Iida Station Area about 60 years ago and today

History of Iida Station Area

The center of Iida sits on a river terrace in the Ina Basin. It is a downtown that continued as the castle town of Iida Castle and has been called a "Little Kyoto" for the look of its streets. Iida Station is on the northwestern edge of that downtown, and the tracks pass diagonally over the terrace from northeast to southwest. In the southern part of the aerial photographs, the Matsu River, spreading a riverbed of white gravel, flows from west to east, and on its north bank a dark band of woods traces the edge of the terrace. The positional relationship of these three, the station, the river and the edge of the terrace, does not change through the aerial photographs of two eras and today's photograph. The change is in the fields that surrounded the outside of the downtown, and in one large road that cut in among them.

On top of a burned castle town

To tell the story of how this town looks, it is necessary to start from two fires before the photographs. According to the chronology of the City of Iida, there was a great fire in front of Iida Station in July 1946, and in April of the following year, 1947, a great fire broke out that burned two-thirds of the downtown. This means that two-thirds of the rows of houses built up as a castle town were lost in succession in less than a year.

For the reconstruction, the city decided as its city plan on firebreak roads dividing the town into four and urakaisen back alleys. It is the idea of dividing the downtown with wide roads so that fire does not spread across the whole town. The Ringo Namiki (the name means apple tree avenue) began when students of Iida Higashi Junior High School planted apple trees in the central planting strip of those firebreak roads, and the chronology gives November 1953 as the start of the planting. The avenue marked its 40th anniversary in 1993. Greenery raised by the citizens was thus built into the streets redrawn from the burned ruins.

The railway had passed over this terrace since before then. The lines of the Ina Electric Railway and others were combined into the Iida Line in August 1943. The City of Iida itself was born in April 1937 when Iida Town and Kami-Iida Town merged.

A tilted grid and a white riverbed

It is the 1961-69 aerial photograph that shows the town more than 14 years after the great fires, and no blank that suggests burned ruins can be found anywhere in the frame. A dark band runs diagonally through the middle of the frame from northeast to southwest, recognizable as the tracks and the station yard. On its east side, a grid of streets tilted at an angle is filled completely with rows of houses, taking up most of the right half of the frame. The orientation of the grid is almost parallel to the tracks, and just east of the yard a single road draws a large arc into the grid. By contrast, the rows of houses on the west side of the tracks are thin, and a little farther away they change into lots of paddies and fields with scattered farmhouses.

A little more than 14 years after 1947 in the chronology, the grid east of the tracks had been filled without leaving a single vacant lot.

In this era the Matsu River, flowing in the southern part of the frame, spreads a wide riverbed of gravel shining white, and the streams of water flow in thin branches within the riverbed. On the north bank, black woods continue in a band, and the rows of houses of the downtown break off just short of that band. The position of the band is the edge of the terrace, the border between the high surface on which the town sits and the low surface of the river. The south bank is spread with paddies, fields and settlements, and the difference from the dense grid on the north bank is clear. In the upper half of the frame, the foot of the mountains and woods press close, and in front of them an oval sports ground and long buildings that look like school buildings line up. From the upper right to the right edge, another thin river carves a valley as it descends.

The height of the ground is highest in the west and north and falls toward the east and south. The surface of the terrace itself tilts gently toward the river, and the side closer to the river is lower. The hazard map made by the City of Iida shows how the slopes at the edge of the terrace and the low surfaces along the river are treated.

An arc curving around the north and west

An arc of a wide road, tracing the foot of the mountains to the north from the upper right of the frame, curving around the west and passing out to the lower left, appears for the first time in the 1974-78 photograph. In 1961-69 there were only paddies, fields and woods in this place. The chronology records the stake-driving ceremony of the Chuo Expressway in October 1966 and the opening of the section between Nakatsugawa and Komagane in August 1975. The arc does not touch the grid of the downtown at all, and was drawn so as to wrap the town on the terrace from the outside. You also notice that the paddies and fields remain differently inside and outside the arc. On the western side inside, roofs are beginning to increase, and outside, green lots are still wide.

The Matsu River in the same era looks thin between green banks, and the width of the white riverbed is much narrower than in 1961-69. The band of woods on the north bank remains in the same position, and the southern edge of the downtown has not moved either. There is no notable change in the grid in the center either; the change is only outside the grid.

There are other things that kept their positions. The oval sports ground at the top center of the frame is in the same place from 1961-69 to today's photograph, and from 1974-78 the arc road passes just grazing its south side. The white square that looks like a schoolyard at the foot of the mountains in the upper left, and the valley of the thin river in the upper right edged by woods, also barely change their outlines. The new road was drawn threading through the gaps between these existing facilities and the terrain.

The arc road runs in the same position in today's photograph too, and many of the paddies and fields that spread on the western side inside it have been replaced by rows of houses and large roofs. The composition in which the rows of houses were thin west of the tracks has disappeared, and both sides of the station have the same density. In the upper right inside the arc, lots of green and brown fields remain in a small cluster. At the lower right of the frame, the Matsu River is held between straight embankments on both banks, and the white riverbed has changed into a thin gray band. The band of woods on the north bank remains in almost the same shape as in 1961-69, and the edge of the terrace continues to be the southern border of the town.

The residential land in Kamisato Kuroda is in a district of the former Kamisato Town, which merged into the City of Iida in July 1993, about 1,299 m from the station. If you trace the land price here up to the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji), 53,000 yen per square meter in 1998 is the highest, and 29,900 yen in each year from 2015 to 2026 is the cheapest.