Meimai Danchi about 60 years ago and today

History of Meimai Danchi

On the hills between Akashi and Maiko there are rows of residential buildings aligned in the same direction. Those rows, which take up the center of the frame like a band, are Meimai Danchi, a danchi (housing complex). The name takes one character from the name of each of the two towns, and the site straddles the border between the City of Akashi and the City of Kobe. The sea appears only slightly in the lower left corner, and most of the frame is filled with rows crossing the hills diagonally and the rows of houses at their feet.

The choice of the hilltop

Hyogo Prefecture chose the hill country that remained between the two towns as land for a large-scale danchi. Along the coast, the railway and a wide road came first, and the flat land inside them had become town early on. A sizable site remained only on the hill side, and the form of climbing a slope from the station to reach the residential districts has become the structure of the town today as it is. The nearest station is Asagiri Station on the JR West Sanyo Line, running along the water's edge, at a position down the slope from the residential districts on the hill.

If you line up the height figures in the four directions, only the southern side is left behind. The center is 50.2 m, the north 55.1 m, the east 55.2 m and the west 50.8 m, all hilltop values, and only the south drops to 39.1 m. The difference between the highest and lowest points is about 16 m, and a tilt in which only the south descends to the sea can be read. Three of the four directions sit on a band of the same height because the residential districts were placed in the middle of the spread of the hilltop. Because conditions differ between the hilltop and the water's edge, the City of Kobe and the City of Akashi each publish maps of assumed landslides and flooding. Since the location straddles the border, open both and look up the address you want to check. If you confirm the drop to the south in the cross-section graph before turning to the maps, it is easier to match them with the landform.

A hill of farmland and irrigation ponds

In the black-and-white 1961-69 photograph, not a single residential building appears. Almost the whole frame is hill farmland and woods, the valleys branch finely, and long, narrow fields like stripes cling to their slopes in terraces. There are also lots where evenly spaced grains line up neatly, which look like fields planted with seedlings. Irrigation ponds made by damming the valleys remain in hollows of the slopes. A large gray water surface in the upper left, another to its south and a bright pond toward the bottom of the center can be counted, at least four in all. Thin roads climb, threading through the valleys, and the settlements are gathered small at the meeting points of valleys. The lower right corner is in the same tone, with branching valleys and terraced farmland continuing, and a bright surface with a round outline and a small settlement with rows of roofs lie in the middle.

The scene outside the hills appears in the same photograph. The lower left corner is a town densely packed with fine grid blocks, and a wide road crosses diagonally to its north. In the left corner of the bottom edge of the frame a bow-shaped sand beach continues widely, and the railway and a road run along the beach inside it. It is a natural sandy shore with neither embankment nor jetty. And in the middle of the bottom edge, one bright square flat surface drawn with faint grid lines has opened. Small shadows that seem to be construction are scattered on it, showing that land development had already begun.

Rows fill the hills

When you switch to 1974-78, the appearance of the hills changes completely. In the central band of the frame, rows of residential buildings aligned diagonally appear layer upon layer. In the brown tones of winter, when plants had withered, only the rows of white rectangles stand out. Around the rows, many bright surfaces of freshly leveled soil remain, and lots with only the skeleton of streets and no buildings are mixed in. A wide road runs diagonally across the upper center, with a ramp drawing a curve wrapped around it partway. In 1961-69 the same place was valleys and terraced farmland, and this line was nowhere. In the upper right of the frame too, another cluster of rows of residential buildings and white lots appears, and you can see residential districts being added one by one on the hilltop. The lower part of the left half stays dense town, and the lower right is still woods and farmland.

1979-83 takes on a greenish tone, and the density of the rows rises further. The way the ramp in the upper center wraps can now be read clearly, and the bright bare ground of land development is still scattered, changing position. In 1984-86 the roofs of the residential buildings stand out white, and the diagonal rows are at their clearest. The cream-colored surfaces of land development shrink in area, and the blocks reach toward the edges of the frame. Of the irrigation ponds counted in 1961-69, the one toward the right still keeps its water surface in the same position in this era.

The beach and the hills remade

In today's photograph, most of the frame is town. Even so, if you look at the central band, the direction of the rows has not moved. The arrangement of residential buildings aligned diagonally keeps the layout that appeared in 1974-78 as it was; only the colors of the roofs have become varied, and bright open spaces and other buildings are slipped in between the rows. The round grove of dark green in the center has been there with the same outline from 1974-78 until now. The irrigation pond toward the right also keeps its light blue water surface, and a square water surface has been added in the upper right.

The lower left corner has changed greatly. The sandy shore that was bow-shaped has become a beige beach leveled in a half circle, and an arc of breakwater encloses it offshore, calming the water inside. In this way the beach was enclosed by a breakwater. Inside the beach, tracks and elevated roads overlap as several bands, running east-west between the sea and the hills. The hills in the lower right remain as a mass of woods, but bands of bright turf thread through the inside in curves, with small white spots dotted about. It is a place where only the contents were remade while the position of the outer edge of the woods did not change.

Just inside the danchi, a record of official land prices (Chika Koji) spanning more than 40 years remains. It is the residential land in Kariguchidai 2-chome, at a position about 326 m from this location. Per square meter it began at 164,000 yen in 1983, rose to 330,000 yen in 1991, and after that followed a downward trend with small recoveries along the way, falling to 132,000 yen in 2011. In the 2026 publication it is 155,000 yen, not reaching the level of the first year of the record. It is a price movement with peaks and valleys, in an order where the highest year comes midway and the lowest year also comes midway. Residential areas of the type that cut hills and place residential districts together were later built in many places, such as Tama New Town Minami-Osawa. Meimai Danchi is one of the early ones.