Wakayama Marina City about 60 years ago and today

History of Wakayama Marina City

At the southern edge of the City of Wakayama there is a square island with sharp corners. Its outline shows that it is land people built by piling up earth, but the thing placed on it is neither a pier nor a factory. Long, thin white boats line the landing piers in many rows, and the southern half of the island is painted in patches of pavement and lawn. A shore lined with buildings and tanks lies across the channel, yet only the island's role is different. Where does this difference come from? If you look at the photographs of the old eras first, half of the answer lies on the side of the landform.

This sea, opening gently toward the Kii Channel, has a long beach built from sand carried by the rivers that flow down the Wakayama Plain, and to the south of it a hill juts out to the water's edge to form a cape. The water south of the cape is especially shallow. In the aerial photographs, that shallowness shows through the water surface as patterns of sand. From the side of construction work, the same shallowness meant that little earth had to be sunk. The town area lies behind it, and on the opposite shore across the cape a factory shore already existed. Neither an access road nor a waterway had to be laid out anew. The reasons this sea was chosen as a site for land preparation lay in these two points, ahead of the beauty of the scenery.

The elevations measured on the island are 3 m at the center, 3.6 m to the north, and 3.8 m to the south, so every direction falls at almost the same height. The figures do not move because they measure a designed height, not the ups and downs of the original landform. The east and west sections have no values, and the line breaks off. This is because both sides of it are the sea surface and the channel. Because it is low land surrounded by the sea, the City of Wakayama publishes the areas and depths assumed to be flooded by a tsunami or storm surge. The thing to read together with the figures of the section is that map.

A shallow sea and a sandy beach

In the 1961-69 aerial photograph, everything from the left half of the frame to the lower half is one continuous sea. In the black-and-white tones only the shading of the water changes slightly, and the sand ripples of the shallows float up faintly. The land gathers in the upper right corner. A thin sandy beach runs diagonally, and strip-shaped paddies and fields and a hamlet packed with roofs continue inside it. South of the hamlet a hill thrusts out into the sea and becomes a dense black forest. On the southern edge of the cape there are a white straight structure and a small square water surface, which can be read as a place for bringing boats in. From the upper left of the frame, a long, thin white structure extends diagonally into the sea. Below the center a single white line is drawn diagonally, and it is the trace of a passing ship. The island is nowhere.

1974-78 survives in color. The sea sinks into a deep blue-green, and the edges of the sand ripples in the shallows can now be traced. Even so, the extent of the sea does not change. The change is in the lower right. The shore south of the cape juts out squarely offshore, nearly 10 white round tanks stand together in a group, and to the north of them long buildings and reddish-brown lots are lined up in order. It is a factory site. In the town area at the upper right an oval track and a round facility appear, and the rows of houses have filled in up to the foot of the hill. The sea is still sea.

The factories growing on the opposite shore

The 1979-83 photograph is taken in colors that are dark and sunken overall. The texture of the sea surface can hardly be read, but the land side is clearer than in the previous era. On the factory site, long buildings with blue roofs increase and the gaps between the lots fill in. At the water's edge of the sandy beach, chains of white dots are placed, lined up along the line where the waves strike. At the upper right the oval track is painted red, and next to it a sports ground with a fan-shaped infield is added. On the sea side, a seam between photographs remains as a square boundary. Here too the island does not appear.

By 1984-86 the sea is almost black. Offshore there are a few small white ships, and at the bottom edge a small boat trailing a short wake appears. On land the factory buildings stand shoulder to shoulder, and reddish-brown roofs form rows. The houses of the town have climbed up into the valleys of the hill. The oval track at the upper right and the fan-shaped sports ground next to it have not changed places since the previous era, and only the rows of houses around them have grown thicker. The sandy beach remains as a white band, and the shape of the road inside it does not change either. Through the fourth photograph there is no island. To eyes that have stepped forward from the oldest era, this sea seems to go on being sea forever.

The other half of the answer lies in the purpose of the land preparation. In 1994 an exposition was held on this island. The land prepared as its venue was handed over as it was to a place for leisure and for mooring boats. It is an island not for transferring cargo but for people to come and play and to keep boats. The place name, too, contains a word that refers to a place for keeping boats. The method of piling earth to turn a shallow sea into land is no different from that of the factory zone on the opposite shore, yet only the role given to the finished land was different. That is why the island and the opposite shore look so different in today's photograph.

An island of yachts and rides

At the center of today's photograph there is clearly a square island with sharp corners. Its outline is enclosed by straight lines, white buildings and a thin tower gather at the northern end, and from there pavement and lawn spread south. In the inlet north of the island many landing piers stick out, and long, thin boats are moored packed together with no gaps. The rows of yachts fill the landing piers. South of them, finely colored buildings and round structures form one cluster, and you can tell it is an area for welcoming people. Wide pavement and grassland lie further south, with only the lines of the lots drawn on it. Offshore to the west of the island a thin breakwater extends far, and its tip swells slightly.

The island is not isolated. On the east side a thin line crosses the channel and connects to the mainland shore, where buildings with white roofs and tanks stand in a row. Kainan Station on the Kisei Line is further inland from there, and the tracks do not enter the island. On the mainland, the cape that was a black forest in 1961-69 is still forest, and the sandy beach north of it remains too. Offshore of the beach, however, straight structures have been placed, and the shape of the water's edge differs from that in the black-and-white photograph. At the sports facilities in the upper right the track is painted red, and next to it a building with a round roof has been added. It is the same place as the track that began to look red in 1979-83. The color of the water changes in steps between the top and bottom of the frame because the photographs pieced together were not taken at the same time.

Land price records remain not for the island but for the mainland side across the channel. They are for one point in a residential area of Kemi, about 1.3 km from the location. Per square meter, the price was 130,000 yen in 1995 and 42,600 yen in 2025. In the 2026 publication of the official land prices (Chika Koji) it is 42,300 yen, and in the record up to the 2026 publication the highest is the 130,000 yen of the first year, 1995, and the lowest is the value of the last year, 2026. When reading the figures, keep in mind that the record began just after the island opened.

Traces of the shallow sea remain in the water around the island. The water surface spreading west and south of the island is pale in color and continues offshore as a band. The places that appeared as sand ripples in the 1961-69 black-and-white photograph roughly overlap the places that look greenish in today's photograph. Only the inside of the square outline was replaced by land, and the shallowness outside it is unchanged. To return to the opening question, two things decided the island's role: the landform of this shallow sea, and the purpose given in 1994. If you step through the eras from the oldest and watch the moment the shape of the island appears in the last photograph, you can see that the two overlap in the same place.