Toyama Shinko Port (Shinminato) about 60 years ago and today

History of Toyama Shinko Port (Shinminato)

Inside a sandbar open toward Toyama Bay there was a lagoon called the Hojozu Lagoon. Sand and gravel carried by rivers were pushed by the waves and piled up long and narrow, and that band separated the water surface from the open sea. This landform, called a coastal lagoon, can provide deep water if it is dug down, and the sandbar shields it from the swells of the open sea. As a place to dig a port into, it had the right qualities from the start. There are ports in many places where the sea was dug into to make channels and quays, and the Kashima Coastal Industrial Zone, dug inside the sand dunes, is one of them, but Toyama Shinko Port differs in that the water to be dug was there first. The port town of Hojozu continued along the back of the sandbar; the town's name later passed to Shinminato, and in the 2005 merger it became part of the City of Imizu. This is land where the outline of the lagoon decided the outline of the port in advance.

The sandbar closing off the lagoon

The 1961-69 aerial photograph is black and white, and the dark sea surface of Toyama Bay takes up almost the whole upper half of the frame. Thin lines that seem to be scratches on the film run diagonally across the sea, and a light gray band enters the upper middle, leaving an area that does not appear in the photograph. From the center of the frame downward, a large dark water surface spreads sideways. This is the Hojozu Lagoon. Between the lagoon and the sea, the sandbar runs diagonally from the upper left down to the lower right, rows of houses continue densely along its back, and a single straight line passes along the houses from end to end. It looks like a railway line. On the north shore of the lagoon, long, narrow masses line up in groups on the water, and dark lines extend from the shore in arcs. From the photograph, you cannot tell whether they are rafts or landing piers. Many small dots are scattered on the water of the lagoon, and some leave thin wakes behind them. A channel that seems to be the Uchi River and the dense town of Shinminato lie at the western end, and to the south and southwest a grid of paddies spreads everywhere. The lots divided by ridges vary in size and do not resemble the square division of industrial land that appears in later eras. The place to keep your eyes on is the eastern part of the sandbar: a thin dark band cuts vertically through the sandbar, and a bright thin line crosses over it. It looks like a channel draining the lagoon's water to the sea and a bridge over it. The sandbar is still connected.

Sea surface enclosed by seawalls

Color comes with the 1974-78 photograph. The tones of navy and blue-green shift in steps from tile to tile, and the seams remain as vertical lines. The open sea and the waters of the port sink extremely dark, close to black, but this is not an area missing from the photograph; it is water that came out dark because of the exposure. The sandbar differs decisively from the previous era: its whole eastern stretch has been cut away, and a wide channel connects the lagoon and the open sea. It is the mouth of the port. On both sides of the cut the rows of houses remain as they were, and the line that ran along the back of the sandbar dead-ends in the east and in the west. On the sea north of the sandbar, a thin white line encloses a large rectangle. The inside of the enclosure is still water, and it can be read as the stage at which only the seawall had been drawn on the sea first. Southwest of the sandbar spreads very bright prepared land with sand exposed, and dark shapes that look like work boats draw close to the water's edge. Offshore, white structures forming T shapes and grids line up, and on the right a long breakwater forming a zigzag extends north. In the lower part of the frame, white paving, large roofs and neatly divided sites have appeared, pushing the paddies aside. It is the time when there are only lines on the sea.

A dug-in port has the logic that the dredged earth and sand become the material for reclamation just as they are. Because deep water and flat industrial land can be obtained in a single work, several ports of this form were built on the waterfront in Japan in the 1960s, and this area between Toyama and Takaoka became one of their stages. However, cutting the sandbar to open the mouth of the port also meant cutting off, east from west, the road and the tracks that ran along the back of the sandbar. The two divided shores were linked by a ferry run by the prefecture, and people with business on the opposite shore came to move according to the ferry times.

The bridge across the mouth of the port

In today's aerial photograph, the sea surface that was north of the sandbar has become land. In the area where wave patterns appeared in 1961-69, bands of lawn and trees, a loop road and a bright semicircular plaza have been placed, and a ship with sails is moored at the water's edge. The terminus of the Manyosen Line carries the station name Kaiwomaru because it points to the place where this ship is moored. Factories and warehouses line the band of the sandbar, and cargo-handling sites stacked with boxes of many colors spread out. The mouth of the port remains open, but a cable-stayed bridge crosses it high above. The cables strung in fans from the two main towers can be counted clearly even from above in the photograph. This is the Shinminato Ohashi Bridge, opened in 2012. On the east side of the bridge are parking lots and rows of cars, and on the south shore factories with blue roofs and material yards continue. At the northwestern end a bent breakwater takes the open sea, and in the small water surface inside it dozens of long, narrow boats float facing the same way. The dark blue-green waters that take up the lower half of the frame overlap exactly with the position where the lagoon was. In the position of the lagoon there is a port.

Even so, if you move your eyes to the left edge of the frame, a thin channel that seems to be the Uchi River and the dense rows of houses edging it remain in almost the same position as in 1961-69. The water surface of the lagoon has been replaced by the waters of the port, and the eastern half of the sandbar was cut away to become a channel, but only the western end of the sandbar kept the shape of a town without being swallowed by the port lots. If you are looking for traces of the lagoon, looking at the direction of these rows of houses is quicker than looking at the water.

If you look at the height of the ground at five measuring points, the highest is the center of the sandbar at 3.6 m, the north is 3.1 m, the south 2.3 m, and the east and west are both 2.2 m. The difference is only 1.4 m, and no point reaches 4 m. The City of Imizu has made maps of the assumptions for floods, storm surges and tsunamis separately. Since the way the ground was formed differs between the top of the sandbar and the reclaimed land, it is good to open them while keeping in mind which side you are looking at. Land prices can be followed not at the port site itself but at an observation point for the official land prices (Chika Koji) for industrial land in Ishimaru, Takaoka, about 1.4 km away. The record begins at 19,000 yen per square meter in 2003, fell to 14,700 yen in 2013, and in the 2026 publication it is 15,700 yen. Because the movement has ups and downs, the three values at both ends and at the bottom are set out here as they are.

In order of year, the turning points of this land are the following five.

If you look while switching, it is good to move your eyes in the following order.