Old photographs of tower apartment towns: Musashi-Kosugi, Ebina, and Musashi-Urawa

Published: September 7, 2026 / About 13 min read

The last era in which no tall building appears

If you open the area in front of Musashi-Kosugi Station in the 1987-90 aerial photograph, you cannot find a single tall thing. The roofs are all low, the shadows are short, and the factory site that the tracks embrace with a large arc still remains as it was. At Futako-Tamagawa and at Musashi-Urawa too, the photographs of the same era show the same scene. Until the late 1980s, the station areas where tall buildings would later stand in rows were, as far as can be seen from above, towns of low roofs and short shadows. The scene as of 2026, with rows of the tall buildings called tower apartments, appears only in the newest photograph among the eras.

The places where the buildings went up have something in common. They are not land divided into small pieces, but places where a wide lot used for a single purpose became vacant all together at one time: the site a factory moved away from, the site of a rail yard where freight cars were sorted, or land where paddies remained right next to a station. If you step back to the older eras, the outline of that wide lot can be read clearly, and many of those outlines have been carried over into today's blocks. If you go back and forth between the eras, you can see that only the framework of the town remained while its contents were replaced.

Six station areas lined up on the same axes

If you line up the station areas with tall buildings side by side on the same axes instead of looking at them one at a time, the way you read them changes. We prepared three axes: the center elevation, the era of the oldest photograph available at the location, and what occupied the place before the buildings.

When you line them up, you notice right away that the elevations are scattered from 5.7 m to 21.5 m. A single explanation, that towns of tall buildings gather on low land, cannot tie the six together. The other thing you notice is that the eras of the oldest photographs do not match. At Ebina you can step through only the four eras from 1961-69 onward, and there is no prewar photograph and none from right after the war. The photographs available directly decide the length of time you can read.

Musashi-Kosugi: land that factories left all at once

In the photographs of Musashi-Kosugi, the large arc the tracks draw catches the eye most. In the 1945-50 photograph, the area held in that arc is a factory district: a black circular structure sits in the site, and long, narrow buildings are lined up facing the same direction around it. In the 1961-69 photograph the field lots retreat to the corners of the frame and rows of houses fill most of the view, but the factories inside the arc keep their outline while adding buildings. When color arrives in 1974-78, you can make out the large roofs shining white and the structure, now covered by trees, as a dark green circle.

There were two triggers for the change of direction. One was the relocation of the factories, which emptied a wide, unified site all at once. Something that rarely happens on land divided into small pieces moved forward at once because a single site was vacated. The other was the railway: in March 2010, platforms of the Yokosuka Line were added to the transfer station where the Tokyu Toyoko Line and the Nambu Line cross. In today's photograph tall, deep navy buildings stand in a cluster from the north of the station to the center, the long, narrow shadows the buildings cast on the ground overlap one another, and only that area of the frame sinks into darkness. Even so, the arc of the tracks itself remains with the same curve as in 1945-50.

Saitama-Shintoshin and Sasashima Live: land where the bands of freight cars emptied

Among the same "wide sites that became vacant at once", there are cases where the buildings placed on them were not residential buildings. Whatever era you open, the subject of the photographs of Saitama-Shintoshin is a spindle-shaped band running vertically through the center of the frame. From 1945-50 to 1979-83, rows of freight cars are packed without gaps inside the band, and only the rows of houses on both sides grow thicker. In 1987-90 that band becomes empty. The bundle of tracks disappears, the inside of the spindle-shaped outline changes to gray-brown bare ground, and only traces of thin vertical stripes remain on the ground. According to the City of Saitama, the official opening of the town on this former rail yard site took place in May 2000, and Saitama-Shintoshin Station and a multipurpose facility with a large arched roof opened in the same year. In today's photograph, the large white arched roof, a government building that gathers branch offices of the national government, and tall buildings in a single line running north-south sit on the former site.

Sasashima Live is the same type. In the 1945-50 photograph, tracks open like a fan to the south from Nagoya Station, and in 1961-69 countless lines extend south. In the 1987-90 photograph the fan shape remains only as a color on the ground; the shining lines of track have disappeared and brown bare ground spreads out. A railway came through this empty space again in 2004, when the whole Nishi-Nagoyako Line of Nagoya Rinkai Rapid Transit opened and Sasashima-raibu Station was placed. In today's photograph masses of large buildings line up inside the fan, and the tall building at the northern end faces the high-rise cluster in front of Nagoya Station. The buildings house a school, a broadcaster, shops, and offices, and the uses of former sites are not limited to housing.

Musashi-Urawa: land where a cross formed at the border between town and paddies

The 1945-50 photograph of Musashi-Urawa looks like two different kinds of land, top and bottom. The upper 1/3 of the frame is a town with roofs lined up without gaps, and narrow roads branch many times over. From the middle down it switches to paddies: long, narrow lots line up, and paddy ridges make a faint mesh that continues to the bottom edge. In 1961-69 the border only pushes out a little to the south, and the lower half of the frame is still paddies. In 1974-78 a wide area south of the border changes to yellowish-brown bare ground, and blue and white roofs begin to enter it here and there.

