Aerial photographs from 1974-78: what stage of grading is Tama Center at?

Published: October 14, 2026 / About 13 min read

Which point in the construction schedule the 1974-78 aerial photographs show

If you open the 1974-78 aerial photographs at one place after another, you notice that even when all are "under grading", the progress of the towns is not aligned at all. They are towns where only tracks and roads run across ground stripped of soil, towns where lot lines have been drawn but no buildings stand on them, and towns where residential buildings already stand in rows. This photograph from about 50 years before 2026 cuts out the very middle of the town-building process, and the point where it is cut differs from location to location.

The scenes that appear can be divided into three stages: ground only, lots only, and residential buildings standing. New towns built by cutting away hills and land reclaimed from the sea mostly fit somewhere in these three stages. The guide to the eras of aerial photographs summarizes the reasons photographs of this era are in color and how widely the shooting dates spread.

At the ground-only stage, tracks and roads come first

In the photograph of Tama Center, the location at the earliest stage, the bare surface where the hills were stripped takes up most of the frame, and only a bundle of tracks crosses that surface without buildings. According to Keio Corporation's chronology, the Sagamihara Line opened to Keio-tama-center Station in October 1974. From this arrangement you can read the order in which the tracks heading for central Tokyo reached the top of the hills before the town.

At Tsukuba Science City, roads were placed on the ground first. Many straight bands, far wider than the ridges between fields, run in two directions, crossing each other diagonally. Yet almost no buildings stand along them, and the inside enclosed by the bands remains fields and bare ground. In having only a framework before the contents, it can be placed in the same stage as Tama Center. Even in the photograph as of 2026, the grid of streets at this location keeps the direction and position it was given in 1974-78.

Tama New Town Minami-Osawa shows a look one step earlier still. The frame is sunk in pale pink and brown, so much that it is hard to tell leafless woods from leveled bare surface, but if you pick out the surfaces whose outlines are cut by straight lines, the work stays at the lines of roads crossing the ridges and part of the slopes. Even within the same Tama New Town, the hub, Tama Center, became bare ground hill and all while Minami-Osawa still has only the lines of roads, and this gap lines up in photographs of the same era.

A plateau with lot lines drawn

The second stage is the look in which lot lines enter the ground and still no buildings stand on it. At Chiba New Town Chuo, the grid lots are clustered only in one corner on top of the plateau, and the rest of the surface has stopped where the boundaries of the fields disappeared. This is an example in which the lot-line stage and the ground-only stage before it sit next to each other in the same photograph.

Blocks drawn inside the seawall

On land reclaimed from the sea, a process of building the land itself comes in before the lot stage. The 1974-78 photograph of Kaihimmakuhari is an example in which the two appear at the same time. Everything from the upper half to the center of the frame has turned into land, mottled with brown bare ground, withered grassland, and hollows where water remains. Many straight roads have been drawn across it, and the outlines of square blocks are already formed. Hardly any buildings can be seen. In the center, a white seawall line runs diagonally from northwest to southeast, and the water outside it is still shallow. In the lower right, a band of reddish-brown soil that seems to have just been piled up undulates out to the water's edge, showing that the reclamation was partway through advancing offshore step by step.

At Ashiyahama in Hyogo Prefecture, the shape of the land comes out more sharply. Offshore, where in 1961-69 there was nothing but water, two lots of whitish land with sharp corners jut into the sea. The surface is bare ground with neither paving nor grass, straight lot divisions are faintly drawn inside, and there are only a handful of buildings. A straight waterway runs along the boundary between the two lots, and the outer edge is bordered by a white seawall. In the lower left of the frame, another reclaimed area that became a town earlier enters, and roofs painted in different colors line up in order. The main thing to see in this photograph is that, on the shore of the same bay, land with only lots and land with buildings on it sit next to each other.

Port reclaimed land starts moving from the places where cargo is put

Unlike residential towns, on port reclaimed land the lot stage and the start of cargo handling come one before or after the other. At Kinjo-futo in the Port of Nagoya, a pentagonal flat area appears where there had been tidal flats, and the inside is taken up by ocher bare ground and lot lines. Even so, long, narrow transit sheds line up diagonally along the west edge, and small square cargo is piled on the quay. Left of the center, a single structure with a white round roof stands out, higher than its surroundings. The inside of the land is still lots only, but the edge facing the sea has already begun to be used.

Heiwajima / Oi Pier on Tokyo Bay has the same form. Left of the center, the large roofs of warehouses line up in order, and a large white box-shaped building stands to their south. The location's point is right on top of this building, a place that was at the water's edge in 1961-69. Meanwhile, everything from the center to the right is one expanse of ocher bare ground, with only lot lines and wide roads drawn, and green puddles left unfilled remain here and there. In the upper right, a corner of tracks bundling thin straight lines can also be seen. Between the left half and the right half of one photograph, the stage is shifted by one.

