Seto Inland Sea - Transport

Transport

Today the Inland Sea serves its coastal areas mainly for two purposes: first, international or domestic cargo transportation, and second, local transportation between coastal areas and islands on the sea. Major ports are Kobe, Okayama, Takamatsu, Tokushima, Matsuyama, and Hiroshima. Honshū and Shikoku have been connected by three series of bridges since the late 1980s. Those series of bridges, collectively known as the Honshū-Shikoku Bridge Project, are, from east to west, Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, Great Seto Bridge, and Nishiseto Expressway. On the other hand, no bridge over the Inland Sea connects Kyūshū and another island.

Historically, the Inland Sea as transport line served four coastal areas: Kansai, Chūgoku, Shikoku, and eastern Kyūshū. The Inland Sea provided each of these regions with local transportation and connected each region to the others and far areas, including the coastal area of the Sea of Japan, Korea, and China. After Kobe port was founded in 1868 to serve foreign ships, the Inland Sea became a major international waterway with connection to the Pacific.

Due to the development of land transportation, the travel between east and west — that is, transportation within Shikoku, within Honshū, and between Honshū and Kyūshū — shifted to railroad and road transport. Two coastal railways, San'yō Main Line in Honshū and Yosan Main Line were built. Those railway lines stimulated the local economy and once invoked a rail mania. Many short railroads were planned to connect a certain station of those two lines and a local seaport on the Inland Sea, and some of them were actually built. The Ministry of Railroads, later the Japanese National Railways and then Shikoku Railway Company, ran some train ferry lines between Honshū and Shikoku including the line between Uno Station (Tamano) and Takamatsu Station (Takamatsu). When the Great Seto Bridge was finished and began to serve the two coastal areas, that ferry line was abolished.