photograph most of the frame is gray water surface, and the land is only the upper left corner and a thin edge at the left end. There are no islands, lots, or roads yet. Then in 1974-78 a large pentagon of land appears in the same way at the center of the frame. On both shores of the bay, the work of cutting shallow sea into angular shapes and making it land was advancing within the same era of photographs.

The difference shows in the next era, 1979-83. At Kinjo-futo rows of vehicles lined up in order on the quay, but in the Kasumigaura District the contents of the blocks, which had finished grading and were divided by a grid of roads, remain widely as bare ground with grass starting to grow. Even in 1987-90 a patchwork of grassland and bare ground stands out from the center to the south, and it is in the photograph as of 2026 that the empty lots are almost filled. Even for land born in the same era, there was a large gap in how fast it began to be used as a place for setting down cargo.

Hills for contrast: the elevations of Kozoji and Miyoshigaoka

Kozoji New Town in the City of Kasugai has a center elevation of 91.5 m, and Miyoshigaoka (Miyoshigaoka New Town) in the City of Miyoshi 74.9 m; unlike the port, which made flat surfaces by adding earth, these are lands where surfaces were made by cutting away the relief. The way to read the grading of hill towns is left to new towns on plateaus and hills.

Start switching eras from the tidal flat at Kinjo-futo

If you want to check Nagoya's old sea in the photographs, the quickest way is to open Kinjo-futo first and go back and forth between the tidal flat of 1961-69 and the pentagon of 1974-78. The moment the sea changes into land fits within two neighboring eras. Next, if you move to Garden Pier and compare the comb-tooth jetties of 1945-50 with the filled gaps of 1979-83, you can see that even in the same port, the way land was added differs. Finally, at Sasashima Live, switch between the 1945-50 photograph and the photograph as of 2026, and look for where the water surface at the dead end of the canal is. That is the farthest place inland that cargo reached, coming up the canal from the sea.

If you look at the three places in a row, the new land offshore, the old shores of the port, and the former site south of the city center, you can also see that the movement of land for cargo changing into land where people gather happened in different eras at each place. Reclaimed land across the country is lined up in towns built by filling the sea.

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