Port Island in Kobe shows this type in its most cluttered look. A quay runs along the west edge of the island, warehouses form rows, and several cargo ships lie alongside. Yet the inside of the island is whitish bare ground with only faint lines of roads, and in the middle a water surface not yet filled cuts in like an inlet. Seawall lines extend offshore to the southeast, and you can read the procedure of turning the enclosed inside into land in order. The origin of the soil that filled this island is taken up in Towns born by cutting away mountains.

Residential buildings stand, and the town begins to fill from one corner

The location that has advanced to the third stage is Kozoji New Town in the City of Kasugai, Aichi Prefecture. If you switch to 1974-78, rows of residential buildings facing the same direction appear from the upper left to the upper center. Graded land with exposed soil and lots where only the framework of streets has been made with no buildings yet spread around them, and in the upper right fields remain beyond the lot lines. It is a location where all three stages live together in one photograph. According to a plan document of the City of Kasugai, the development was carried out from 1966 to 1981 as a land readjustment project of the Japan Housing Corporation, and the first residents moved in in 1968. This means the 1974-78 photograph shows the turning point of the project, when work was still continuing several years after residents moved in.

Suma New Town (Myodani) in the City of Kobe is at the same stage, but the area taken up by residential buildings is much smaller, and the rows of residential buildings gather only in the northeast corner of the white surface that was cut and leveled. In the history of the Kobe Municipal Transportation Bureau, the subway between Myodani Station and Shin-Nagata Station began operating in March 1977. Because the opening falls within the span of the photograph's era, you cannot tell from the photograph alone whether this one is from before or after the opening.

Hill towns and sea towns line up their stages differently

At the four hilltop locations above 80 m in elevation, the stages are scattered from one end to the other, from Minami-Osawa with only road lines to Kozoji with rows of residential buildings. Even in grading of the same hills, if the year the project started differs from town to town, the stage that appears in photographs of the same era also differs. In contrast, the five reclaimed locations below 5 m in elevation all stay at the lot stage or before it, and not one of them shows rows of residential buildings right at the location's point. On the sea, work begins by running a seawall around to build the shape of the land, so before lot lines are drawn there is one more process that the hills do not have. The "lots only" of reclaimed land is lots only after having finished the step in which the land was completed.

The project chronology divides the stages

The stage that appears is decided not so much by the era of the photograph itself as by when that town's project began and when it welcomed people. At the three locations whose years could be confirmed in official materials, the stage in the photograph corresponds to the chronology.

Kozoji, several years after residents moved in, has residential buildings standing; Tama Center, where the railway had only just arrived, has nothing but tracks; and at Myodani, where the station opening overlaps the span of the era, only one corner is starting to become a town. Put the other way, if you look at which stage a town is at in the 1974-78 photograph, you can roughly guess where that town was in its project chronology before opening the chronology. The way of reading that follows the hill new towns in the order they started is also tried in Sixty years of the three great new towns, and combined with the view that lines up Senri / Tama / Senboku, the position of this era of photographs becomes clear.

Do not judge the stage by the color of bare ground

When you tell the stages apart, you are tempted to rely on the color of the ground, but the color of exposed soil differs considerably from land to land. The bare ground at Tama Center is pale pink, Myodani is white that reflects light, Kinjo-futo and Heiwajima / Oi Pier are ocher, Kaihimmakuhari is brown, and freshly piled soil appears reddish brown.

A surer clue than color is the shape of the outline. In the Minami-Osawa photograph, leafless woods and leveled bare surface both sink into pale pink and brown, and color alone cannot tell them apart. Yet you can separate them by the shape of the edge: a surface where the grains of branches can be seen is woods, and a surface whose outline is cut straight as if drawn with a ruler is ground that people have worked. You check the same way whether it is the lot stage, by seeing whether thin straight lines form a grid or parallel lines on the ground. It is enough to check for buildings last. If you look in the order of outline, lines, and buildings, you will hesitate far less at the boundaries between the three stages.

Step forward to 1979-83 to check the next stage

Every location taken up here has a 1979-83 photograph ready to follow. Once you have judged the stage in 1974-78, the reliable way to read is to step one era newer and check how far it has advanced. At Heiwajima / Oi Pier, grass grows on the ocher bare ground in the right half and turns it brown, and the row of large warehouse roofs on the left extends. At Tsukuba Science City, trees line up in rows of dots on both sides of the thick streets. At Minami-Osawa, by contrast, the woods look as if they have returned to deep green, but this is because the shooting season differs, not because the ground has gone back to how it was.

When you open a location that interests you, just going back and forth between the two photographs from 1974-78 and 1979-83 shows how the stages advance. The moment lot lines turn into blocks and bare ground into roofs becomes one line in that town's chronology.