Land readjustment in Esaka: how the grid of blocks took shape

Published: November 2, 2026 / About 10 min read

The square blocks lined up around Esaka Station appeared all at once between 1961-69 and 1974-78 in terms of photograph eras. In every earlier era, the photograph is taken up by paddy plots. This article lays the order of the railway and road openings, the land readjustment, and the filling in with buildings over the photograph eras, and tells apart the line that became the axis of the grid from the line that stayed without being built into it. The finer points of each photograph are left to the description on the spot page. Because one photograph era spans several years, the year of each event is read against that span.

Three eras before the grid

In the three photographs from c. 1928, c. 1936-42, and 1945-50, paddy plots fill most of the frame, and even the place that would become the station has nothing but ridge lines. A single line running diagonally from lower left to upper right is worth following through all three.

This line, which shows up darkish in c. 1928, appears as a white straight band in c. 1936-42 and still passes through the same position in 1945-50. As a later section shows, this line survives into the era of the grid. From c. 1936-42 on, the Kanzaki River can also be seen crossing the bottom of the frame in an arc.

Land with a height difference of 0.5 m

The elevations at the five measuring points of the spot lie between 2.1 m and 2.6 m: 2.2 m at the center, the south, and the west, 2.1 m to the north, and 2.6 m to the east. The difference between the lowest point, the north, and the highest, the east, is 0.5 m, and four of the five points fall within a range of 0.1 m.

A report by the City of Suita describes the surroundings of Esaka as land where wet paddies originally spread. By the elevation figures, it is land with few clues in the terrain, such as the edge of a hill or a valley, that would set the direction of the plots.

Railway and road in 1970

The Namboku Line of the Kita-Osaka Kyuko Railway opened on February 24, 1970, and was linked with central Osaka by running through onto the Midosuji Line of the Osaka Municipal Subway. The Shin-Midosuji also opened in the same year. Because the railway and the road both ran north to south in the same year, in later photographs the two appear to overlap like a single thick straight line. The lines of the station at Esaka list two, the Midosuji Line and the Namboku Line.

In terms of photograph eras, the year of the opening falls between 1961-69 and 1974-78, and these two photographs bracket the time before and after the opening. In the 1961-69 photograph, the place that would become the station is still among the paddies, and the surrounding roads and the factories along the river have begun to change.

The grid drawn by land readjustment

A document of the City of Suita's comprehensive plan states that, alongside the extension of the Shin-Midosuji and the subway Midosuji Line, land readjustment projects were carried out around Esaka Station and elsewhere, and roads and parks were built. According to the glossary of the same document, a land readjustment project is an area-wide development project that changes the shape of land plots and newly builds or revises public facilities such as roads and parks.

In the 1974-78 photograph, square blocks line up along a thick north-south straight line that passes through the station. From its position, the straight line is the route of the railway and the Shin-Midosuji that had opened, and the blocks can be read as the result of the project redrawing the paddy plots. The direction of the grid was set neither by the terrain nor by the old settlements but by this north-south line.

The City of Suita itself was born in 1940 when Suita Town, Senri Village, Kishibe Village, and Toyotsu Village joined together. The name Toyotsu that remains in the town names near the station carries on the name of a village that took part in this merger.

Years of events and the photograph eras

According to the company history of Kita-Osaka Kyuko, from the year after the opening through 1974 development along the line did not progress, and the company posted losses every year. Development began to grow from around 1975. Only four to eight years separate the opening from the taking of the 1974-78 photograph. The company history speaks of the line as a whole, but since the end of the third row and the fourth row of the table fall within the span of this photograph, the photograph of this era shows a time when the roads had come first and the buildings had not yet caught up.

The grid fills in from 1974-78 to 1984-86

In the 1974-78 photograph, buildings and yellow bare ground are mixed in patches within the grid. In 1979-83 the bare ground shrinks to dots, and in 1984-86 it becomes hard to find vacant land around the station. In 1979-83 a large orange roof by the river and the oval track of an athletics stadium on the left of the frame are also added, and the use of large sites becomes visible apart from the fine grid. If you look at these three photographs in a row, you can read the process of roofs entering the frames divided by roads one after another. It is an order of roads first, buildings later.

