Trace the old names: towns on the day their district names changed

Published: September 8, 2026 / About 15 min read

The land had other names before the present ones

The former district name of Minato Mirai was Midori-cho. Yokodai was divided among five districts, Sasage-cho, Yabeno-cho, Hino-cho, Kurigi-cho, and Mine-cho, and the area in front of the station at Nagareyama-Otakanomori was made up of places called Iridai, Ushikaizawa, and Tateno in the sub-district (aza) of Ichinoya. The surroundings of Center-Kita were covered by district names such as Ushikubo-cho, Otana-cho, and Kachida-cho. The names on the map as of 2026 were all given long after the land itself.

On the day district names are replaced, a record of the procedure is always left. This is because the municipality goes through the procedure of changing the areas and names of the sub-districts in step with the replotting disposition of a land readjustment project or the implementation of the residential address system. If the date is known, you can place aerial photographs on either side of it. What appears in the photograph from before the name was given, and how many meters above sea level is the land? With these two clues, you can tell apart places where the new name fits the shape of the land and places where only the name jumped ahead.

The dates of name changes come in two types

The ways district names switch divide broadly into two. One type matches the completion of a land readjustment project. Because the new district names and lot numbers take effect from the day after the public notice that fixes the allocation of land in the project area, the date can be pinned down to the day. For the area around Nagareyama-otakanomori Station, the City of Nagareyama gave public notice of the replotting disposition on May 10, 2019, and from the following day, May 11, put into effect the chome of Otakanomori-kita, Otakanomori-higashi, Otakanomori-minami, and Otakanomori-nishi.

The other type matches the implementation of the residential address system, and assigns chome to areas where grading or reclamation has finished. The City of Yokohama implemented the residential address system in the Yokodai district of Isogo Ward on April 1, 1970. The area that had spread across five former districts was reorganized into Yokodai 1-chome to 6-chome, and the addresses of the danchi (housing complex) became easy to read all at once. With either type, the date of the switch remains in materials the municipality publishes.

Yokohama, where the shipyard and the yard were replaced along with the name

The name of Minato Mirai was decided before the town was built. The name of the plan and the project was decided as "Minato Mirai 21" in October 1981. At this point, the waterfront of the area was occupied by stone docks, the freight yard of Takashima Station of Japanese National Railways, and the buildings of the Yokohama Shipyard of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The relocation of the shipyard was decided in March 1980, and the relocation was completed in March 1983. Construction of the project began in November of the same year. In other words, the order is that the decision on the name came before the shipyard left.

Minato Mirai as an address appeared even later. The City of Yokohama implemented the residential address system in Nishi Ward and switched from the former district name Midori-cho to Minato Mirai 1-chome to 5-chome on October 2, 1989. On October 31, 2005, part of Takashima 1-chome was added to Minato Mirai 5-chome. The 1945-50, 1961-69, and 1974-78 photographs are all records of "the Midori-cho era", and the 1987-90 photograph spans exactly the switch of the district name.

The elevation of Minato Mirai is 3 m at the center, and in all four directions it stays within the range of 3.4 m to 4.5 m. Because it is flat land made by filling the sea, the port that the name Minato Mirai (minato means port) points to matches the terrain well. The nearest official land price point (Chika Koji) shown on the location page is in Goshoyama-cho, Nishi Ward, a residential area about 1 km away from the area. The price per square meter fell from 435,000 yen in 1993 to 249,000 yen in 2012, and in the 2026 publication it was 336,000 yen. The period in which the town's name took hold and the movement of the price do not necessarily point in the same direction.

Five district names came together under the name of one hill

Yokodai is a place where the relation between name and terrain is a little twisted. As the name Yokodai (dai means plateau) says, this area is on top of a hill. The elevation is 38.5 m at the center, which includes the station, 49.7 m to the north, 57.5 m to the south, 47.1 m to the east, and 55.6 m to the west. Only the figure at the center is 8.6 m to 19 m lower than the four directions. In other words, the station and the shops are placed not at the highest point of the hill but in a place like a valley line cut through the hill.

Yokodai as a district name was born on April 1, 1970. Until then, this area spread across five districts, Sasage-cho, Yabeno-cho, Hino-cho, Kurigi-cho, and Mine-cho. The old division that had split the hill into five was unified to match the lots of the danchi. The 1945-50 photograph is from that time of five districts, and the 1961-69 photograph is from the years in which you can see how far the grading had advanced. If you step through 1974-78, 1979-83, and 1987-90, you can follow the process of the rows of houses filling in after the residential address system.

The record window of the official land prices at Yokodai is short, and the series shown on the location page is from 2022. It is a residential area in Yokodai 4-chome, Isogo Ward, and the record runs from 245,000 yen per square meter in 2022 to 295,000 yen in 2026. For an area half a century after its district name was given, only a few years of the 2020s remain as figures.

