Culture and History Around Odaiba-kaihinkoen

The place name Daiba comes directly from the Japanese term for a gun battery. Several coastal defenses were constructed in Tokyo Bay during the final years of the Edo period, and the Third Battery survives today as a historic park accessible on foot from the Odaiba Marine Park side. Minato City's place-name history explains that today's Daiba district occupies the northwestern portion of reclaimed land known as Landfill No. 13 and became directly connected to the Shibaura side with the opening of Rainbow Bridge in 1993. Subsequent waterfront-subcenter development, rail construction and the arrival of television, commercial and entertainment facilities transformed the former defensive waterfront into a mixed residential, office and tourism district. Today, modern commercial architecture and an artificial beach coexist with the physical remains of the Third Battery. The area's present form makes more sense when viewed as a sequence of late-Edo coastal defense, land reclamation, bridge and rail construction, and modern waterfront redevelopment.