At Moriya as well, the 1984-86 photograph shows a grid of roads drawn in advance over a graded site with few buildings. Unlike Esaka, where the grid was drawn over paddies, the grid at Numazu Station Area was redrawn over burned ground, and the city received approval for a postwar reconstruction land readjustment project in January 1947. Aerial photographs from 1974-78: what stage of grading is Tama Center at? covers how to tell the stages of grading apart.

The diagonal band that did not follow the grid

In the photograph as of 2026 too, a band with some width runs where the diagonal line appeared in c. 1928. Within the grid aligned with the north-south straight line, this band keeps the direction it had in the time of the paddies, and a green strip also runs through its middle. Where the band runs into the grid, blocks cut into triangles have formed. One line from the time of the paddies has survived inside the redrawn grid.

The bundle of tracks along the right edge of the frame and the arc of the Kanzaki River at the bottom have also not changed position since c. 1936-42. The grid replaced the paddy plots, and the river and the bundle of tracks stay in the same places outside it.

Watch for gaps and color shifts in the photographs

When you step through the eras to compare plots, you also need to pay attention to the way the photographs themselves were taken. In the 1945-50 photograph, a long horizontal part toward the bottom is missing and shows as gray. It is not a pattern on the land, so even if the paddy plots look cut off there, it cannot be read as a change in the plots.

The 1974-78 photograph is dark at the top and tinged yellow in the middle. When picking out yellow bare ground, allow for the yellow tinge over the whole middle. The way of reading that does not decide the stage of grading by the color of bare ground alone is also covered in the 1974-78 article mentioned earlier.

Table of plots by era

At the 1974-78 row, where the north-south straight line first appears, the column for the place that became the station switches from paddies to the straight line. In the four rows before it, the place that became the station stays paddy throughout, and only the column for the surrounding plots changes little by little.

Official land prices in Toyotsu-cho

In the official land prices (Chika Koji) for a residential lot in Toyotsu-cho, 510 m from the center of the spot, 900,000 yen per square meter in 1991, when the records begin, is the highest value in the records up to the 2026 publication. The lowest up to the 2026 publication is 200,000 yen in 2011, 2012, and 2013, and the 2026 price is 235,000 yen. The following year, 1992, the price was 648,000 yen, a drop of 252,000 yen in one year. Over the five years from 1991 to 1996, 900,000 yen became 330,000 yen, a drop of 570,000 yen. After falling to 215,000 yen in 2004, the price stays between 200,000 yen and 235,000 yen through 2026. The 2026 price of 235,000 yen is a level slightly above one quarter of the 900,000 yen of 1991. From 210,000 yen in 2023 to 214,000 yen in 2024, 221,000 yen in 2025, and 235,000 yen in 2026, the price rose in each year from 2024 to 2026. Because the records start in 1991, they do not overlap with the photograph eras up to 1984-86 compared in this article.

The order to check on the spot page

On the spot page for Esaka, first go back and forth between 1961-69 and 1974-78 to check the boundary where the paddies give way to the grid. Next, stepping from 1974-78 to 1984-86 shows the bare ground being filled by roofs, and finally placing c. 1928 beside the photograph as of 2026 shows that the diagonal band remained in the same direction. The blocks cut into triangles are easy to find if you move your eyes along the band in the photograph as of 2026, and if you switch from there to c. 1928, you can confirm that the diagonal line passed through the same position. If you place c. 1936-42 beside 1984-86, you can also see that the bundle of tracks on the right edge and the arc of the Kanzaki River have not moved.

Kento (Former Suita Rail Yard), in the same City of Suita, is also a spot with the same eight eras of photographs as Esaka, and there it was the land of a former rail yard, not paddies, that turned into a town. Towns born on former rail yard sites, seen in aerial photographs covers how to read former rail yard sites, and the differences in how the photographs of each era were taken are summarized in Compare aerial photographs by era: from 1928 to fiscal 2007.

The prices in this article are actual examples at each point in time and do not reflect market prices after the article was written.