Kohoku New Town, where district names were born on the day the wards were born

The addresses of Center-Kita were decided on the same day as the birth of the ward. In the City of Yokohama, Kohoku Ward and Midori Ward were reorganized and Aoba Ward and Tsuzuki Ward were newly created on November 6, 1994. On the same day, the residential address system was implemented in the fiscal 1994 (Heisei 6) district of Kohoku New Town, and district names such as Ushikubo-higashi 1-chome and 2-chome and Nakagawa-chuo 1-chome were born. Until then, this area had been covered by old place names that all ended in "cho": Ushikubo-cho, Otana-cho, Kachida-cho, Kitayamata-cho, Shin-Yoshida-cho, Chigasaki-cho, Nakagawa-cho, Higashiyamata-cho, Minamiyamata-cho, and Eda-cho.

The residential address system of Kohoku New Town did not end in one go. In the materials of the City of Yokohama, it was implemented from fiscal 1989 to fiscal 1995, divided into districts for each fiscal year. Because addresses were assigned in order starting from the lots where grading had finished, the birthdays of district names lined up in many variations inside the same new town. This is a case where the newness of the names is a record of how the construction proceeded.

If you look at the elevation, the center of Center-Kita is 23.7 m, with 35.4 m to the north, 38.6 m to the east, 22.7 m to the south, and 22.4 m to the west. You can read that the center district was placed on terrain near a valley, with places more than 10 m higher close by to the east and north and opening toward the southwest. The 1961-69 photograph is still from the time of Ushikubo-cho and Otana-cho, and if you step through 1974-78, 1979-83, and 1984-86, the band of grading spreads, and the 1987-90 photograph is the last era before the birth of the district names. The official land prices of a residential area in Ushikubo-higashi 1-chome are recorded from 340,000 yen per square meter in 2020 to 433,000 yen in 2026.

The day a district name was given to a town that had lived with provisional addresses

Nagareyama-Otakanomori is a town where the station opened first and the addresses caught up later. While the land readjustment project was under way, addresses had to be written with provisional lot numbers, and that was resolved on May 11, 2019. From this day the City of Nagareyama put into effect Otakanomori-kita 1-chome to 3-chome, Otakanomori-higashi 1-chome to 4-chome, Otakanomori-minami 1-chome to 3-chome, and Otakanomori-nishi 1-chome to 4-chome. It is a way of naming that leaves no room for confusion, dividing the names by north, south, east, and west with the station at the center.

If you read the table matching the old sub-district names, the makeup of the station area comes into view. The area that became Otakanomori-minami 1-chome was Iridai, Ushikaizawa, and Tateno of Ichinoya and Nishi-Hatsuishi 6-chome, Otakanomori-kita 1-chome was Judayu and the chome of Higashi-Hatsuishi and Nishi-Hatsuishi, and Otakanomori-higashi 3-chome was Nakahashiue, Komagihashiue, Dodai, and Nakatamariue of Komagi. The sub-district names lined up with words for valleys, streams, and plateaus are traces of land that was divided by the flow of water and by steps in the ground. Even after the land readjustment, Komagi has remained without changing its name.

The old sub-district names are made of words for terrain. If you look at the elevation, the center of Nagareyama-Otakanomori is 18.2 m and the four directions are 17.1 m to 18 m, a difference of only about 1 m. Because it is land where lots were drawn on the flat surface of the Shimosa Plateau, dramatic cut or fill does not catch the eye even as you step through the photographs. The 1961-69, 1974-78, 1979-83, 1984-86, and 1987-90 photographs are all from the time when the land was Ichinoya and Judayu, and neither the station nor the lots exist yet. The official land prices of Otakanomori-minami 1-chome are recorded from 241,000 yen per square meter in 2020 to 428,000 yen in 2026. It is a young series for a young address, with the record starting within a few years of the district name taking effect.

The islands of Ota Ward, where era names became place names

In the area of Heiwajima / Oi Pier, several district names bearing the names of islands line up: Heiwajima, Showajima, Keihinjima, Jonanjima, and Reiwajima. For the part of the Central Breakwater reclaimed land incorporated into the ward, Ota Ward newly created a district area on June 1, 2020 and implemented the residential address system for Reiwajima 1-chome and 2-chome. The names showing the age of the land as it is are a quality peculiar to reclaimed land. Because the names line up in the order the land was made, the list of district names doubles as a chronology of the reclamation.

