Mikuni Port (formerly Sakai Port) Pier

Mikuni Port (Former Sakai Port) Breakwater

A stone arm 511 metres long and about nine metres wide reaches west into the Sea of Japan from the right bank of the Kuzuryu River, where it empties near the old port town of Mikuni in Sakai City, Fukui Prefecture. The structure is not founded on solid rock but on woven brushwood. Beneath the visible stonework lies a mattress of oak branches, lashed into a lattice, weighted with stone and sunk onto the soft sand of the river mouth, then built up with packed rubble and capped with large blocks of andesite. This technique, brought from the Netherlands, kept the breakwater from settling unevenly into the riverbed, and it was the first time the method had been used in Japanese waters.

The breakwater does two jobs at once. It shelters the harbour from the heavy northwesterly seas of winter, and it narrows the flow at the river mouth so that the current scours away the silt that once choked the channel. Built between 1878 and 1882, it was designated an Important Cultural Property in 2003 for its high historical value, and it still guards the port today.

Dutch Engineers and a Meiji Ambition

Mikuni had grown rich on coastal shipping, a key stop for the kitamaebune trading vessels, but the Kuzuryu River kept defeating it. Sediment washing down from upstream silted the mouth almost every year, flooding the town and blocking the larger boats. Six local merchants pressed the prefecture and the new Meiji government for help, and the government sent G. A. Escher, a Dutch civil engineer in the employ of the Home Ministry. Escher drew up a plan that combined a curving breakwater on the right bank with brushwood spur dykes upstream, designed to squeeze the channel and let the river flush its own sediment out to deep water. His colleague Johannis de Rijke took charge of the construction once Escher returned home, corresponding with him by letter as the work went on.

The project belonged to a larger story. The improvement of Sakai Port was among the first modern harbour works the Meiji government undertook, and Mikuni is now counted with Misumi in Kumamoto and Nobiru in Miyagi as one of the "Three Great Ports" of the Meiji era. The stone came from the basalt coast around Tojinbo nearby, ferried by boat. The labour was punishing: winter storms wrecked the brushwood foundations more than two dozen times, a cholera epidemic swept through, and costs ran far over budget, reaching some 300,000 yen, of which local merchants shouldered around 80,000.

There is a footnote that delights visitors who know it. The designer, George Arnold Escher, was the father of the graphic artist M. C. Escher, the creator of the famous impossible staircases and tessellated prints. The artist was born in 1898, two decades after his father left Japan, so he never saw the harbour, but locals have long called the structure "Escher's Breakwater" in honour of the engineer.

What to Look For on a Visit

From the shore the breakwater draws a long, low curve across the river mouth, and walking out along it is the best way to feel its scale and its age. The place is known for its sunsets, the stone arm silhouetted against the water as the sun drops into the Sea of Japan, and for fishing, which draws anglers to the channel year-round. A monument near the river mouth, set up by a local service club, carries reliefs of Escher and de Rijke.

The breakwater has been repaired and extended over the years. It sank during the 1948 Fukui earthquake and was raised again, and a new section added downstream in 1970 brings the combined length to roughly 927 metres, though the historic stone portion keeps its original character. One practical caution: the seaward tip is exposed and has at times been closed because of storm damage, so the full walk to the end is not always possible. The car park at the adjacent Sunset Beach is a convenient base, and the basalt cliffs of Tojinbo are a short trip away.