Tama New Town (Keio-horinouchi) about 60 years ago and today

History of Tama New Town (Keio-horinouchi)

Keio-horinouchi Station is in the part of Tama New Town that falls within the City of Hachioji. The center of the location is on the southern edge of a valley that runs diagonally from the left to the upper right, and if you head east and south from there, the ground rises by more than 20 m. An old road ran along the valley floor, and the hills to the south were covered with woods and fields. The work of cutting open those hills to build a residential town and running an elevated railway through the valley appears step by step in the photographs from the mid-1970s to around 1990. The station opened on May 21, 1988, and the 4.5 km of the Sagamihara Line from Keio-tama-center Station to Minami-Osawa Station opened on the same day.

The valley road and the southern hills

The 1961-69 photograph is black and white. A white road enters from the left edge of the frame toward the center in a gentle arc, changes direction slightly above the center, and runs straight out to the upper right corner. The valley floor along this road is filled with finely divided dark gray rice paddies, and houses stand in small clusters of a few on both sides of the road and at the foot of the hills. In the valley toward the upper right, a thin stream meanders alongside the road. The south and the north of the valley are both hills, and the tops of the ridges are a patchwork of dense tree crowns and small fields. A corner in the lower right looks different: several long, narrow grass surfaces in the shape of a golf course line up, and buildings and a parking lot appear in the middle of them.

The plan to turn these hills into a residential town was decided within the era of this photograph. The city plan for the New Residential Town Development Project of Tama New Town was decided in December 1965, and the city plan for the Yugi Land Readjustment Project followed in July 1971. According to materials from the City of Hachioji, Horinouchi to the north of the station is the area of the land readjustment, and Bessho on the hill to the south is the area of the New Residential Town Development Project.

The 1974-78 photograph was taken in January 1975, in winter, when plants had withered, and the fields and the bare soil appear pale pink. Only the upper edge of the frame has a dark green tone, and in the upper left corner you can see houses along curving streets and a black square pond. The valley road still passes among paddies and rows of houses, but in the upper right the road along the valley has been redrawn as two thick straight lines. At the right edge, surfaces of brown soil open in steps, and you can tell that the work of cutting the hills had begun to enter from the east side of the frame. The grass surfaces in the lower right stand out whitish in their winter color. In October 1974, the year before, the Sagamihara Line had been extended to Keio-tama-center Station.

A wide road through the valley

In the 1979-83 photograph, the look of the valley floor changes greatly. A wide, bright road runs along the valley from the left edge to the upper right corner, and slightly left of the center an intersection with a road branching south has been made. From there, another wide road descends to the lower left corner as if it circles the edge of the hill. In the middle of the right edge, apartment buildings facing the same way stand in several rows, and there is a white open space next to them. The hills south of the valley are still mostly woods; apart from a thin strip of brown bare ground south of the center, soil shows only in the lower left and lower right corners.

In the 1984-86 photograph, buildings begin to fill both sides of the valley road, and on the hills south of the road brown and white soil where the woods were cleared opens here and there. In the middle of the left side there is a large white surface cut open, and a curving road passes through it. A brown band extends south from the center, and in the lower left several flat areas cut in terraces stack up. Toward the right, a building with a large white roof and apartment buildings line up south of the valley road. Surrounded by the soil of the land grading, only the grass surfaces in the lower right remain in the same shape as in the previous era.

The elevated line and the town opening in front of the station

The 1987-90 photograph was taken in October 1989, and a black straight line runs from the center of the frame toward the lower left corner. It appears to be the elevated structure of the Sagamihara Line, which was extended to Minami-Osawa Station in 1988. Just south of the center, a wide white road extends south, and thin lines dividing lots have been drawn on the soil on both sides of it. Toward the right of the center, construction of a large white building is under way, and north of the valley road small roofs line up with no gaps between them. The northern hill is still dense woods, and only one small patch of brown bare ground is open in the upper middle.

Residents began moving into the Bessho 1-chome District in front of the station in March 1990. On the 30th of the same month the section from Minami-Osawa Station to Hashimoto Station opened, and the whole Sagamihara Line was open. The Yugi Land Readjustment Project ended with the public notice of replotting disposition in June 1996, and the New Residential Town Development Project also ended: the part carried out by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in March 2004, and the part carried out by the Urban Renaissance Agency in March 2006.

The northern hill where woods turned into housing

In the latest photograph, almost the whole frame is filled with buildings and roads. The straight line from the station to the lower left and the wide road along the valley are in the same positions as in 1987-90, and mid-rise buildings stand together between them. On the hill in the upper middle that was woods, a residential area of detached houses with curving streets laid around it has been built. On the slope to its lower left, too, houses with small roofs line up densely. In the middle of the left side you can see the track of an athletics stadium and a sports ground, and in the lower right the grass surfaces remain in the same arrangement. Woods remain on the top of the northern hill and in the upper left corner, and in the middle of the right edge, a large white roof and a sports ground sit between the white buildings of apartment housing.

According to the City of Hachioji's statistics compiled from the Basic Resident Register as of January 1, 2026, 10,892 people live in Bessho 1-chome and 8,824 in Bessho 2-chome. The average daily number of passengers getting on and off at the station was 29,491 in fiscal 2025, according to the figures of Keio Corporation.

The standard site at Matsugi 35 is 369 m from the center of the location, and its published official land prices (Chika Koji) are available from 1994. In the records up to the 2026 official land prices, the highest is 375,000 yen in 1994, the first year; the lowest is 170,000 yen in both 2012 and 2013. In 2026 it is 217,000 yen, back to the same amount as in 2001. The amounts are per square meter, and they fell every year from 1994 to 2006. After rising once in 2007 and 2008, they fell or stayed flat until 2013, and from 2014 they have risen every year except 2021.