Ashiyahama about 60 years ago and today

History of Ashiyahama

The town of Ashiya sits on a long, narrow plain where the Rokko mountains press toward the sea. The Ashiya River, flowing down from the mountains, carried sediment, and a wide sandy beach and pine woods ran along the area around its mouth. It was known as a beach crowded with sea bathers, and on the map there was only a thin edge of sand south of the town. If you look at the same area as of 2026, the line where the beach was is hidden inside the town, and square land juts out in two tiers to its south. This is the area called Ashiyahama, and it was all sea originally.

A shoreline of pines and sand

The 1945-50 aerial photograph is composed with land in the upper half of the frame and sea in the lower half. From the middle of the left edge toward a point slightly above the middle of the right edge, a single band of shining white sand runs in a gentle arc. This is the shoreline before reclamation. The band grows thicker and thinner from place to place, and it is clearly bright even in the grainy photograph. On the land side, rectangular fields of varying shades line up, and from the middle toward the left a settlement packed densely with small houses appears. Two straight lines cross the upper left of the frame diagonally; they are a road and a railway. In the upper right corner the lots are large, and big white buildings are mixed in. The row of dark dots continuing along the shore seems to be trees that catch the wind. And the lower part of the frame is only a water surface with faint patches from cloud shadows or murkiness, with not a single structure in it.

The town stops at the water's edge

Only the land side changes greatly in 1961-69, which is also the first photograph displayed for this location. The rectangles that were fields disappear, and fine grains of roofs fill the upper left of the frame without gaps. The town extends along the two straight lines, and lines that look like sidings can be seen along the railway. Yet the shoreline itself keeps almost the same arc as in the previous era. The difference is that the white band of sand has grown thinner and the water's edge is sharply cut off by the edges of buildings. At this point, the town had come up to the water's edge and stopped. In the upper right of the frame the lots along the shore have grown larger, and a big white building and a structure jutting a short way into the sea can be made out. The lower two thirds of the frame are still water all over, and in the coarse grain there are long, thin, faint streaks and several small black dots. They are ships. Up to this era, there is no sign of reclamation anywhere in the frame.

Towers standing on bare ground

In 1974-78, when the photographs become color, the center of the frame looks like a different place. Where there was water, two sections of whitish land jutting into the sea appear with sharp corners. The surface is bare ground with neither paving nor grass, and inside there is a faint straight division into lots and small, pale green water surfaces. A straight channel runs along the border between the two sections, and the outer edge is lined with white seawalls. There are only a handful of buildings. On the sea side, two long, thin straight embankments extend offshore, and in the lower right a yellowish hook-shaped structure appears. The order of the work, building the land first and placing the town on it afterward, is laid bare in this one photograph. Another reclaimed area enters at the lower left of the frame, and there, buildings with roofs painted in different colors and long, narrow orange courts line up neatly. A developed site that became a town first and a developed site that is still only ground sit next to each other on the shore of the same bay.

In the 1979-83 photograph, tall buildings stand in the center of the bare ground, divided into two clusters. There are more than ten that can be counted, and their plans have many corners. The rooftops are white and bright, and long, thin shadows fall to the southwest from the foot of each. The surroundings are still ocher bare ground, dotted with low white buildings, lots that seem to be under construction, and square blue-green water surfaces. The unusual order in which the towers stood before the town is captured in this era. These high-rise housing blocks were built by inviting proposals for industrialized construction techniques, and a method of fitting dwelling units into a large steel frame was adopted. Residents began moving in in 1979, and the area became a residential district known as Ashiyahama Seaside Town.

A second beach

By 1984-86, the bare ground is almost filled. Low rows of houses spread at the foot of and around the high-rise buildings, and the roads are not straight but curve gently to form cul-de-sacs. Buildings that look like schools with ocher sports grounds and blue rectangular water surfaces are added, and the town's facilities come together. The street trees are still thin, and the color of the ground sets the impression of the photograph. At the right edge of the same photograph, the next developed site appears in the sea. Ocher ground is divided into rectangles, and lots holding water inside line up. This is the era when a second reclaimed area began to grow south of Ashiyahama. A long white embankment crossing the sea diagonally also stands out sharply in this photograph.

In the Southern Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake of January 17, 1995, the City of Ashiya also suffered heavy damage over a wide part of the town. The housing on the reclaimed land was not unscathed either, and the disaster is deeply engraved in the memory of this town.

In today's aerial photograph, a thick band crosses the lower half of the frame diagonally from lower left to upper right. It is an elevated road crossing over the sea. The second reclaimed area, which was under development in 1984-86, spreads south of it, holding low houses along curved roads, a white sandy beach shaped into a fan, a water surface with yachts packed along the landing piers, and a sports ground with an oval track. A beach has been rebuilt on land that people made by filling in the sea. On the main body of Ashiyahama, the street and garden trees have grown, and the frame is much greener than in 1984-86. The high-rise buildings have changed neither position nor direction, and they stand as landmarks that have not moved for more than 40 years.

Of the five measurement points, the lowest is not on the reclaimed land but the north one at 2.1 m. The location's measurement point is 4.2 m, the east 4.4 m, the west 3.7 m and the south 3.5 m, so the land built later is higher than the side that was land from the start. The order of the numbers shows that the height to which soil was piled during reclamation and the ground height of the old town do not necessarily match. The City of Ashiya's official hazard map is the source showing the expected extent of flooding. The 670,000 yen per square meter of 1993 is the ceiling of the series of values up to the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji). It is the figure recorded at a residential site in Matsuhama-cho about 350 m away; from there it kept falling to 230,000 yen in 2005, and in the 2026 official land prices it is 325,000 yen. The curve has the shape of bottoming out and then recovering.