Nanko Port Town about 60 years ago and today

History of Nanko Port Town

Nanko Port Town lies at the southern outskirts of the City of Osaka, in the southern half of Sakishima jutting out into Osaka Bay. Its addresses also go by Nanko-naka and Nanko-minami, and it is a port town just as its name says. However, this area was once the bottom of a sea made shallow by earth and sand carried by rivers. The inner part of Osaka Bay lacks depth, and to berth large ships there was no choice but to go offshore in search of depth. The work of expanding the port headed offshore, and a town for people to live in was placed on the land born there. It is a location where, just by following the eras of the photographs, you can see the steps by which a surface that was sea became land and then a town.

Three photographs of nothing but sea

In the photograph from around 1928, most of the frame is gray water. The large blank white from the lower left to the lower center is the area the photography of the time did not reach, several diagonal seams run across it, and the brightness of the water steps at each seam. Toward the upper right only a bright white band and one long, narrow black streak along it appear. There is no land and no blocks anywhere.

Even around 1936-42, 90% of the frame is still sea. The patchwork of light and dark is even stronger, and small black ships are scattered here and there in the upper half. At the upper left there is a dark streak drawing an arc, thought to be a trace left by a passing ship. The change is in the lower right corner, where a thin waterway, straight-edged lots and a whitish mottled site come in. It is the land on the opposite shore. From that corner a bright dotted line extends to the upper right, thought to be something like a breakwater jutting offshore.

In 1945-50 about 40% on the left is blank white. The remaining part is dark water, and a thin white line runs vertically through the center of the frame and bends to the right in the lower half. It is a line drawn by human hands. To the right of that line, on the water inside the port, a dozen or so long, narrow white ships line up. In the lower right corner, a white rectangular site, a straight waterway and the shape of a pier have become clear. Even after three photographs in a row, land does not appear.

Bare ground enclosed by seawalls

With the fourth, 1961-69, the frame changes completely. From the center to the left half, a vast light-gray surface appears. It is a method in which the seawall lines first divide the sea: the edge of a polygon made by folding straight lines over one another extends long from north-northeast to south-southwest, and its inside has become bare ground. Dark patches holding water and thin, branching drainage streaks remain on the surface, showing that it has just been reclaimed and has not yet hardened. At the upper left there is another prepared surface and a bright band like a sandbar.

The upper right and lower left are still dark water, and many white ships float at the upper right. In the middle on the right there is a lot where the water looks densely filled with fine grains, thought to be a place where timber was floated. To the right and lower right, existing blocks cut by thin waterways spread, with very fine grains of rows of houses. The reclaimed side is brand-new large lots, and the opposite shore is a finely divided city area, so the coarseness of the two lands is split within one photograph.

The eras when residential buildings appear

In the 1974-78 photograph, the prepared surface has changed into a dry white flat area, and straight roads dividing the lots pass in both directions. The north side is already working as a port: warehouses with blue roofs stand in rows, red cargo-handling equipment is set at even intervals on the quay, and cargo ships are moored alongside. Flat areas covered with fine grains of color also spread. However, the center of the frame, the area that later becomes the town, remains whitish bare ground. Only the roads and lots come first, and there are no buildings.

If you switch to 1979-83, the bare ground changes into rows of residential buildings. More than ten white, long, narrow slab-shaped buildings line up facing the same direction, with bands of green and the soil color of land under preparation mixed between them. This is the era in which a new transit system starts running in 1981: the Nanko Port Town Line opened and linked the island with the mainland. In the center, traces of excavation remain in a curve, and lots in the middle of construction can also be seen. The quay on the north side is filled even more with grains of color that seem to be containers, and the number of red pieces of equipment has also increased.

In 1984-86, the rows of residential buildings almost fill the left half of the frame. Groves come in between the blocks, and a round sports ground and wide green space appear in the center. At the upper left a facility with a large roof and a wide parking lot have been added, showing that the way the north side of the island was used had begun to change. The trunk road crossing the frame diagonally has grown wider, and the bridges over the waterways have also become thicker. On the sea at the upper right, ships waiting offshore are dotted white, and in the lower half a water surface of fine grains spreads.

Blocks where the green has grown

In today's photograph, the slab-shaped residential buildings are surrounded by dense green. The way the buildings are lined up has hardly changed from 1984-86, yet the trees have grown and softened the outlines of the blocks. The round sports ground remains the color of soil, and several rectangles that look like courts also line up. The large roofs continuing south of the group of residential buildings are covered with blue panels, and the roofs of the warehouses have become places for generating power. The quay on the north side is filled with colorful containers, and cargo-handling equipment lines the shore. The composition in which blocks of homes and cargo-handling quays fit into one photograph is the result of the order of preparation remaining as it was.

The height of the land is close to flat, but there are slight differences among the five measured values. The center is 4.1 m, the south 4.7 m, the west 3.5 m and the north 2.7 m, and only the eastern measuring point is high, showing 7.7 m. Because land made by filling the sea is built flat from the start, no ups and downs like mountains or valleys arise. Instead, differences in the thickness of the fill and in the time of preparation appear as steps of tens of centimeters to several meters. Since the photographs also show that this is a low, flat artificial island surrounded by water, it is worth opening the hazard map published by the City of Osaka and checking the assumptions for storm surge and tsunami by the zone for each address.

In Nanko-naka 1-chome there is a point where the official land price (Chika Koji) is published for warehouse use. It is at a position about 473 m from the center. It was 93,000 yen per square meter in 2011 and 198,000 yen in the 2026 publication, so lining up the first year and 2026 gives more than double. The lowest year in the records up to the 2026 publication was 2013, at 89,000 yen. Kobe Port has Port Island, built in a similar period, where you can compare the similar idea of placing housing and cargo handling on the same island.