Kofu Station North Exit about 60 years ago and today

History of Kofu Station North Exit

The center of the castle town spreads south of the tracks, and the site of Kofu Castle also adjoins the station on its southeast. For a long time the north exit of Kofu Station was on the back side of the station. On the north side the railway grounds lay long and narrow from east to west, and beyond them rows of houses, schools and fields continued. If you line up the aerial photographs of two eras, 1961-69 and 1974-78, with today's photograph, you can see that while the grid of the surrounding streets hardly moves, only the contents of the band touching the north of the station are replaced. The bundle of tracks grows thin, and plazas and public buildings line up on the freed ground. This is the process by which a second gateway to the prefectural capital was made on the other side of the station.

Tracks that grazed the north of the castle

The railway linking Kofu and Tokyo came through only after a long tunnel through the mountains was ready. According to the City of Kofu's explanation, the Sasago Tunnel opened in July 1902, and the following year the Chuo Line was extended to Kofu Station. The journey that had taken three to four days along the Koshu Kaido shrank to about six hours. In 1911 the line from Kofu Station west to Kobuchizawa Station opened, and Kofu changed from a station where the tracks ended to a station along the way. The station was placed just north of the castle site, and the tracks ended up running east to west along the northern edge of the castle town. The orientation of the station, with the castle town side as its front and beyond the tracks as its back, was born this way.

The station grounds in two eras

In the default photograph, 1961-69, the railway crosses the frame straight from left to right. Just west of the north exit the tracks split into many lines, forming station grounds swollen into a spindle shape. Along their northern edge small roofs line up eave to eave, and the boundary between the grounds and the town looks as if it is divided by a single line. Toward the southeast of the station there is a rise edged by black curves. These are the remains of the stone walls and moat of the castle site. From the south of the station a wide, straight street extends toward the bottom edge, and the grid of streets on the castle town side is aligned with that street as its axis.

If you move your eye to the upper half of the frame, the north of the station becomes clear. The area at the upper right and along the top edge is fields where small black and white squares line up like a checkerboard, with white open spaces that look like schoolyards breaking through here and there. Several white square open spaces can be counted in the upper half alone, each accompanied by a building with a large roof, placed here and there at the boundary between the fields and the rows of houses. At the upper left two oval stadiums stand side by side, and at the right edge a dark mountain covered with forest runs north to south. Below the stadiums, toward the left edge, there is a section where long, narrow white roofs line up in many parallel rows, and among the fields only that section is as orderly as if lines had been drawn. From the lower left a river showing streaks of white sand flows in diagonally. The rows of houses are packed around the station and on the south side, and the farther north you go, the more the pattern of fields wins out.

The change in density over the same range becomes clear in the 1974-78 photograph. Most of the field lots that spread at the top and upper right have been replaced by roofs, and green squares remain only here and there. The stadiums at the upper left show red-brown running tracks, with the dark green foot of the mountain pressing in behind them. White, tall buildings line both sides of the street south of the station. Along the tracks away to the west of the station, several large white square roofs have also appeared in a cluster. Even so, the bundle of tracks in the grounds keeps almost the same width as in 1961-69, and the spindle-shaped swelling west of the north exit can be read clearly. At the lower left a wide road runs in a curve along the river and merges with another road. The town spread north, but the width of the station grounds did not move. The photograph of this era shows that contrast best.

Public buildings lined up on the former site

The band of the station grounds was worked on after the eras of the photographs. The City of Kofu began the Kofu Station Area Land Readjustment Project in fiscal 1991. The project area is 21.9 hectares; the city treated this area as large vacant land such as former railway sites, and used it to reorganize roads and building lots. It is a project that redrew the long, narrow land left vacant beside the tracks into a form usable as lots of the town. In March 2004 the Kofu City Civic Core District Development Plan, which places national government facilities and private buildings together as one, received the national government's consent.

The north exit took shape from 2007 to 2013. In March 2007 Kofu City Historical Park, which restored the Yamate Gate and the Yamate Watari Yagura Gate of Kofu Castle, was completed. In July 2010 the north exit station plaza was completed, and in the same month the building of the Fujimura Memorial Museum was also finished. This museum is the school building of the former Mutsuzawa School, an Important Cultural Property of the nation, moved from the grounds of Takeda Shrine to the north exit of the station, and it opened in October. In December Yocchabare Plaza was completed, forming one space with the station plaza. In 2012 the Yamanashi Prefectural Library moved into a new building at the north exit of Kofu Station, and in March 2013 Koshu Yumekoji, by a private operator, opened. A castle gate, a Meiji-era school building and the prefectural library: the north exit is marked by buildings of different character gathered in one area.

In today's photograph the tracks in the grounds are no more than a thin bundle with fewer lines. On their north side a wide paved surface and buildings with large roofs appear together. Their position almost overlaps the northern half of the grounds that had been swollen into a spindle shape up to 1974-78. If you compare the two eras, the overlap of the outlines shows that the ground freed by trimming the width of the tracks was handed over just as it was to the town side. Tall buildings have increased on both sides of the station, and the arrangement in which only the south was the center of the city area has broken down. Not one of the fields at the top and upper right remains, and wherever you look in the frame the rows of houses continue. Among those rows of houses, several pairs of a white schoolyard and a large roof can be counted in the upper half alone, and many of the open spaces that were placed here and there at the edges of the fields in 1961-69 remain in the same positions. In the middle of the upper half a thin green line runs down from north to south and blends into the rows of houses just before the tracks. The green of the mountain at the right edge and the stadiums at the upper left, whose outlines are almost the same as in 1961-69, do not change. The curve of the stone walls of the castle site also remains southeast of the station, facing the restored gate at the north exit across the tracks.

Land prices in the residential area that spread north of the station can be traced at Takeda 3-chome, about 1,060 m from the station. The value per square meter, up to the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji), was highest at 83,900 yen in 2004 and lowest at 61,000 yen in 2024 and 2026.