Tomakomai Port (West Port) about 60 years ago and today

History of Tomakomai Port (West Port)

A corner of a sandy beach facing the Pacific Ocean cuts squarely inland. The West Port of Tomakomai Port is not a port that uses a natural inlet or a river mouth but a port made by digging into a sandy beach. The place name is said to come from an Ainu word for a river at the back of a marsh, and the water of this land was originally not on the sea side but on the side of the marshes and small streams scattered over the low wild land. That lowness and flatness are what make the method of digging work.

Before the port: wild land and sandy beach

The Yufutsu Plain, low land of peat and sand that continues to the coastline, spreads east of Tomakomai. The coast facing the Pacific is a long sandy beach with no bay deep enough to take in large ships. If you want ships to berth, you either extend breakwaters out to sea to protect them from the waves or dig into the land and draw the water in. If you choose to dig, the water surface where ships stay is placed behind the sandy beach, and the land itself shields it from the swells of the open sea. The dug-out earth and sand can be used for reclamation and for raising the ground nearby, so flat low land is not a disadvantage but also becomes a place to put the material. Paper mills had been running from the beginning of the 20th century, and since this was also land where timber and coal gathered, there was demand for a port that handles cargo from early on.

The lowness of the land also shows in the elevation measurements. The value at the point on the edge of the dug-in basin is 3.9 m, the south side near the sea is 2.9 m, and only the east side, toward the inland, finally reaches 5.8 m. The north side is 4.6 m, and on the west side no value is obtained because it is water. This means that so much water surface and so many quays line up on land with a range of only a few meters. The official hazard map published by the City of Tomakomai shows as areas how far flooding is assumed to reach. If you lay the map over the terrain you can read in the photographs, you can grasp what the elevation figures mean.

The photograph from the start of digging

In the 1961-69 aerial photograph, the small amount of water surface catches the eye. Most of the frame is pale wild land and farmland-like lots, with straight land divisions and stripe-like lines in rows. A large mass of bright bare ground with thin scratched-looking lines in it lies in the center. It can be read either as a trace of digging earth or sand or as the early stage of land preparation, but the center is still wild land, and there is no outline of an anchorage anywhere. A single thin dark line runs straight north-south, bending slightly partway.

Water surface is only at the southern edge of the frame. A rounded water surface connects through a thin neck to a wide, angular water surface, and from there a straight channel runs south and out to the sea. At the mouth of the channel short jetties stick out on both sides, and small white buildings form a row on the shore. It can be read as the stage at which the dug-in port was finished only in the part near the sea. The channel already looks wide enough to let ships through, and room remains to extend it as far as needed to the north. A meandering thin dark line and dark, irregular land that looks wet spread in the east, and at the lower right the waves of the open sea break white. The coastline continues east and west in a gentle arc, and only the mouth of the channel cuts that line.

The era when the anchorage opened

By 1974-78, a deep blue-green water surface opens wide in the center of the frame. The place that was wild land in the previous era has turned into an anchorage, and it is surrounded by straight quays. The farmland-like stripes and irregular land divisions are cut off at the edge of the water, and outlines with sharp corners take over the frame instead. If you compare the same position in the same frame, you can see how large an area was replaced in a little over ten years. On the north shore a black flat area spreads, and if you zoom in, many rows of long, narrow piles line up and curved bands wrap around them. The southern edge is a quay, and a ship is moored alongside. It looks like a yard for piling up and handling black powdered material.

In the northeast, reddish brown square lots and a row of white round tanks appear. The southeast is land with white round tanks lined up densely, and a seawall runs between it and the open sea. On the west shore, long buildings with green roofs form a row, with a small inlet and landing piers attached. Only the left side of the center remains pale light blue, a shallow water surface whose bottom shows through, and its western and northern edges are straight quays. This is a part that can be read as being in the middle of widening by digging. White ships float in the anchorage, trailing thin wakes. It was a little over ten years in which the anchorage opened all at once.

Today's frame and the mouth of the port

In the photograph as of 2026, the pier jutting like a peninsula north of the anchorage has become a wide paved flat area. A long white-gray transit shed stands, and south of it white vehicles form neat rows. At the southern end of the pier an orange and white hull is moored alongside, with a structure with a blue roof beside it. It can be read as a place where ships that vehicles drive aboard arrive and depart. In the 1974-78 photograph no white transit shed or rows of vehicles appear on the north side of the anchorage, which means the use of the same position has been replaced. The outline of the water surface has not changed much, and only the roles of the land around it have been renewed.

The change is clearest in the position of the black flat area. The black place that occupied the north shore in 1974-78 has turned into paving and green, and the black yard moves east. Along the eastern shore, dark piles and blue buildings line up, and ships berth at the quay. Rows of regularly arranged dark blue panels and a group of factories with blue roofs appear in the northeast, and the round tanks in the southeast have increased in number. The row of green-roofed buildings on the west shore remains, and in the southwest there is a small anchorage with landing piers where small boats gather. The northwest is a dense town area, and railway lines run in parallel. From Tomakomai Station, the Muroran Line and the Hidaka Line extend.

The straight channel that ran out to the sea in 1961-69 and the mouth of the port where small boats trail wakes in today's photograph are in almost the same position in the frame. The framework of the port seems to carry on the direction of the single channel from the start of digging just as it was. Just by going back and forth between the two photographs, you can read the order: the exit to the sea was decided first, and from there the port was dug wider toward the inland. The low wild land was land where the more you dug, the more the water surface grew.

In a residential area of Funami-cho there is a reference point where land price records remain over a long period. It is about 1.1 km from the center of the port. Per square meter, 2013 is 19,300 yen, and in the 2026 publication of the official land prices (Chika Koji) it is 17,400 yen. If you set the two values for 2013 and the 2026 publication side by side, the later one is about 10% lower.