Rinku Town about 60 years ago and today

History of Rinku Town

Across the water from Kansai International Airport, on the seashore of the City of Izumisano facing Osaka Bay, there is a piece of reclaimed land named Rinku Town. The name carries the sense of land facing the airport, and it is also used as the name of a railway station. This location comes with a slightly unusual circumstance. Past aerial photographs can be viewed in four eras, yet in all four the offshore area is sea. That is because the land in question was completed in the 1990s. So in the old eras, you look at the beach and the sea before reclamation, and the fields of Izumi spreading inland from them. The shore of Senshu from the days before there was either an airport or a town remains just as it was.

A shore of sandy beaches and irrigation ponds

In the oldest photograph, from 1961-69, the upper left half of the frame is filled with sea. Because old photographs are stitched together, several diagonal streaks run through it, and the gray of the sea turns darker or lighter across those streaks. The upper left corner is a large blank of light gray, the range the photography of the time did not reach. The line dividing sea and land is a white sandy beach, extending straight and diagonally from northeast to southwest. It is not the straight line of a seawall but the line of the edge of a beach where waves wash up.

The land side is fields divided into fine lots, with settlements placed here and there among them. A town area where the grains of the rows of houses are dense lies in the upper right of the frame, and in the middle on the right several irrigation ponds can be seen, sunk in darkness. The distance from the mountains of Izumi to the sea is short, and on land that could not rely on a large river, irrigation ponds took on the role of storing water. In the lower middle of the frame there is an oval track, which looks like the grounds of a school or a sports field. Even if you turn your eye back to the sea side, there is no straight line anywhere that would become the outline of the later reclaimed land.

In 1974-78 the photograph changes to color. The sea shows blue, and rows of dark dots line up diagonally offshore. Because they are evenly spaced and regular, they are thought to be structures people built on the sea, used for aquaculture. The coastline is still a white sandy beach. In the upper left there is a stepped range blanked out in black, where the photographed range ends. On land, white buildings begin to line up together along the sea, and large roofs that look like factories mix into the beige of the fields. In the upper right corner a reddish-brown jetty and a dark, sunken anchorage can be seen. These are the facilities of a fishing port. Beside the track in the lower middle, a blue rectangular water surface has also been added.

Dark rows lined up offshore

If you switch to 1979-83, the whole frame sinks into a dark blue-green tone. In the upper left, a missing area blanked out in black is mixed with white square blanks. The rows of dark dots offshore have increased in number from the previous era and look like a band crossing the sea surface diagonally. The land is divided into dark green fields and gray town areas, and at the upper part of the right edge the shape of the fishing port's jetty has become clear. The coastline is still a sandy beach, and no white straight line that would be reclamation work appears. Only a single long, thin white line enters the lower left corner.

In 1984-86 the sea turns dark navy, and the rows offshore spread further and show like a fine, grid-like mottling. It is the photograph in which the use of the sea surface can be read most clearly. Close to the shore, an area of muddy ocher water continues as a band, and it looks like the color of sand and soil washed out from the beach. White ships line up in the fishing port in the upper right. The land side is green fields and a dense town area, and the grain of the lots has become finer still. Even so, the line of the shore has not moved. The land is only in today's photograph.

The photograph in which land appears

If you open today's photograph, a solid piece of land appears outside the sandy beach. Its edge facing the sea is a seawall made by joining broken lines, and the soft curve of a beach is no longer there. From the upper left corner toward the middle of the frame, a thin straight line crosses straight over the sea. It is the figure of a bridge crossing the sea diagonally. Where the bridge reaches the land it turns into ramps coiling in large spirals, and many curves overlap to form a grade-separated interchange.

In 1994 the airport opened. An artificial island was built off Senshu, and Osaka Prefecture reclaimed and prepared this area, which lies on the shore opposite it. The railway placed a station on this land just before crossing to the airport, and as of 2026 the West Japan Railway Company's Kansai Airport Line and Nankai Electric Railway's Airport Line run into it. In 1996 the Rinku Gate Tower Building was completed toward the north. In today's photograph too, that one building alone is far taller than the buildings around it and catches the eye with its long, slender figure.

On the reclaimed land, buildings with large roofs and wide parking lots are placed in large lots. There is also a corner where long, narrow buildings line up in several rows. On the other hand, there are places here and there where only the lots have been divided while the ground stays brown and bare, making a scene in which half of the blocks remain vacant land. Toward the south along the sea, a band of white sand draws an arc, and you can tell it is a beach placed by human hands. In the sea in the upper right there is an anchorage enclosed by jetties, where countless small white boats are moored. It is a place shifted in position from the fishing port of the old eras. The dense rows of houses spreading over the right half of the frame are the town area from before reclamation, grown just as it was. The large lots of the reclaimed land and the fine rows of houses of the existing town area stand side by side in a single photograph, with the line of the seawall as the boundary.

Land close to the height of the sea

The elevations of the five measured points all fall within a range of 0.4 m, from 3.9 m in the east, the highest, to 3.5 m in the west, the lowest. Even if you cut a cross-section, the line is almost level, and no relief corresponding to hills or valleys appears. This is because land made by reclamation is finished flat from the start, and the inland side is also lowland close to sea level. The hazard maps published by the City of Izumisano and Osaka Prefecture draw as zones how far water is assumed to come in a storm surge or tsunami. When you compare the photographs, it is worth having that map open as well.

A land price point with records continuing from 1999 is in Kasamatsu 2-chome. Its use is residential, and it is about 669 m from the location. At the start of the records in 1999 it was 141,000 yen per square meter, and in 2026 it was 72,000 yen, so if you compare only the two ends up to the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji), it is about half. The lowest up to the 2026 publication is 62,100 yen in 2014 and 2015. Port Island, an island built to move the functions of the port offshore, is on the north shore across Osaka Bay. The aim of reclamation differs from this land, where a town was placed on the shore opposite the airport.