Why the Japanese are abandoning their beaches

On the Fujisawa coast [southwest of Tokyo] stretches Katase Nishihama-Kugenuma Beach, a vast expanse of sand bathed by blue waters with Enoshima Island and Mount Fuji in the background.

It welcomes nearly a million people a year. This year, too, it's attracting families playing in the waves and young people gathering at beach restaurants. Yet, despite the crowds, beachgoers are worried.

“In twenty years, we’ll probably have to close our restaurant,” complains Yoshitada Kurihara, president of the Enoshima Beach Cooperative, who runs a restaurant on site. The beach the restaurant overlooks continues to shrink; it’s losing about a meter a year, and the distance between the restaurant and the sea is now only about twenty meters. This phenomenon is due primarily to the construction, in 2007, of the Katase fishing port wharf, which slows the influx of sediment from the Sakai River. Added to this is erosion caused by typhoons and strong waves.

Thus the Queen and Prince of the Sea competition, which had been held every year on a stage installed by the sea since 1981, was moved to a hall in 2015: the site had frequently become unusable at high tide.