Kansai International Airport was Japan's answer to the noise-bound, curfewed Itami Airport: build a new gateway where no neighbors could complain, in the middle of Osaka Bay. Engineers spent 1987 to 1994 constructing an entirely artificial island five kilometers offshore, the first airport ever built completely on man-made land.
Renzo Piano designed Terminal 1 as a sleek aerodynamic wing stretching about 1.7 kilometers, one of the longest buildings in the world. The airport opened in September 1994 and within months proved its resilience, emerging essentially undamaged from the devastating 1995 Kobe earthquake nearby.
The island settled into the soft seabed clay faster than predicted, forcing continual jacking of the terminal's columns, an engineering saga that led the American Society of Civil Engineers to honor Kansai as a Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium. A second runway on an adjacent reclaimed island opened in 2007, enabling full 24-hour operations.
Typhoon Jebi flooded the airport in 2018 and a tanker strike severed its access bridge, prompting major flood defenses. Renovated ahead of Expo 2025 in Osaka, Kansai now thrives on Japan's inbound tourism boom as the gateway to Osaka, Kyoto and Nara.