Izumoshi Station Area about 60 years ago and today

History of Izumoshi Station Area

With the San'in Line running east-west as the boundary, the rows of houses of an old town spread to the north, and a plain of paddies and homestead woods spread to the south. The center of the frame is within the grounds of Izumoshi Station, placed almost in the middle of the Izumo Plain. The elevations of the five surrounding points fall between 7.3 m and 8.0 m, with almost nothing that could be called relief. Although the same flat land at the same height continues north and south of the tracks, in the photographs the north and the south long showed completely different faces. The order in which that gap closes appears, as you advance the aerial photographs from the oldest era, as changes on the south side of the station.

As the station of Imaichi

According to the public newsletter of the City of Izumo, the station opened on October 10, 1910, as Izumo-Imaichi Station of the national railways. Imaichi is the name of the town spreading north of the tracks, and the station was placed at its southern edge. The station building was rebuilt in 1941, and in 1957 the station name was changed from Izumo-Imaichi to Izumoshi. In 1970 a new station building was completed.

The plain south of the station formed a rural landscape typical of the Izumo region. Materials on the history and culture of the City of Izumo cite the dispersed settlements in which houses stand scattered across the plain, and explain that many houses have homestead woods called "tsuijimatsu" that surround their north and west sides with tall Japanese black pines. They are stands of trees to shelter from the northwest seasonal wind in winter. The area south of the tracks was land where such homesteads floated among the paddies, and the land beyond the south exit of the station was not a town but paths through paddies.

North and south of the tracks

Wide station grounds run east-west through the middle of the 1961-69 photograph, slightly toward the top. Many tracks are bundled together, and within the grounds buildings with long roofs and black rows that look like rolling stock line up. The north side of the tracks is an urban area packed tightly with small roofs, and in the upper part of the frame a broad road extending east-west and a grid of roads crossing it can be seen.

However, just across the tracks to the south, the scene is put together completely differently. From the middle of the frame to the bottom edge, lots of paddies spread all over, and black, round stands of trees float among them here and there. Each stand of trees is a wood surrounding a homestead, thought to be the dispersed settlement of tsuijimatsu. The farther south you go, the fewer the houses; in the lower left a river lies like a band, and in the lower right corner wooded hills form the edge of the plain. In the middle of the right edge there is a corner where long, narrow buildings of the same shape stand in parallel, used in a different way from the south where paddies spread.

The scene to the south begins to move from 1974-78. Houses increase just south of the station, and from the tracks to a little below them the land is fairly well filled with roofs and roads. Below that, around the very middle of the frame, there are still many strips of paddies, but several narrow roads pass through them, and houses are beginning to line up along the roads. The urban area north of the tracks also grows denser, and in the upper part of the frame many buildings with large white roofs have appeared. A square sports ground can be seen in the upper right corner, and the town to the north is spreading east as well. Even so, the width of the station grounds is almost unchanged from 1961-69, and the roads connecting north and south had to cross this wide bundle of tracks.

In the middle of the bottom edge of the frame in the same era, a large, white, square development site has appeared. It is wider by orders of magnitude than the surrounding paddies, and on the bright, leveled ground a few buildings are rising. According to the history of the Shimane University Faculty of Medicine, its predecessor, Shimane Medical University, was established in October 1975, and medical care at the university hospital began in October 1979. The university itself states that it is on the south side of the station, and this development site is thought to correspond to its grounds. Along the tracks at the right edge, a new corner where buildings with long roofs stand in many rows has been added.

The band of track carried on pillars

In 1998, Izumoshi Station became an elevated station. The City of Izumo's public newsletter records that elevating the tracks produced today's station building. In December 2000, Dentetsu-Izumoshi Station of Ichibata Electric Railway, lined up next to it, also moved to an elevated station. The bundle of tracks that had separated north and south on the ground became a single narrow band carried on pillars. A booklet explaining Shimane Prefecture's city planning, showing the elevated tracks in the City of Izumo in a photograph, explains that the aim of this kind of project is to eliminate level crossings to prevent traffic jams and to unite the urban areas on both sides of the tracks. Keeping the tracks from obstructing travel between north and south was what the project aimed for.

In today's photograph, at the place that was once wide station grounds, only a black, narrow line runs straight east-west. Roofs of the same density spread north and south of the tracks, and from the photograph alone you cannot tell which is the old town. The strips of paddies that were in the middle of the frame south of the station have all been replaced by houses and roads.

Just north and south of the tracks, several buildings with large gray flat roofs and paved open spaces line up. In the upper left corner there is a large rectangular building, and in the upper part of the frame tall buildings with white roofs stand here and there along the streets. The town to the north, which in 1961-69 could be read from the broad east-west road and the grid, has kept the shape of its roads while only the size of the buildings has changed. The direction of the tracks extending west and east from the station has not changed at all since the black-and-white eras.

At the development site in the middle of the bottom edge, large white buildings are clustered together, and a sports ground spreads to their south. Overlaying the outline with the white square of 1974-78 shows that the outer shape of the grounds remains almost as it was. In the lower right corner, a wide road now crosses diagonally along the foot of the wooded hills. In the middle of the left edge, a few lots of paddies remain as a small cluster, recalling the plain of 1961-69. The river flowing in the lower left passes through the same position in every era.

Because this is flat low ground with a river flowing to the south, it is worth checking the expected flooding location by location on the municipality's hazard map. A standard site for official land prices (Chika Koji) is in a residential area in Enya-cho, about 750 m from the station; in the record up to the 2026 publication, the lowest value is 45,000 yen per square meter in 2021 and 2022, and the highest is 47,000 yen in 2026. In the photographs, the area south of the station, once paddies dotted with homestead woods, changed into an urban area in about 60 years.