Otaru-Chikko (Wing Bay Otaru) about 60 years ago and today

History of Otaru-Chikko (Wing Bay Otaru)

On a long, narrow strip of flat land squeezed between the sea and the hills, tracks, water surfaces and large roofs overlap. This is Chikko in the City of Otaru, Hokkaido. If you open the aerial photographs from the oldest era, dozens of thin lines run in a bundle along the shore, and offshore, pale bundles float densely on divided water surfaces. In today's photograph the bundle of lines has disappeared, long, huge buildings continue diagonally on the same band, and white boats form rows on the water. It is a place where a shore for handling cargo was replaced by a shore for shopping and boating.

The reclamation that made the port

In Otaru the hills press close right behind, and flat land is scarce. To increase the port's work there was no choice but to make land on the sea side, and the place name Chikko (the name means port construction) keeps the memory of that work as it is. From the Meiji era to the 1910s and early 1920s, breakwaters and piers were built, and the port grew as a gateway sending coal and farm products carried from the interior to Honshu. To be a port that sends out coal, the shore where ships berth and the railway had to be connected directly. Tracks heading for the port were laid on the reclaimed flat land, and places for lining up freight cars extended long and narrow along the coastline. The houses of working people clung to the slopes of the hills, and a form in which the flat land and the slopes shared roles was completed.

Two eras in which the yard is the main character

In the black-and-white 1961-69 photograph, the coastline runs diagonally from the upper left to the lower right, and the upper right is occupied entirely by dark sea. The band along the shore shows a rail yard for sorting freight cars, with dozens of thin lines lined up in parallel. Between the lines many short rows like dotted lines can be seen, freight cars left standing that have become grains. Toward the offshore, long, narrow white breakwaters extend in two stages, with a gap at the joint between the two stages. On the shore at the upper left there is a long, dark pier, and something white like haze hangs over the water.

In the middle of the frame enclosed by the breakwaters and a short jetty, the shape of compartments dividing the water surface can be read. Pale bundles of the same length float in many rows drawing fan-like arcs, thin landing piers like the teeth of a comb jut out on the inner side, and countless small shapes are crowded together. The natural reading of this shape is a place for keeping timber floating on the water. Nearly half the frame is hills, with small roofs packed densely along winding roads. On the shore at the lower right a white sandy beach draws an arc, and a single road traces its inner side.

1974-78 is the first era with color at this location. The band of the rail yard is wider than in the previous era, with dozens of lines drawn on faded green ground and rows of freight-car dots on them. Toward the west of the band a circle, a ring around it and short lines radiating from the ring can be seen, the shape of equipment for turning locomotives around. Right next to it a long building with a pale blue roof lies flat. At the upper left there is a square pier jutting into the water, with pale green rectangles lined up on it. The compartments in the center have clear outlines, and bundles of the same length are packed in good order inside lots enclosed by thin lines. Small boats are moored diagonally at the thin landing piers outside the compartments, and a large mass of pale buildings and a blue-green square water surface lie at the lower right. The upper right corner is cut off as a black triangle with no data.

Railways that stopped sorting

The system in which the port and the railway worked together to move cargo gradually lost its role as the main means of transport shifted from ships and freight cars to motor vehicles. The decisive moment was the timetable revision of 1984. At that time the transport method of gathering freight cars at rail yards in each region and sorting them was abolished, and it was switched to container trains running directly between bases. The yard, which had been kept wide for sorting, itself became unnecessary. The bundle of lines that had extended long and narrow along the coast shrank to a few, and flat, wide land became empty right in front of the town. There are former rail yards that followed the same course in many places, and Kita-Nagase in Okayama is one of them.

A large commercial facility was chosen as the use for the emptied land. In 1999 a commercial facility opened, and it later came to be called by the name Wing Bay Otaru. A composition in which flat large roofs continue diagonally at a position jutting out over the sea is a shape that is hard to think of unless you know its history as a freight shore.

A shore of shopping and boats

In today's photograph, a flat, wide band remains where the band of the rail yard was, and large flat-roofed buildings continue diagonally on it. The tracks have been reduced to a few, and a station is right beside them. The compartments in the center have disappeared, changed into a water surface enclosed by straight jetties, with white boats forming rows at finger-like landing piers. White warehouses and blue roofs stand on the pier at the upper left, and one dark-colored ship is berthed. The lines of the breakwaters extending in two stages do not change across the three eras. To the right the forest of a cape, a sandy beach and the color of shallow sea remain, and the houses on the hills are visibly denser than in the photograph from the 1970s. Toward the inland, several green and blue-green square sports grounds are placed on flat places picked out between the slopes. A shore where ships berth, a shore for shopping, a shore for swimming and places for sports are packed side by side on the narrow flat land.

Height records exist for only three of the five points at the center and in the four directions. The center is 3.2 m, the south 4.8 m and the west 0 m, and the north and east have no values because those directions fall over the sea. Since this is flat land made by reclamation, the ground stays low everywhere. If you keep in mind that this is low land open to the sea, it is worth looking at the maps the City of Otaru distributes to see which areas of this band are covered by the assumptions for tsunami and storm surge.

The price of land, the official land price (Chika Koji), is measured at a residential area in Sakura 1-chome, about 988 m from this location. The record begins in 1983 at 42,600 yen per square meter, rose continuously from there, and from 1996 to 1998 stayed at 48,800 yen, the highest value up to the 2026 publication. After that came a long decline, and the 22,300 yen of 2016 to 2018 is the lowest up to the 2026 publication. Up to the 2026 publication it has stayed flat at 22,500 yen, not reaching half of 1996-1998. The process by which a town of ports and railways shifted its character to a town of shopping and tourism can be read from this single series too.

If you go back and forth between the two eras and today, it becomes clear what was replaced on this band and what remained. The bundle of lines and the compartments on the water were replaced; the coastline and the breakwaters remained, and so did the very shape of the land, with the hills pressing toward the sea.