All seven eras of photographs are available, from around 1936-42 to 1987-90, but the oldest era has a narrow area of image, and there is no photograph at all directly above this location. You can confirm that the ground underfoot was water from the 1945-50 photograph on. In the 1961-69 photograph, a straight seawall line is drawn on the water surface, and a band of flat bare ground continues south inside it. By 1974-78 the large roofs of warehouses stand in rows, and the right half is ocher bare ground with only lot lines and roads drawn. By 1979-83 grass has grown on that bare ground, and the contrast between the two eras shows that the reclaimed land was not used right away.

The elevation is 3.8 m at the center, 4.2 m to the north, 4.1 m to the south, and 7.6 m to the west. The value for the east is missing because that direction falls on the water surface of a canal. The pattern of almost no relief north to south, with only the west one step higher, shows that the location sits on a surface graded flat. The nearest official land price point is Omori-kita, Ota Ward, on the mainland side across the canal; the price per square meter fell from 1,240,000 yen in 1991 to 381,000 yen in both 2012 and 2013, and the 2026 publication was 594,000 yen. You need to read it carefully as a record of the residential area on the opposite shore, not the price of the districts with island names.

List the old and new names to bracket the photographs

If you list the switches of district names, you can decide at a glance which eras of photographs to place on either side of the date. The eras before the date are the time of the old name, and the eras after it are the time of the new name.

If you put the four in date order, Yokodai is 1970, Minato Mirai 1989, Center-Kita 1994, and Nagareyama-Otakanomori 2019. Over half a century, new addresses were born one at a time, in the order of the danchi on a hill, a port redevelopment, the center district of a new town, and the station area of a new line.

Sort by elevation and the names' claims come into view

You can judge whether a name fits the height of the land by lining up the elevations. Here the elevation at the center is placed beside the range of elevation in the four directions.

At Yokodai all four directions are higher than the center, and the difference reaches 8.6 m to 19 m. The picture is that the station of a place that calls itself "dai" sits at the lowest break in the plateau. Center-Kita also has places more than 10 m higher close by to the east and north, while the south and west are at almost the same height as the center. At Nagareyama-Otakanomori the range is just over 1 m, leaving no room to copy the relief of the terrain into the name. Minato Mirai and Heiwajima / Oi Pier are flat reclaimed land in the 3 m to 4 m range, and their names speak of use rather than terrain. The names of hills point to terrain, and the names of reclaimed land point to roles. This contrast is the dividing line in how names are given.

Where the names that vanished from addresses went

Even when a district name changes, the old name does not always simply disappear. Of the five districts that became Yokodai, Sasage-cho and Hino-cho were carried on by separate residential addresses on the neighboring Konan Ward side. The City of Yokohama put into effect Konan 1-chome to 6-chome and Konan-chuo-dori in the northern Sasage district on June 5, 1972, and Sasage 1-chome to 6-chome in the Sasage district on August 1, 1977. On the north side of the hill it became the new name "Yokodai", and on the south side "Sasage" remained as a district name with chome. This is a case where the same former district name followed different paths across a ward boundary.

In Kohoku New Town, names that had once disappeared have come back. After Ushikubo-higashi and Nakagawa-chuo were born in 1994, in the district of the Sekikochi Land Readjustment Project on October 25, 1999, "Ayumigaoka" and "Ushikubo-cho" were born from the areas of Eda-cho and Nakagawa-cho. It is a form in which an old district name was revived as a new district name. On the City of Nagareyama side too, in the 2019 procedure that gave birth to the four-direction district names of Otakanomori, Komagi was kept without changing its name.

Old names remain outside addresses too: in the names of neighborhood associations and town councils, the names of elementary and junior high schools, and the names of bus stops. Traditions about the origins of place names are handed down in each locality, but here the story stays within what can be confirmed with photographs and elevation.

Check what came before the name in the photographs

If you step through the photographs after fixing the date a name was given, the way the town looks changes. At Minato Mirai, the three eras before October 2, 1989 fall in the time of Midori-cho, and the outlines of the docks and the freight yard appear in them. At Yokodai, the 1945-50 and 1961-69 photographs, before April 1, 1970, are from the time of five districts, and with them you can bracket the stages in which the hill was being cut. At Center-Kita and Nagareyama-Otakanomori, the past photographs are all from the time of the old names, and you check the appearance after the names were given by comparing with the latest photograph.

On a location page you can choose an era and switch the photograph. The elevation cross-sections and the official land price series are also gathered on the same page, so you can follow in sequence the terrain before the name was given and the records after it. To trace the order in which towns and stations were born, Places where a new station and a town were born at the same time, seen in aerial photographs is the next step; to see the reclaimed land on the Tokyo Bay side together, 60 years of the Tokyo Bay shore: the changing purposes of reclamation; and to check the way to step through the eras itself, the guide to the eras of aerial photographs. If you learn one former district name and open the photographs, the place is no longer land without a name.

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