Hamamatsu Station, Himeji Station, Toyama Station, and Takamatsu Station in old photographs

Published: September 13, 2026 / About 16 min read

Wide areas that adjoined the 4 stations

If you open these 4 stations in old aerial photographs, the side of the station's front exit is filled with town in every era. The grains of the roofs are replaced and the width of the streets changes, but the way the area is used does not change. The part that is rewritten in a big way as you step through the eras is a different area adjoining that front exit: a band where many sidings line up for sorting freight cars, quays that receive cargo from ships, water where ships turn around. Although these areas were continuous with the passenger station's grounds, they were not put to the town's use, and in the 1961-69 photograph they appear widely at every station.

This article lines up four places: northeast of Hamamatsu Station, the north exit side of Himeji Station, north of Toyama Station, and the area in front of Takamatsu Station. The way to read them is the same for all: go back and forth between a pair, first remembering what appears on the front exit side and then looking at what appears on the land adjoining it. The direction in which the land was placed differs at all four: at Hamamatsu it is northeast of the station, at Himeji from north to east of the station, at Toyama north of the station, and at Takamatsu from the area in front of the station to the waterfront. If you fix the direction in your head first, your eyes will not get lost when you switch eras.

Hamamatsu Station: old photographs from five eras are all there

The area northeast of Hamamatsu Station has the most of the four places, and you can step through photographs from five eras, from 1945-50 to 1987-90. On the front exit side, that is, from south to west of the station, roofs are already packed tightly as of 1961-69, and the white lines of the streets stand out as a mesh. It is flat land resting on sand and soil carried by the Tenryu River, and the town extended along the route where the Tokaido runs east and west.

Its pair is the station yard extending east from the station. In the 1974-78 photograph, this area crosses the frame as an ocher band, with stripes of thin lines lined up inside it. The band is wide on the side near the station and becomes narrower toward the east. In 1979-83, however, part of the area north of the station where the stripes had been packed is replaced by a bright blank, and a shape that looks like a round structure appears in it. In 1987-90, the blank spreads from north to northeast of the station, and almost none of the striped lines remain. A frame where the stripes vanish and the blank spreads appears only once among the five past eras.

This area became vacant because elevating the tracks and land readjustment went ahead around Hamamatsu Station and the functions of the freight station were moved toward the west of the city. This means a site at the center of the city that had not been finely divided by existing roads remained as one piece. In 1994, Act City Hamamatsu opened there. A tower over 212 m tall is combined with large and small halls and lodging and exhibition facilities, and in the photograph as of 2026 it appears as a group of buildings different in size from the grains of the surrounding roofs.

Himeji Station: the bundle of tracks on the north exit side in old photographs

At the north exit side of Himeji Station, the wide street running straight north from the station corresponds to the front exit side. In the 1961-69 photograph, because the surrounding streets are all narrow, only this one looks unnaturally thick. A moat with a square outline and woods stand at the end of the street, and that is the castle. The positions of the moat and the main keep do not move whichever era you switch to. If you first remember this north-south axis as a landmark for stepping through the eras, you will not get lost.

The paired area is the railway land extending from north to east of the station. In the 1961-69 photograph, a thick band crosses the center of the frame from east to west, and thin lines branch like a fan on the east side of the station. The finer the mesh of lines, the more it reads as a place where freight cars were handled in fine detail. The area north of the band is a town densely packed with small buildings right up to the edge of the moat, while the area south across the band has only rectangular fields lined up all over. Near the same station, the north and south of the band are completely different scenes.

In the 1974-78 color photograph, the inside of the band can be read in finer detail: the bundle of sidings lined up east of the station, a corner where long, thin buildings stand in regular rows and that looks like cargo handling, and the line that branches west of the station and heads north. This band was the widest open area in the town. If you go on to 1979-83, the fields south of the band are replaced by commercial and residential blocks, but the band itself does not move. If you switch to the photograph as of 2026, the lines that ran side by side east to west are gathered into one thin band, and square buildings and paved lots line the area the sidings had occupied. This is the area called Casty 21. A roofed pedestrian area projects in front of the station, and the width of the street heading north stands out even more in the photograph.

