The Port of Tokyo is one of the largest

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese

seaport A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Ham ...

s and one of the largest seaports in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

basin having an annual traffic capacity of around 100 million tonnes of

cargo Cargo consists of bulk goods conveyed by water, air, or land. In economics, freight is cargo that is transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. ''Cargo'' was originally a shipload but now covers all types of freight, including trans ...

and 4,500,000

twenty-foot equivalent unit The twenty-foot equivalent unit (abbreviated TEU or teu) is an inexact unit of cargo capacity, often used for container ships and container ports.Rowlett, 2004. It is based on the volume of a intermodal container, a standard-sized metal box whic ...

s. The port is also an important employer in the area having more than 30,000 employees that provide services to more than 32,000 ships every year.

History

The forerunner of the Port of Tokyo, the ''Edo Port'' (Edo Minato) played a very important role in the history of marine transport of

and as a distribution point for supplying goods for the people of Edo. During the

Tokugawa Shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

the Port of Tokyo was not allowed to open to international trade, although the neighbouring

Port of Yokohama The is operated by the Port and Harbor Bureau of the City of Yokohama in Japan. It opens onto Tokyo Bay. The port is located at a latitude of 35.27–00°N and a longitude of 139.38–46°E. To the south lies the Port of Yokosuka; to the north ...

was already open for this kind of trade. The development of the port was finally encouraged during the

Meiji Period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

with the influence of a project that was meant to improve the

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environment ...

of the

Sumida River The is a river that flows through central Tokyo, Japan. It branches from the Arakawa River at Iwabuchi (in Kita-ku) and flows into Tokyo Bay. Its tributaries include the Kanda and Shakujii rivers. It passes through the Kita, Adachi, Arakaw ...

by dredging channels and reclaiming land at

Tsukishima is a place located in Chūō, Tokyo, Japan, in the Sumida River estuary. It is a reclaimed land next to Tsukuda District. The land reclamation completed in 1892, using earth from the dredging work performed to create a shipping channel in Toky ...

and

Shibaura is a district of Minato ward located in Tokyo, Japan. The district is located between the eastern side of the Yamanote Line train and Tokyo Bay. Shibaura consists mostly of artificial islands created by the excavation of industrial canals in t ...

. The

Kanto earthquake Kantō (Japanese) Kanto is a simplified spelling of , a Japanese word, only omitting the diacritics. In Japan Kantō may refer to: *Kantō Plain *Kantō region *Kantō-kai, organized crime group *Kanto (Pokémon), a geographical region in the ' ...

in 1923 served as a starting point of a full-scale

terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together * Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output dev ...

construction project, which was topped out with the opening of the first terminal, Hinode, in 1925. Alongside the completion of another two terminals, Shibaura and Takeshiba, the Port of Tokyo opened for international trade on May 20, 1941.The History of the port of Tokyo
After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

the development of the port became a vital task for the reconstruction of the

ese industry, and construction started on the ''Toyosu coal terminal'', the ''Harumi terminal'' and other terminals one after another. By the late 1960s, the container transport system had become a major factor in shipping worldwide. In 1967, Nippon Container Terminals, Ltd. (NCT), became the port's (and Japan's) first container terminal operator. That same year, the first

container ship A container ship (also called boxship or spelled containership) is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermodal ...

to call on a Japanese port was the first such ship handled by NCT. This significantly contributed to establishing the Port of Tokyo as a major international trade port.

Statistics

In 2007 the ''Port of Tokyo'' handled 90,810,000 tonnes of

and 3,696,000

s, making it one of the busiest

ports in Japan and one of the largest

container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...

ports in the country. :''* figures in tonnes''

Terminals

Container terminals

The ''Port of Tokyo'' has three container terminals with an area of 1,504,718 m² with a total number of 15 berths and a

quay A wharf, quay (, also ), staith, or staithe is a structure on the shore of a harbour or on the bank of a river or canal where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers. Such a structure includes one or more berths (mooring location ...

length of 4,479

metre The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...

Oi container terminal

The terminal has seven berths with an area of 945,700 m² and a

length of 2,354

Aomi container terminal

The terminal has five berths with an area of 479,079 m² and a

length of 1,570

Shinagawa container terminal

The terminal has three berths with an area of 79,939 m² and a

length of 333

s. Opened in 1967 it is the oldest

container terminal A container port or container terminal is a facility where cargo containers are transshipped between different transport vehicles, for onward transportation. The transshipment may be between container ships and land vehicles, for example train ...

Kamigumi Tokyo container terminal

The terminal has one berth with a

length of 260

s. Private berth by Kamigumi.

Foodstuff terminal

There are two foodstuff terminals opened in February, 1999, ''Oi marine products'' and ''Oi foodstuff'', with five berths with a

length of 1,060

s and a storage area of 359,000 m².

General cargo

The general cargo section of the port has five terminals: one for

bulk cargo Bulk cargo is commodity cargo that is transported unpackaged in large quantities. Description Bulk cargo refers to material in either liquid or granular, particulate form, as a mass of relatively small solids, such as petroleum/ crude oi ...

, one for

timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, wi ...

, one for

construction materials This is a list of building materials. Many types of building materials are used in the construction industry to create buildings and structures. These categories of materials and products are used by architects and construction project managers ...

, one for log handling and one for linear products with a storage area of 900,000 m², a

length of 3,500

s, storage for 200,000

cubic metres The cubic metre (in Commonwealth English and international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or cubic meter (in American English) is the unit of volume in the International System of Units (SI). Its symbol is ...

and storage for 210,000 tonnes of logs.

Automobile terminal

The ''Port of Tokyo'' has two RoRo terminal with a total length of 1,200

s, a land area of 100,000 m², storage capacity of 22,000 cars and a

transshipment Transshipment, trans-shipment or transhipment is the shipment of goods or containers to an intermediate destination, then to another destination. One possible reason for transshipment is to change the means of transport during the journey (e.g. ...

capacity of 3,500,000 units per year.RoRo Terminal

Passenger Ship terminal

*Harumi Passenger Ship terminal - International passenger Ship terminal. * - Domestic passenger Ship terminal. * - Domestic ferry terminal.

References

{{Coord, 35, 37, 01, N, 139, 47, 44, E, source:kolossus-jawiki, display=title

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Water transport in Tokyo Economy of Tokyo Tokyo Bay