Yokkaichi Kasumigaura District about 60 years ago and today

History of Yokkaichi Kasumigaura District

On the west shore of Ise Bay, the water is slow to grow deep. The rivers flowing down from the Suzuka mountains carry fine sand and mud, and off Yokkaichi there spread a sea so shallow that the bottom could be seen at low tide. This area, called Kasumigaura, had a sandy beach and was known as a place crowded with sea bathers. Partitioning the sea into squares and turning it into land is a story that came after that.

From the side doing the reclamation, a shallow sea is convenient. Turning deep water into land takes an enormous amount of earth, but if the water is shallow, a small amount of earth and sand is enough. Moreover, oil and chemical factories already lined the shore of Yokkaichi, and the shipping routes for tankers carrying crude oil, a port for sending out cargo, and railways heading inland were all in place. To the question of where to put new factory land, this shallow sea was an answer that was almost too obvious.

When it was a shallow sea

If you open the 1961-69 aerial photograph, most of the frame is water. In the coarse-grained black and white a gray water surface continues from top to bottom, and bands of bright patches float along the top side and the left edge. These are the parts where the sand of the shallows shows through. The land is only the upper left corner and a thin strip along the left edge, where seawalls set in straight lines and structures jutting a short way from them into the water stand in a row. Square lots, rows of stakes running like dotted lines, and small ships between them appear in the lower left corner. The right half is a separate frame, and here the water surface is dark and the patterns of fine waves are packed densely. In the middle a single ship moves forward, trailing a sharp white wake. The white blank at the right edge is the area this era's photograph does not cover. There are no islands, no lots, and no roads.

An island born from mud

When you switch to 1974-78, a large five-sided piece of land appears at the center of the same frame. It is not, however, a finished industrial zone. The whole photograph is a construction site. It is enclosed by white straight seawalls and stakes continuing in dots, the inside is brown and sand-colored bare ground, and the traces of flowing water remain as branching streaks. One section toward the southeast is still filled with pale ocher muddy water, and you can tell that earth and sand are still being poured in. Only the northwest side is in operation. Dozens of round white tanks stand together, plants packed with thin pipes and towers line up densely, and buildings with large white roofs and finely colored storage yards for materials continue to the north of them. In the channel on the left many ships line up, and on the opposite shore there are also tanks and landing piers. The edge of the reclamation and the edge of the operating factories sit next to each other in one photograph.

The time when this island was being built overlaps with the time when the name Yokkaichi became known for something else. A lawsuit over air pollution from factory smoke was filed in 1967, and a ruling was handed down in 1972. The Yokkaichi pollution lawsuit was an event that made people reconsider the relation between building factories and people continuing to live nearby. The method itself of piling earth on the sea to make factory land had continued since before then, but the next two photographs show that the finished land did not fill up right away.

Until the lots filled up

In the 1979-83 photograph, the land preparation itself is finished. The island's outline has settled into a sharp-cornered shape, and the inside has been divided into long, narrow blocks by a grid of roads. Yet the lots are empty. Brown, with grass beginning to grow, and sand color spread in patches, and the shadows of buildings can be counted on your fingers. At the northern end, a large building with a blue gridded roof stands shoulder to shoulder with a long white building, and rows of finely colored materials are placed in front of them. The plant on the left has grown even denser than in the previous era, and the group of white tanks has spread south. Toward the bottom of the center two black round tanks are placed as a pair. Offshore, a few ships ride at anchor, each floating apart from the others. The main thing to see in this era is that empty lots remained for a long time. The lower half of the frame suddenly turns dark navy because of a seam between photographs, not because of the color of the sea surface on the same day.

By 1987-90, the change happens not inside the island but in the sea to the northeast. A breakwater bends as it extends offshore and encloses a square water surface. Inside the enclosure, patterns of earth and sand spread faintly, which can be read as the start of the next reclamation. In the northern part of the island, colored dots that look like materials and box-shaped cargo fill the lots, and buildings with blue roofs have increased. Toward the south, white spherical tanks appear as a group, and to the west of them three cylindrical tanks with bright tops and one dark-colored tank are placed together in the same lot. From the quay at the southern end, a landing pier juts into the sea, and a ship is berthed alongside it. Even so, from the center of the island to the south, a patchwork of grassland and bare ground still remains widely. Even after 10 years have passed since the land preparation, the lots have filled in unevenly.

Black mounds and white spheres

In today's photograph, the lots that were empty are almost filled. The most eye-catching part is the northeast corner. The water surface that was enclosed by the breakwater in 1987-90 has become land, and black deposits stand in many rows as long, narrow mounds. Beside the place where the black mounds form rows, structures with long legs are set along the quay. In the north, warehouses with large white roofs stand, and a lot where white cars line up neatly sits next to a lot packed with colored dots. At the center, white spherical tanks cluster together, and to the south of them white cylindrical tanks stand in a row. Green bands and round thickets are planted between the lots, and the color of the bare ground just after land preparation can no longer be seen. A white ship is berthed at the landing pier at the southern end, and offshore the line of a thin, bent breakwater extends far.

The flatness of the land also shows in the elevation. The measuring point at the center is 3.6 m, it is 3.2 m to the north, 2.9 m each to the west and the south, and 2.4 m to the east. The values in all four directions are even, and they do not drop to the water surface in any direction. Even values like these at the center of reclaimed land mean that the island is that large. Because it is land people built flat by piling up earth, it is natural that it has no ups and downs, but its flatness also means that the difference from the sea surface is small. The City of Yokkaichi publishes the assumed flooding for areas including this one as a hazard map. From the aerial photographs, you can read only as far as the shapes of the piers and lots, so for how high the water is expected to rise, there is no choice but to consult that map.

The value records are taken from factory land on the island. They are for one point in Kasumi 1-chome, only 249 m from the location. Per square meter, the price was 51,000 yen in 1993 and 25,100 yen in the 2026 publication of the official land prices (Chika Koji). In the record up to the 2026 publication, the highest year is the first, 1993. The lowest, on the other hand, is not the last year but 22,600 yen in 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022, and from there it has recovered a little up to the 2026 publication.

Remnants of the shallow sea remain outside the island. The channel on the left continues thinly between the mainland and the island, and on both its shores the tanks and landing piers that have stood since 1974-78 are in the same positions. The island did not fill the whole bay; it cut a shallow part into a five-sided shape and turned it into land. In the 1961-69 photograph, the place where that five-sided shape lies is an even gray water surface. The shape of the water is not the only thing that remained. The district name given to the factory land on the island is Kasumi, and the name of the station on the Kintetsu Nagoya Line running inside the channel is Kasumigaura. The characters of the name from the days of sea bathing on the sandy beach remain in both the factory address and the station name.