Toyama Station: only two old photographs, read by bracketing before and after

The area north of Toyama Station has only three past eras available: 1961-69 / 1974-78 / FY2007. You cannot trace the change step by step as at Hamamatsu Station with its five eras. So the way of reading changes: you look at it by bracketing the before with the two old photographs and taking the after with the photograph as of 2026. When you bracket before and after, you can see separately what moved between the two photographs and what did not move across the three.

The front exit side is south of the station. In the 1961-69 photograph there is a round plaza where streets gather radially, and a grid town divided by wide straight roads lies beyond it. North of the station, its pair, a long, thin water surface lies across. A canal enters from the top edge of the frame, widens in the center, and dead-ends in a round shape. On the west bank, long, thin sheds and buildings with long roofs continue in a band, and the east bank is large rectangular farmland. East from the station there is a bundle of tracks spreading to dozens of lines, and short rows of dots between the lines appear as the grains of freight cars left standing.

When color arrives in 1974-78, the shape of the water surface hardly changes, while the colors around it are replaced. The factories on the west bank increase their number of roofs, and equipment with round outlines also appears. On the east bank, streets are laid out on the rectangular farmland, which changes into a residential area with small roofs lined up regularly. Then, in the photograph as of 2026, both banks of the central water surface are edged with green, and you can make out lawn areas, curving paths, and a thin bridge crossing the water. This is Fugan Canal Kansui Park. The canal entering from the northern edge is straight, and both its width and direction overlap exactly with the 1961-69 photograph. The use of the land was what was replaced, and the shape of the water was what remained across the three photographs.

Takamatsu Station: the fan shape and landing piers in old photographs

The area in front of Takamatsu Station is the example where the front exit and the neighboring land are closest. In the 1961-69 photograph, the lower two-thirds of the frame, which corresponds to the front exit side, is filled with town where roofs are packed finely, and many wide straight streets run through it. Only a large lot in the upper center has a coarser texture, and that is the castle ruins. It was a sea castle that drew seawater into its moat, and the waterfront to its north became the starting point of the reclamation.

The paired area is north of the castle ruins. A sea of one dark color occupies the upper half of the frame, and at its edge, left of center, dozens of tracks spread like an opened fan. The base of the fan is bundled thinly toward the town to the southwest, and its tip reaches the port's quay directly. A form for handing cargo between ships and freight cars is drawn just as it is on the ground. This was land where the quay and the ticket gates were squeezed within a few dozen steps of each other so that passengers arriving by ship could transfer straight to trains. Two thin jetties stick out diagonally into the sea.

In 1974-78, the sea turns a greenish blue, and buildings begin to line the graded land on the left that had been white. The 1979-83 photograph has a strongly bluish tone overall, and the fan is unchanged in this era too, with the reddish-brown roadbed extending southwest in a bundle. The turning point came on April 10, 1988. When the Seto-Ohashi Bridge connecting Kojima and Sakaide opened and Honshu and Shikoku were linked by a bridge, the quays and sidings that had been widened for the seam between ships and trains were no longer needed at the same scale. In the photograph as of 2026, the fan remains nowhere. The tracks are reorganized into a few straight lines running west, the places that the sidings and quays had occupied are replaced by green lawn and wide paving, and several tall buildings stand there. This is the area called Sunport Takamatsu.

The long, thin water surface that cuts into the inside of the town remains as of 2026 at the same angle as in the 1961-69 photograph. The buildings on both banks have been rebuilt, but at the water's edge small white boats are moored in a row. Even when the large quays moved offshore, the place for small boats did not move.

What appears at the front exit and what appears on the neighboring land

If you list the pairs of the four stations, the differences in direction and in the character of the land become clear. Hamamatsu Station and Himeji Station have railway land, Takamatsu Station has railway and port land, and Toyama Station is a junction of water transport and rail.

Line up the eras you can step through at the four stations

If you compare the four stations from the same angle, checking first which eras have photographs saves wasted effort. Only two eras are common to all four stations: 1961-69 and 1974-78. In these two eras, Hamamatsu Station, Himeji Station, Toyama Station, and Takamatsu Station can all be lined up under the same conditions. The black-and-white 1945-50 photograph can be opened only at Hamamatsu Station, and 1979-83 only at Himeji Station and Takamatsu Station.

