Kento (Former Suita Rail Yard) about 60 years ago and today

History of Kento (Former Suita Rail Yard)

If you leave the ticket gates of Kishibe Station and walk north, several large buildings line up beyond a wide sidewalk, and the ground at their feet is laid out with lawns and pavement. For a long time, this area was land used only for rearranging freight cars. If you advance the aerial photographs in order from the oldest era, a single band crossing the frame diagonally from the upper right to the lower left keeps appearing in all seven eras up to 1984-86. Its direction and width barely move. From era to era, only the color of the band and what is packed into it change.

A band drawn at the foot of the hills

The heights of the five points are scattered between 9.9 m and 6.3 m. In order from the highest: 9.9 m to the north, 9.5 m at the center, 8.7 m to the west, 7.6 m to the east, and 6.3 m to the south. The north and west are high, and the land descends toward the south and east. The difference from end to end is 3.6 m, a low ground with a clear direction of slope. A river lies at the bottom of the descent, and its course appears as an arc from the lower right of the frame to the lower middle. To the north, the Senri Hills begin, but this frame corresponds to where their foot melts into the plain. There are no steps or cliffs, and it is land where the direction of the ridges dividing the fields matches everywhere.

A facility for regrouping freight cars one by one lines up dozens of tracks side by side and requires enough length to push whole trains into them as they are. If the lines curve, one end cannot be seen from the other, and if there is a slope, the parked cars cannot be held in place. A straight site without relief could be secured in one piece partway along the trunk line linking Osaka and Kyoto. That is why a large rail yard was placed along this line in the 1910s and early 1920s. Freight cars gathered from various places were broken up here, regrouped by destination and sent out again. The use of the area was fixed early on as land not for a town but for passing through.

From a black mass to a bright band

The photograph from around 1928 is coarse-grained, and cloud shadows are scattered widely from the upper left to the lower right. Even so, the composition can be read. The railway descends diagonally from the upper middle of the frame to the lower left, and from the middle left to the lower left the lines are bundled wide and parallel. Around the band, rectangular farmland spreads all over, with only small hamlets surrounded by trees dotted about. Slightly above the center there is a corner where white, long, narrow buildings aligned in the same direction continue, and from the lower right to the lower middle a river draws an arc, its embankments appearing double. In the upper right, even the edge of the film and handwritten marks have been captured. Only the lower left and lower right corners look black, as densely packed urban areas.

By c. 1936-42, the appearance of the band changes completely. The individual lines cannot be read; it appears simply as a pitch-black spindle-shaped mass. This is because it is filled with freight cars. The surroundings are, as before, orderly farmland, and a bright, wide white road runs diagonally from the upper left to the lower left. In the middle right there is a corner where small buildings with white roofs form a line, and right of center a mass of black buildings can be seen. The contrast between the fine grain of the farmland and the blackness of the band is strongest in this era.

The 1945-50 photograph has a bright, hard tone, and the same band has changed from a black mass into a bright surface where each line can be read. The small number of parked freight cars becomes the very brightness of the photograph. The middle left and the middle right each have a corner where buildings like small white boxes are lined up regularly. The fine grain of farmland remains in the right half, and toward the left of the top edge there is a black pond. The river and its embankments pass through the same positions as in the previous era, and only the urban area in the lower left has grown denser.

Eras when rust-colored stripes remain

1961-69 is a photograph sunk dark overall. The band runs from the upper right to the lower left as a wide, dark surface in which many parallel lines can be read, and in part of its inner side black masses are clustered. These are parked cars. The right half has changed greatly: the farmland has been replaced by a fine grid of housing, and square buildings with bright roofs have come to be mixed in here and there. A thin, dark waterway meanders from the upper left downward, and in the lower left corner the grid of the urban area is packed without gaps. The composition in which only the band of tracks is not eaten by the town is seen best in this era.

From 1974-78, the frame has color. The photograph is divided into three horizontal rows with different tones, the upper side leaning toward a dark greenish color and the lower left side toward pale beige. The band reads as dark green-gray on the upper side and as fine rust-colored stripes on the lower left side. While urbanization reaches widely, green and brown rectangles can still be counted in the upper half of the frame, continuing as a cohesive lot in the upper right. The river meanders, showing a brown water surface and green embankments, and toward the bottom there is an orange-brown oval surface. By 1979-83 the difference in tone among the three rows has almost disappeared, and the rust-colored band stands out diagonally in a uniform frame. The roofs mix blue and milky white, and pale brown surfaces that keep the shape of lots are only dotted along the top edge and toward the right. Woods and a pond remain in the upper left, and in the middle left two tall buildings stand, casting shadows.

1984-86 is a dark, dense photograph overall. Even so, the band is still there as rust-colored stripes, its width and position not much changed from the previous era. Above the center there is a corner where many white, bright buildings line up in parallel, and the urban area is packed without gaps, with blue roofs standing out. In the upper right and lower right, large buildings and pale surfaces that look like development spread out. The method of transport that gathered and regrouped freight cars was revised across the whole of the national railways in 1984, but the rust-colored stripes still appear in the photograph of this era. There is a time lag between the change of role and the change in how the ground looks.

What stands on the north side of the band

When the wide surface for regrouping was no longer needed, a flat area of a size that rarely appears in a city was left behind. Directly next to a station, in one piece, and along a trunk line as well. The use of this land was debated for a long time, and town development centered on medicine and health, called Kento (the name means health city), was carried forward. In 2019 a national medical research institution moved here, and large buildings stand on the north side of the band. From a surface for keeping cars to a surface people come to, the use of the same flatness was swapped.

In today's photograph, the band has not disappeared. A narrowed bundle of tracks runs diagonally in the same direction as in the old eras, and on its north side large, white, bright buildings and wide paved surfaces appear together. A passage with a white roof spans the band, and it has become possible to walk back and forth between the north and south of the tracks. A little farther away, a large building with a blue roof and a sports ground covered with green lawn can be seen. The woods and pond in the upper left have not changed position since the black-and-white eras, and the river flowing from the lower right to the lower middle also keeps its green embankments. Wherever you look in the frame, the urban area has no gaps. A residential site in Kishibe-naka 5-chome has an observation point for official land prices (Chika Koji), about 385 m from this location. The price per square meter is 161,000 yen in 2023, 165,000 yen in 2024, 178,000 yen in 2025 and 194,000 yen in 2026. In the record from 2023 to 2026, the difference between the first and the last is 33,000 yen.

Traces remain in the angles of the roads. A narrow road tracing the edge of the band extends diagonally without meshing with the surrounding streets. The photographs also show that the band could be crossed in only a few places, since few roads connect north and south. The slight slope, high to the north and west and low to the south and east, changed nothing through the seven eras up to 1984-86. A single long band drawn to match the direction of the trunk line, not the terrain, has decided the shape of this land.