Esaka about 60 years ago and today

History of Esaka

If you head north by subway from central Osaka and cross the Kanzaki River, the station beyond is Esaka. Around the station, buildings with offices and shops are packed along a north-south avenue, but if you go back through the aerial photographs, the same place was all rice paddies until the 1960s. The boundary at which paddy lots are replaced by blocks is clear: from the era in which a single straight line running north to south through the center of the frame appears, the paddies have almost disappeared by the next era. The way this land changed was decided by the arrival of the railway and the road, not by terrain or old villages.

A lowland where the paddy grid continued

This area is a flat lowland spreading north of the Kanzaki River. On land without relief, a way of life of drawing water, dividing paddies and growing rice continued for a long time. According to materials from the City of Suita, in 1940 Suita Town merged with Senri Village, Kishibe Village and Toyotsu Village and became a city. The name Toyotsu also remains in the town names near the station. It is low land along a river, and the City of Suita also publishes a hazard map on assumed flooding.

In the c. 1928 photograph, small rectangular paddies cover almost the entire frame. Through the middle of the frame, from the lower left to the upper right, a single black line of trees or rows of houses runs diagonally, and a small village clusters at its lower left end. Elsewhere, houses gather only in small villages surrounded by trees, dotted at the top and left of the frame. Toward the right, a railway line drawing an arc extends downward, and in the upper right corner the soil of a hill is brightly exposed. Through the center of the frame, where the station would later be placed, run only the lines of the ridges dividing the paddies.

The figure of a large river crossing the bottom of the frame in an arc appears from the c. 1936-42 photograph. It is the Kanzaki River. Countless small black streaks line up in each paddy, making the fineness of the lots stand out all the more. The black line that ran diagonally through the center has changed into a bright white straight band. Its width is also even, and it looks as if it was improved as a road. Toward the west of the band there is a white triangular surface, clearly used differently from the surrounding paddies.

The composition of the 1945-50 photograph is also almost the same. The diagonal straight road runs through the frame, and paddy lots continue without a break on both sides. Toward the top of the frame there is a pond that looks painted black, and toward the bottom a gray band where the photograph is missing runs horizontally. On the right side, many tracks are bundled and run down to the southwest. Even at this postwar point, nothing but paddies and the lines of ridges can be seen around the place that would become the station.

The year the north-south straight line came

In the 1961-69 photograph too, the position that would become the station is still among the paddies. The change had begun from the surroundings. Just to its south, a white straight road crosses east to west, and in the upper left of the frame a wide road passes in a large curve. Large factory buildings are grouped on the riverbank, and a group of buildings with large roofs has also appeared toward the lower left of the center. Even so, the paddy grid widely occupies the center of the frame, preserving the paddies as they were before the station was built.

The Japan World Exposition of 1970 decided the turning point. To carry visitors to the venue in the Senri Hills, the Kita-Osaka Kyuko Railway was established in December 1967, and the Namboku Line opened on February 24, 1970. This line connected with the Midosuji Line of the Osaka Municipal Subway, with through service in both directions. In the same year, 1970, the Shin-Midosuji also opened, and Esaka was linked by a single line with central Osaka. Materials from the City of Suita record that, in step with the subway extension and the construction of the Shin-Midosuji, a land readjustment project progressed around Esaka Station and roads and parks were laid out. Directly linked to central Osaka, Esaka afterward drew companies.

The 1974-78 photograph is divided in two by a wide straight line running north to south through the center of the location. This straight line passing the position of the station appears to be the route of the railway that opened in 1970 and of the Shin-Midosuji. The straight line crosses the Kanzaki River by bridge and continues south. The surrounding paddies have almost disappeared, and within the grid of square blocks, buildings are mixed with yellow bare ground where nothing has been built yet. Near the station, buildings a size larger than those around them have also begun to rise. In this era the upper part appears dark and the middle tends toward yellow.

The town did not fill up right after the tracks came through. The company history of Kita-Osaka Kyuko looks back on 1971 to 1974, after the Expo ended, as a period when development along the line did not progress and large losses were made every year, and says that development began to grow steadily from around 1975. The company history describes the situation of the whole line extending to Senri, but the yellow bare ground scattered around the station in the 1974-78 photograph also looks like land divided by roads and waiting for buildings. By the next era, 1979-83, roofs had been placed on much of it.

A diagonal line left in the lots

If you look at both sides of the north-south straight line in the 1979-83 photograph, buildings are densely lined up, and yellow bare ground remains only here and there. A large building with an orange roof has appeared by the river, and on the left of the frame the oval track of an athletics stadium can be seen. In 1984-86 buildings with blue roofs have increased, and hardly any empty land can be found around the station. On the west side of the north-south straight line, a little south of the station, large buildings stand together in a cluster. The bundle of tracks running along the right edge of the frame and the arc of the Kanzaki River flowing at the bottom are in almost the same positions as in the c. 1936-42 photograph. In today's photograph, large buildings are packed along the north-south straight line, and the grid of blocks has no gaps up to the edges of the frame.

Even so, the diagonal streak that appeared as a black line in the c. 1928 photograph still crosses the frame from the lower left to the upper right as a band with width, with a green streak through the middle. The grid of blocks was drawn aligned with the north-south straight line, but this one line alone remained in its direction from the paddy era. Around where the grid and the diagonal band cross, several blocks with a triangular piece missing can be seen.

The land price of a residential site in Toyotsu-cho, in the record up to the 2026 publication, peaked at 900,000 yen per square meter in 1991, and its bottom is 200,000 yen in 2011, 2012 and 2013.