Hinosato Danchi about 60 years ago and today

History of Hinosato Danchi

The City of Munakata, Fukuoka Prefecture, home to Munakata Taisha, lies between the City of Fukuoka and the City of Kitakyushu. Just south of Togo Station, on the railway linking those two cities, a housing complex was placed that uses an entire hill. It is Hinosato Danchi, a danchi (housing complex). The conditions came together: a position from which you can commute to either Fukuoka or Kitakyushu, and a hill of sizable area. When you switch through the aerial photographs in order from the oldest, the moment when this hill changes into a town all at once comes in between, within a single photograph.

Terraced paddies on hills carved by valleys

The tilt of the land shows directly in the elevation values. The north, where the station is, is low at 11 m and the west at 15.2 m, while the center, the south and the east are higher at 19.3 m, 30.6 m and 31.1 m. It is the slope of a hill descending toward the northwest. The railway and the old highway run on the low side, and the high side was woods and paddies in the valleys. This slope side, within walking distance of the station yet able to avoid destroying the paddy fields on the flat land, was chosen as the place to set the town.

In the 1961-69 aerial photograph, only the northeast (upper right) of the frame is flat paddy fields, with small rectangular lots lined up neatly along the channels. From there the railway descends diagonally, and a settlement connects in a long, narrow line, squeezed between the tracks and the road. From the center of the frame to the southern half, the appearance is completely different. Many valleys reach in like branches, and on their floors and slopes terraced paddies fill the hill. Small paddies curving as if tracing the contour lines form layers, and only the tops of the ridges remain as dark woods. No water surfaces can be found either deep in the valleys or on the western edge; the water is held in the paddies themselves.

In the same 1961-69 photograph, follow the tracks in the center left of the frame. There is a place where the single line widens into several to form a long, narrow bulge, with buildings clustered beside it. It is the station of the railway running along the foot of the hill, and the settlement extends only along this bulge and the highway. There is almost no sign of people living on the hill, and the roads are limited to thin lines following the valleys. Before the town was built, this land had a two-layer structure: life in the lowland centered on the station, and the paddies and fields on the hill.

New blocks on the hill

In the 1974-78 photograph, the surface of the hill has been swapped out entirely for something else. The area that was valleys and terraced paddies has become a residential area, and streets drawing curves wind around the slope. In the center of the frame, mid-rise residential buildings of the same shape and the same orientation line up in rows, and east of them a water surface shaped like a tree leaf spreads out black. This water surface is not in the 1961-69 photograph, and the same place was paddies on the valley floor. On the western edge of the frame too, an irrigation pond whose embankment crosses the valley in a straight line appears from this era. The rows of residential buildings also extend to the southwest, with long, narrow buildings repeating regularly. Between the blocks, groups of small roofs that look like detached houses are beginning to spread.

The way the streets are drawn also shows the thinking behind the development. There are several wide roads running up and down through the hill, and roads branching from them curve to trace the slope. It is a form that did not fill the valleys to make them flat, but put residential buildings and lots on steps while keeping the incline of the slope. Comparing the direction of the valleys seen in the 1961-69 photograph with the way these streets curve, you can see that the town traces the bones of the terrain to some extent. However, the steps of the terraced paddies disappeared. The surface of the hill was cut and piled up again, and not a single layer of the fine paddies remains. The water surfaces that appeared in the valleys after development also show that the paths of water were redrawn by both the terrain and human hands. If you first open the disaster assumptions that the City of Munakata shows in map form, the relationship between the valley lines and the streets traced in the photographs becomes easier to read.

In the photograph of this era, do not overlook the outside of the town. The station area to the north and the paddy fields to the northeast are almost unchanged from 1961-69, and the old settlement also remains as it was. The town was not laid over the existing settlement but attached as something separate to the hill south of it. That is why, in this one photograph, the landscape of paddies and woods and the newly built, orderly town live side by side with a clear border between them.

Rows of residential buildings around a pond

The 1979-83 photograph is in color, and the density of the town has risen. The vacant land between and outside the mid-rise residential buildings is filled with buildings, and the blocks of detached houses reach the southern edge of the hill. A building with a large white roof appears in the center left, and just south of it a round roof can be seen. They are of a scale thought to be schools or public facilities, showing that not only residential buildings but also places where people gather were prepared in the same period.

On the other hand, the spread of the town stops here. Untouched forest remains to the south and southeast, and the rows of lots end abruptly just before the valleys begin. The line where the usable surface of the hill was used up has become the outline of the town as it is.

The edge of the forest and the color of soil

In the latest aerial photograph too, the skeleton of the town overlaps well with 1979-83. The water surface in the center remains in almost the same shape, and west of it rows of long, narrow buildings line up in the same positions. However, looking closely inside the danchi, there are places where the orientation of buildings and the shape of lots have changed, suggesting that buildings are being replaced. Southeast of the town, buildings with large roofs and wide parking lots line a major road, and a different kind of building from the residential area on the hill has increased.

The flat land to the northeast changes at a different speed from the hill. In the latest aerial photograph too, the grid of paddy fields remains, and the shapes of the lots can be overlaid with the 1961-69 photograph. However, several buildings with large roofs have been added along the highway, so that white boxes are now dotted among the paddies. Over the half century in which a town was built on the hill, the flat side has kept its character as paddies while giving up, little by little, only the parts near the roads. Two speeds side by side within the same frame are the highlight of this location.

Another thing that catches the eye is color. In the west of the frame, south of the irrigation pond, forest has been lost, and in the latest photograph a wide bare area the color of soil is exposed. The same place in 1979-83 is covered with dark forest, and the ground under the trees cannot be seen anywhere. The photographs can say only that a surface where forest has turned to soil exists here. Even half a century after the town opened, the outline of this hill leaves room for rewriting.

At a residential site in Hinosato 1-chome, about 400 m from the location, there is a record from 2013. Per square meter the starting year is 40,400 yen, and the cheapest up to the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji) is 39,800 yen from 2015 to 2017, so the difference between the two is only 600 yen. From there the direction changed, and 55,500 yen in 2026 became the ceiling of the series up to the 2026 publication. It is a shape that built up to 1.3 times in 12 years, a movement that happened at the foot of a danchi town where a long time has passed since residents first moved in. This sequence of values shows that the town on the hill is not a place that only grows old.