The order of the tracks and the station is unusual. In the 1974-78 photograph a single thin line runs gently down from the left edge of the frame to the center, turns east-west there, and runs out to the right edge. Though the tracks pass through, there is no shape of a station anywhere. In the 1984-86 photograph a new wide white band runs from top to bottom through the center of the frame, and that line crosses the diagonal tracks. The cross where two lines meet is born here, and in 1987-90 the white band settles into a band of gray tracks and the shape is complete. Even so, the area around the crossing is all low buildings, and there is still nothing that casts a long shadow. In today's photograph, just west of the cross, several long, narrow rectangular buildings in a dark, sunken color stand dotted north-south.

Ebina: a station that was a junction in the paddies

Ebina has the highest center elevation of the six, 21.5 m, but the 1961-69 photograph is almost all paddies. Long, narrow lots are lined up in a diagonal direction, and the paths on the paddy ridges make a slightly tilted mesh. Several tracks run diagonally across the paddies, and in the center of the frame they come close and gather at one point. Buildings cluster slightly only around the place where they gather; otherwise, sparse rows of houses only run thinly along a riverside road and the edge of the terrace. The station was not yet the center of a town but a junction in the paddies.

In 1974-78 a long, narrow site appears where many tracks lie side by side in a bundle. The lines open like a fan and close again, and you can read it as a place where railcars are lined up and stored. A building with a large roof shining white stands to its north. In 1979-83 the main change moves east, and on the terrace a residential area neatly divided by narrow roads spreads out all at once. While the paddies of the lowland still remain wide, only the terrace side becomes town first. In today's photograph, just south of the station, several tall buildings stand a head above the surrounding low roofs and cast dark shadows at their feet. And in the left half and lower part of the frame, farmland lots in almost the same shape as in 1961-69 still spread out a few hundred m from those buildings.

Futako-Tamagawa: land where a station area of low roofs was stacked upward

At Futako-Tamagawa, neither a wide factory nor a rail yard left. If you look at the east side of the station in the 1987-90 photograph, there are only low buildings and white, empty lots, and nothing tall stands. Here the blocks next to the station were rebuilt together, and offices, commercial facilities, and housing were stacked vertically on one lot. According to the developer's announcement, the complex opened in March 2011.

In today's photograph only one block east of the station has a different color tone. Several long, narrow rectangular buildings stand facing the same direction, and the roof surfaces appear dark gray, standing out from the low white roofs around them. A large flat roof continues to their southeast, and from above you can see a plaza of round lawn and trees on top of it. If you go back and forth with the 1987-90 photograph, you notice that the same position was low buildings and white lots. The change is only in the height of one block, and the fineness of the roofs in the next blocks is the same as in the earlier eras.

What re-sorting by elevation shows

If you re-sort the towns of tall buildings by elevation, it becomes clear that a single number cannot explain them. The next table lines up the values measured at the center of each location and to its north, south, east, and west.

At Ebina the five measuring points stay within less than 1 m, from 20.8 m to 21.7 m, and there is not even relief you would notice on foot. Musashi-Urawa also spans 5.8 m to 7.3 m and slopes gently south while staying flat. Futako-Tamagawa, on the other hand, is 7.6 m in the west against 12.9 m at the center, and includes a step of more than 5 m among the five points. At Saitama-Shintoshin the measuring point to the east, at 14.0 m, is higher than the center, and the flatness needed for sorting freight cars appears only in the north-south direction. At Sasashima Live only the center at 5.7 m stands apart from the four directions, which line up at 1.0 m to 2.0 m. The height of the land and the assumptions for rain and storm surges are separate matters, so if you want to know the expected extent, the published materials of each local government are gathered on the Hazard Map Portal Site of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Official land prices whose records start in different years

Each of the six station areas has an official land price (Chika Koji) measuring point on residential land about 470 m to 660 m from the station. However, the years in which the records start do not match. The range we can refer to runs up to the 2026 publication, and the spans for each are as follows.

Because the starting years are scattered from 1983 to 2021, comparing the six numbers side by side does not tell you much. You can read the span within each location. Sasashima Live moved from 161,000 yen in 1983 to 347,000 yen in 1991, fell from there to 149,000 yen in 2005, and is 225,000 yen in 2026. The swing along the way is larger than the difference between the start and the end. Ebina and Saitama-Shintoshin also have peaks and valleys before and after their lowest years. At Musashi-Kosugi, Futako-Tamagawa, and Musashi-Urawa, the start of the record is itself the lowest year, and the whole span of the record overlaps with years after the tall buildings went up. To read the movement of the values in connection with the height of the buildings, you first need to keep this difference in starting years in mind.

Step through the eras and check for yourself

You can try the same way of reading at any station area with tall buildings. There are three steps. First, open 1987-90 or an older era and confirm that nothing tall and no long shadow appears. Next, look for the outline of a wide lot there: the arc of tracks, a spindle-shaped band, a bundle of lines opening like a fan, or the mesh of paddy ridges. Last, go back to today's photograph and see how much of that outline remains. If the outline remains, the framework of the town has been carried over and only what is inside it has been replaced.

The type of land that factories left is covered at other locations in the article on former factory sites, and the type of land where a freight rail yard became vacant in the article on former rail yard sites. If the elevation numbers catch your interest, compare the values measured in four directions on the location pages. If you are unsure how to step through the eras, the quickest way is to start from the era guide. Then open Musashi-Kosugi and Ebina in turn, and line up with your own eyes which became town first, the paddies or the factories.

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