The difference in the number of photographs becomes a difference in how you read them. At Hamamatsu Station you can catch the area in the middle of becoming vacant in 1979-83, but at Toyama Station no in-between state remains in the photographs. Even if you ask the same question, the detail of the answer you get back differs from station to station.

Every station is a flat area in terms of elevation

To line up many sidings and park long trains, you need an area that is flat and from which width and length can be taken in one piece. If you look at the elevation of the four stations at five measurement points, the difference from end to end falls within 2 m at every one. The area northeast of Hamamatsu Station is 4.3 m at the center, with 4.9 m to the north and west on the high side and 4.1 m to the south on the low side. The north exit side of Himeji Station is 10.8 m at the center, ranging from 11.5 m to the north to 10.2 m to the south. The area north of Toyama Station is 6.0 m at the center, with 6.6 m to the north and 4.9 m to the west at the two ends. Only the west is low because that side slopes down toward the riverbed of the Jinzu River.

The lowest is the area in front of Takamatsu Station, at only 2.0 m at the center, 3.0 m to the west, and 1.6 m to the east. On a plane made by reclamation and grading, there is hardly anything that could be called a slope. For the expected flooding of low land, each municipality's published materials are gathered on the Hazard Map Portal Site of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Official land price records lined up and closed at the same year

Each of the four places has an official land price (Chika Koji) point nearby, and all of them are residential areas. The distances from the locations are 226 m for the area in front of Takamatsu Station, 519 m for the area north of Toyama Station, 631 m for the north exit side of Himeji Station, and 890 m for the area northeast of Hamamatsu Station. It is more accurate to read them not as values of the former land itself but as values of the town where people live next to it. All values are per square meter, and the range runs up to the 2026 publication.

At the three places of Hamamatsu Station / Himeji Station / Takamatsu Station, there is no year that fell below the previous year, from the year the record begins to 2026. The amount of increase differs: the area in front of Takamatsu Station reached 132,000 yen in 2026 from 119,000 yen in 2017, moving by 1,000 to 3,000 yen each year. The north exit side of Himeji Station moved from 165,000 yen to 234,000 yen over the same span from 2017 to 2026.

Only the area north of Toyama Station, whose record has continued since 1983, has a different shape. It rose from 107,000 yen in 1983, and the highest in the record up to the 2026 publication is 215,000 yen in both 1992 and 1993. From there it entered a long decline, and the lowest up to the 2026 publication was 72,000 yen in 2014. After that the direction changed, and in 2026 it is 110,000 yen. It is a single round trip, with the beginning and end of the record at almost the same height. At a place with a record of more than 40 years, you can see that the impression from a record of less than ten years cannot simply be extended.

Read the four photographs with the same steps

One thing can be said across the four stations: precisely because the land adjoining the stations was not used from the town's side, it could be moved to other uses as one piece. It had not been finely divided by existing roads, and its boundary was gathered into one line on the railway or port side. That is why areas of different character were born for the same reason: a hall and a tower at Hamamatsu Station, square buildings and wide paving at Himeji Station, lawns and paths at Toyama Station, and green lawn and several tall buildings at Takamatsu Station. The only thing that remained alike at all four stations was the shape of the boundary.

As steps, first open 1961-69 and remember the pair of the front exit side and the land, next look at the same view in color in 1974-78, and finally jump to the photograph as of 2026. At Hamamatsu Station, if you insert 1979-83 and 1987-90, you can follow the area up to the middle of becoming vacant. If you are unsure how to step through the eras at all, the steps are summarized in the era guide and how to read the photographs. If you want to see more examples of rail yard sites turning into towns, former rail yards continues the story.

On the four location pages, northeast of Hamamatsu Station, the north exit side of Himeji Station, north of Toyama Station, and the area in front of Takamatsu Station, switch the eras and check for yourself. If you repeat the same steps four times, the differences between the stations rise up from the side of the photographs.

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