Kozoji New Town about 60 years ago and today

History of Kozoji New Town

On the hill at Kozoji there are rows of residential buildings aligned in the same direction. From the upper left of the frame to the center, white rectangles line up in many layers, tracing the shape of the ridges, and low-rise rows of houses fill the ground at their feet. The right half, by contrast, is held by a large, dark forest that land development never touched. Kozoji New Town is the housing area that the Japan Housing Corporation planned as the largest in the Chubu region, and residents began moving in in 1968. The railway station is at the bottom edge of the frame, and the hill town sits on the heights to its north.

Why the hill was chosen

It lies about 20 km northeast of central Nagoya, at the boundary between the edge of the Nobi Plain and the mountains. A station on the Chuo Line had been placed at this valley mouth since the Meiji era, and the railway for commuting to Nagoya came before the development. As far as the 1961-69 photograph shows, the lowland at the western end of the frame was filled with fields and settlements, and only the hill side could secure a large site in one piece.

It is a housing area of the type that places residential districts together on hilly land, planned in the same period as Senri New Town in Osaka and Tama New Town in Tokyo. It is also the result of one idea, turning to hills near stations, advancing in many places at once around large cities with no spare flat land.

The heights within the frame differ greatly between east and west. The western end is the lowest at 81.3 m, the east rises to 97.5 m and the north to 100.4 m. The center is 91.5 m and the south 90.6 m. The difference between the highest and lowest points is about 19 m, and the east-west spread exceeds the north-south spread. The terrain reads as residential districts placed on the slope of a hill falling west toward the plain. Because it is not a flat plateau but a cluster of hills with continuous ups and downs, the land development became work of filling valleys and cutting ridges. Tsubata Shuichi, who took part in the planning, is known as a person who later lived in a corner of this new town himself and practiced a life together with the coppice woods.

A hill with no blocks yet

The black-and-white 1961-69 photograph shows not a single residential building. Most of the frame is the hill's woods, with dark woods and bright slopes alternating valley by valley, and thin roads climbing between them as they branch. Irrigation ponds made by damming the valleys are dotted about as bright water surfaces smoothly reflecting light, and at least three can be counted: in the middle on the left, a long, narrow one toward the lower left, and one near the bottom edge. The pond at the lower left has an angular outline, showing directly the form of a valley stopped by an embankment.

The area from the western end to the lower left is a contrast: fields with long, narrow lots lined up meticulously spread there, with settlements clustered between them. At the confluence of the valleys there is a small settlement with rows of roofs, and to its south a single bright pentagonal flat surface with bare earth opens, surrounded by woods. A straight line that looks like a railway crosses the bottom edge of the frame from the left half, and in the lower right corner a meandering river and a bright riverbed touch the edge of the frame. The only conspicuous man-made things on the hill side are the irrigation ponds and the roads threading through the valleys.

The residential buildings go up first

Switch to 1974-78 and the hill changes completely. From the upper left to the upper center rows of residential buildings aligned in the same direction appear, and graded land with bare earth exposed and lots where only the framework of streets has been made, with no buildings yet, spread around them. At the upper right lot lines have already been drawn, with fields remaining beyond them. In the photograph of this era, differences in color tone by date of shooting split the frame along diagonal seams, and a yellowed surface, a purplish surface and a green surface are joined into one picture. The colors alone show that it is not a photograph taken all together in a single shoot.

Even in the same era, the forest in the right half of the frame has hardly moved. The front line of land development stops at the western edge of the forest, and the area east of that line is woods with only the valley roads. The fields at the lower left are also intact as long, narrow lots, and the time lag in which only the hilltop becomes a different town first is captured at the same time within one photograph.

By 1979-83 the whole is joined in a single brownish tone, and low-rise housing is packed tightly at the feet of the rows of residential buildings. A wide road climbing the hill runs from the upper left to below the center, with large flat-roofed buildings along it. Blocks of detached houses also spread over the area at the upper right, and bright traces of land development are dotted along the edge of the forest. The 1987-90 photograph was taken in a season of deep green, and the contrast between the white rows of residential buildings and the darkness of the woods is at its strongest. In the upper right corner houses with red roofs are densely packed, and on the hilltop large buildings appear where there was vacant land.

The edge of the forest does not move

In today's photograph too, the forest still occupies the right half of the frame. The line of its outer edge has been kept almost without moving. Within the forest several bright open square surfaces and lots that look like fields can be seen, but the spread of the woods itself is not very different from the photograph of 60 years ago. The hill's land development leveled part of the ridges and valleys, and the terrain outside it keeps its old lines just as they were. Of the irrigation ponds photographed in 1961-69, one at the southern edge of the residential district still keeps its water surface in the same position in today's photograph.

The change is on the side of the residential buildings. The arrangement and direction of the rows are as they were, but buildings whose roofs have been repainted white stand out, and the vacant land at their feet has been filled with buildings and paved surfaces. A building with a large roof has been placed in the center of the frame, and at the bottom edge the long, narrow platform of the station extends along the edge of the frame. In the lower right corner the sandbar in the river is tinged with green rather than white sand, and a bridge spans the river.

Land value records can be taken from the residential district on the hilltop itself. In a residential area of Iwanaridai the record begins at 71,800 yen per square meter in 2016, falls to 71,400 yen in 2021, and is 76,000 yen in 2026. It is a movement of less than 6% over ten years, and in the record up to the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji), the lowest year is 2021 in the middle and the highest year is 2026 at the end. At the foot of a hill town more than half a century after residents began moving in, the value is slowly coming back. The City of Kasugai's zone maps draw as lines how far the assumed flooding and landslides extend. If you look at the east-west slope on the cross-section graph before turning to the zone maps, it is easier to match them with the terrain.