Azamino about 60 years ago and today

History of Azamino

The town name Azamino was born on January 15, 1976. Parts of Motoishikawa-cho, Oba-cho and other areas were combined, and Azamino 1-chome to 4-chome were newly created. On the 14th, the day before, the Motoishikawa-Oba Land Readjustment Project, carried out by a land readjustment association, had reached its replotting disposition. Its area is 179.7 hectares, and the company history of Tokyu describes it as the largest land readjustment in Tama Den-en-toshi. The station on the Den-en-toshi Line was built after the work of this land readjustment was finished, and it opened under the same name as the town on May 25, 1977.

If you line up the five elevation points, only the south is high. The center at 31.4 m and the west at 31.1 m are at almost the same height, and the ground is lower at 26.2 m in the north and 23.9 m in the east. The south is 47.5 m, about 16 m above the center. The share of built-up area around the location is 19.7% in 1976 and 92.8% in 2021.

Before the grading, the hills were divided into fields and woods

The 1945-50 photograph covers only about 60% of the frame, the upper part, and the lower part falls outside the range of the photography and is gray. It shows hills where small fields and woods are intricately mixed, and a white road comes down from the upper left toward the center, curving as it follows a valley. East of that road there is a corner where several long, narrow buildings line up in parallel.

In the 1961-69 photograph, hills appear over the whole frame. Dense woods cover the backs of the ridges, and the paddies on the valley floors extend long and narrow as bright strips. In the left half, several such valleys line up running east-west. The white road comes down to the center along the same line as in 1945-50, and the corner of long, narrow buildings is also in the same place. The change shows at the right edge, where a wide road has been run in a large arc across a bright surface cut out of the hill. The spot slightly below the center, which corresponds to the site of the station, is still among paddies and woods. Tokyu promised to place a new station in November 1968, at the time of the application for approval to establish the land readjustment association.

The year before the replotting, only the roads were laid out first

The 1974-78 photograph was taken in January 1975, about one year before the replotting disposition. The upper third of the frame is already filled with buildings, and in the upper middle the long buildings of apartment housing face the same way. Below them, from the left edge to the center, orange soil spreads in one continuous stretch, and although curving streets and the lines dividing the lots are drawn everywhere, the houses standing on it are sparse. A thin straight line passes up and down through the eastern edge of the surface where only the streets were made first, and both sides of the line are still empty too. A wide straight road crosses the frame diagonally from the upper right corner to the middle of the bottom edge. About the lower quarter of the frame is still the same woods and valley paddies as in 1961-69.

In the 1979-83 photograph, taken in October 1979, small roofs line up along the streets on the surface that had been orange. In the middle of the left side, two open spaces with oval tracks sit side by side. Slightly below the center, a long, narrow roof sits on the straight line running up and down, and it appears to be Azamino Station, which opened in 1977. Many brown vacant lots remain in the lots from the center to the right, and the road drawing a large arc crosses that surface.

In the 1984-86 photograph, taken in 1984, the vacant lots toward the right have also filled with roofs. At the left edge the buildings of apartment housing form rows, and in the upper left, too, a new residential area and the site of a large white building have opened. The woods at the bottom of the frame have hardly changed shape since 1961-69.

The southern woods were cut open at the end of the 1980s

The 1987-90 photograph was taken in October 1989, and the woods that had occupied the bottom of the frame are gone. From the lower left to the middle of the bottom, reddish-brown and white bare ground is cut into terraces tracing the contour lines, and lot lines are drawn on each terrace. It is the hill on the south side, where the highest of the five elevation points lies. In the lower right corner, too, the same terraced soil has opened, and several tall buildings stand to its north. The straight line running south from the station passes between the terraces of soil.

In September 1992, the town boundaries were redrawn along with the land readjustment, and part of Azamino 2-chome became Azamino-minami 3-chome. The upper edge of the frame is not covered in the FY2007 photograph. The lower left and the middle of the bottom, which had been terraced soil, are filled with houses, and in the lower left several flat lots with no buildings remain.

The subway junction: neither Motoishikawa nor Tama-plaza

In the 1966 report of the Local City Planning Council, the junction station with Yokohama Municipal Subway Line 3 was set at Motoishikawa. Tokyu sought the junction at Tama-plaza Station. In April 1981, the Utsukushigaoka Federation of Neighborhood Associations brought the signatures of 10,000 people to the City of Yokohama and Tokyu and asked for the same junction, but the Yokohama City Council rejected the request unanimously. Tokyu accepted the city's plan of Azamino Station in November 1984. Line 3 opened from Shin-yokohama Station to Azamino Station on March 18, 1993, and on November 6, 1994, Kohoku Ward and Midori Ward were reorganized and Aoba Ward was created.

In today's photograph, the bottom of the frame, which was terraced soil in 1989, is also almost filled with houses with small roofs. The straight line running up and down through the center and the wide road crossing diagonally from the upper right corner both pass in the same positions as in 1975. South of the station, long, narrow fields and rows of green are wedged in along the straight line. The dense woods in the upper left corner and toward the left of the upper edge overlap in outline with the ridge woods that occupied the same places in 1961-69.

According to the figures of Tokyu, the average daily number of passengers getting on and off the Den-en-toshi Line at Azamino Station was 3,992 in the fiscal year the station opened, and 120,498 in fiscal 2025. According to the Basic Resident Register of the City of Yokohama, 17,682 people live in Azamino 1-chome to 4-chome as of June 2025.

The standard site at 2-23-24 Azamino, 619 m from the center of the location, has published official land prices (Chika Koji) from 1987. The price per square meter reached 890,000 yen in 1988, the highest in the records up to the 2026 publication, then went up and down, fell every year from 1992, and came to 304,000 yen in 2005, the lowest in the records up to the 2026 publication. It rose once from 2006 to 2008, fell from 2009 to 2012, and from 2013 has risen every year; in 2026 it is 509,000 yen, just under 60% of the 1988 value.