Tagonoura Port about 60 years ago and today

History of Tagonoura Port

The coast of Fuji facing Suruga Bay is a beach of sand and gravel that continues straight like a single line. There is no inlet held in the arms of a cape and no deep bay cut by a river, and there is no hollow anywhere that can shelter ships from the wind. The name Tagonoura was what people called this land as a beach looking out on Mount Fuji, sung in old poems, and it did not originally mean a port facility. On the other hand, this area is land where paper mills, which use large amounts of water, gathered early. Even when quays were needed for bringing in raw materials and fuel and shipping out products, there was no natural bay nearby to use. The method adopted was to dig out the low land inside the beach, draw in seawater, and fill the surroundings with the dug-out soil to make quays. In the early 1960s this dug-in port opened.

The mouth at the start of digging

The black-and-white 1961-69 photograph is coarse-grained, and about the bottom quarter of the frame is the sea surface of Suruga Bay. White bands of waves run in many lines parallel to the shoreline, and just inside them there is a long, narrow dark water surface enclosed by seawalls. It is a water area that has just been dug out, its shape is still narrow, and the mouth leading to the bay is tight as if its width had been squeezed. A single breakwater juts out into the sea, extending as if to guard the side of the mouth. The area around the water surface is bare ground under preparation, split into patches of dry and wet surfaces, with construction ruts scattered on the ground. Apart from digging the beach, there was no other way.

In the right half of the same photograph, a town with densely overlapping roofs spreads out. Beyond it at the upper right, a grid of paddies continues, a tall chimney stands in the grid, and a white streak flowing from it trails downwind. The upper left is a hill slope, where fields and woods overlap in steps. The facilities that can be called a port are still few enough to count, and the mouth is still narrow.

The triangular anchorage

If you switch to 1974-78, the photograph turns to color and the shape of the port has changed completely. At the center a wide water surface opens, somewhere between a triangle and a trapezoid, connected to the bay at one point in the south through a narrow mouth. The seawalls around it are straight everywhere, and the corners bend sharply. Several white hulls lie alongside the quay at the top center, and from there a long, narrow jetty juts into the water. Behind the quay, square lots line up, and in each lot mound-like piles stand in rows facing the same way. The west side on the left is a cluster of large factories, with large white roofs, chimneys, and tanks filling the grounds. The east side on the right is a town of dense roofs. In the upper part of the frame, two bands of railway cross diagonally from the upper left to the right. At the upper right, a grid of paddies still remains, with several circular storage tanks mixed in. On the southeast of the coast, short jetties line up at intervals from the water's edge. The water surface inside the port is clearly blacker than the color of the bay outside.

The water surface sunk in black

The 1979-83 photograph is dark as a whole, and the water in the port looks even blacker. Long, narrow white warehouses line the quay at the top center, and ships berth in front of them. On the jetty at the center right, white cylindrical tanks stand in rows at regular intervals. The roofs of the factory cluster on the left have been repainted blue and light blue, and at the upper right a waterway winds away to the east. The southern mouth is squeezed even narrower between two jetties, and in the sea outside it, breakwaters have been placed like the teeth of a comb. At the lower left, a wide white gravel beach appears, and on the western coast several T-shaped jetties jut out. The lower right corner has no photograph prepared and remains a black rectangle. The water is at its blackest.

The color of the port's water is also a record of the other side of this area's industrial momentum. Around 1970, the mud accumulated on the bottom of the port and the pollution of the water were taken up as a major problem, and action was demanded both on the facilities of those discharging the pollution and on the treatment of the accumulated mud itself. The aerial photographs do not tell us what is in the water, but the frame does confirm that the blackness inside the port fades as you advance through the eras. The way in on the land side is Yoshiwara Station, where the Tokaido Line and the Gakunan Railway Line meet.

Rectangles lined up along the beach

In the 1987-90 photograph, the water in the port turns a bright blue-green. Buildings with blue roofs line the quay at the top center, and the cylindrical tanks on the jetty at the center right have increased in number and are packed without gaps. In the factory cluster on the left, buildings overlap one another, and large white and blue roofs cover the grounds. The town on the right has also grown denser in roofs, and blue roofs stand out. The shoreline draws the eye most. Offshore of the water's edge, white rectangles are placed at regular intervals, and the row continues across the whole width of the frame. It has become a form in which the rectangles take the waves. On the sand and gravel beach at the lower left, a long, narrow embankment and a road run, and the railway crossing the upper part diagonally remains as two bands. Toward the right of the bottom edge, a white strip with no photograph has entered.

In today's photograph, the port's water surface looks as if it has stretched branches in three directions. A narrow channel extends west from the wide anchorage at the center, and a canal-like branch also reaches in to the north. The anchorage is ringed with paved piers, and there is also a lot where small white dots line up neatly. Long, narrow buildings with blue roofs sit on the central jetty, and ships berth at the quays. The southern mouth stays unchanged between two jetties, and from there it leads out to the sea. On the east side of the coast, lawn greenery and paths have been laid out, and a large building with a red roof stands near them. On the sand and gravel beach at the lower left as well, a paved square and narrow paths have been laid, and the long, narrow land between the beach and the port is in use. In the upper part of the frame, the bands of the railway and an elevated road run diagonally, overlapping each other. A waterway meanders across the upper right, drawing green bands on both sides. The sea surface at the bottom edge differs in darkness square by square, and the seams are visible.

The elevation profile shows in an unexpected form which is higher, the beach or the port. The southern measuring point near the sea is the highest in the frame at 9.3 m, the center on the inland side is 3.7 m, the north is 3 m, the west is 4.4 m, and the lowest is the east at 1.8 m. The beach side is higher. It is a landform in which a rise built up as waves pushed sand and gravel continues along the coast like a levee, with low land spreading inside it, and these figures also show that the dug-in port was made on the low side. Land prices for residential land have continued to be recorded at Suzukawa-nakacho, Fuji, about 430 m from the location. Per square meter, the price was 70,000 yen in 2005 and 33,400 yen in the 2026 publication of the official land prices (Chika Koji), falling to about half from 2005 to the 2026 publication. Since this is a place where low land faces the sea directly, for the assumptions for storm surge, tsunami, and river flooding, the quickest way is to check the lots that concern you on the maps published by the City of Fuji.