Tokyo Bay

Found in Japan’s southern Kantô area, Tokyo Bay was formerly called Edo Bay taken after the small fishing village Edo which is now Tokyo, Japan’s vibrant capital.  Tokyo Bay is enclosed by Miura Peninsula to its west and Boso Peninsula to its right; it is the region north to the straight line that is formed by Cape Kannon.  The area covers approximately nine-hundred-twenty-two square kilometers, and generally it includes the Uruga Channel, which would then have a total area of one-thousand-three-hundred-twenty square kilometers.   

Historically, Tokyo Bay was the 1850 treaty site for Commodore Matthew Perry’s initial discussions with Japanese bakufu to reopen the ports to foreign trade; it was also the most official venue for the Japanese-European contacts foregoing the Meiji Restoration.  Chiba, Yokohama, Kawasaki, Yokosuka, and Tokyo ports are all situated on Tokyo Bay, where Yokosuka port holds the US Forces Japan naval bases, as well as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. 

On Tokyo Bay’s western coast, in the midst of Yokohama and Tokyo, one can find the Keihin Industrial Area which has been expanded since Meiji Era, and after WW II was made bigger to the Keiyo Industrial Area in the length of the east and north coasts.  The bridge/tunnel called Tokyo Wan Aqua-Line crosses the Bay between Kisarazu and Kawasaki; ferries also traverse the bay to Uruga Channel between Kanaya and Kurihama.

Today, Tokyo Bay’s façade boasts of glitzy malls, luxurious hotels, world-class aquariums, and Ferris wheels that are really impressive.  However, the Bay has been threatened with the entire construction boom where factories, oil storage tanks, and smokestacks have in one way or another contributed to Tokyo Bay’s now polluted waters. 

The once powerful magnetism of the Bay that pulled in millions of people from across the country and provided them with new lifestyles and jobs, has showed its other face with the area’s stretched of destitute population, and the encampments built by the homeless in particular places near Tokyo Bay. Once every month, the government sends out sanitation workers to the bay to clean out these temporary shelters; the homeless have to get up early in the morning take up their cooking gears and settees, wait till the demolition of the houses are done, then goes back and rebuilds it again. 

Tokyo Bay has become a powerful symbol of the country’s economic miracle, but it has also represented another side of Tokyo; but like any other capital in the world, it may just be a common site.