Miyoshigaoka (Miyoshigaoka New Town) about 60 years ago and today

History of Miyoshigaoka (Miyoshigaoka New Town)

The station is named Miyoshigaoka with a small katakana ke in the middle, and the address, read the same way, is written without it. The difference is only whether the small ke is there or not, but both bear oka (oka means hill) in their names. This area, near the eastern edge of the City of Miyoshi in Aichi Prefecture, is hilly land held between Nagoya and Toyota, and the town was placed by cutting those hills.

A hill name carved by valleys

Although the place bears the name of a hill, the lowest of the measuring points is the center at 74.9 m. Moreover, the way the ground rises differs completely by direction. The west at 75.8 m is almost the same height as the center, the south is 80.7 m, the east 87 m and the north 90.7 m, so the difference widens the farther north you go. The difference is nearly 16 m with the north and about 12 m with the east, yet toward the west it is almost flat. This suggests that the center sits not on a ridge but on the side where a valley cuts in. As the aerial photographs show, these hills have terrain in which ridges spread like fingers alternate with valleys cutting deep between them. Because water gathers in each valley, it is good to look at the hazard maps published by the City of Miyoshi and Aichi Prefecture for how water collects in rain.

Valley paddies and a golf course

In the 1961-69 aerial photograph, more than half the frame is filled with dark woods. Human hands have reached only the lines of the valleys, where long, narrow paddies line up in many steps toward the far end of the valleys. There are almost no roads on top of the hills, and the only ways through are narrow roads along the valleys and roads tracing the ridges. Toward the south of the frame there is just one place cut wide and flat, with small buildings lined up in a single row. Bright bare ground with many steps like contour lines spreads to its east, showing that work to cut down the hill had already begun. In the southwest corner of the frame there is a settlement of densely gathered houses, and roads lead out from it. Slightly east of the center, one irrigation pond with a water surface sunk in black can be seen. It is shaped by damming the mouth of a valley to store water, and stepped paddies continue below it. The logic of this terrain, that turning the valleys of the hills into paddies needs a place to store water, appears directly in the photograph.

In 1974-78 the photograph turns to color, and the differences in how the hills are used show clearly. Bands of grass on the northeastern slope line up in several rows, threading between the woods. The shape like spread fingers is that of a golf course, and it already appears complete in this era. At the northern end a sports facility with a running track and a building that looks like a gymnasium stand side by side, and on the flat ground to the south the buildings have been replaced by rows of large white roofs and have widened in area. Fields divided finely into strips spread west of the center, and along the valley to the southwest the rows of houses extend as a thin band. Even so, the center of the frame, the area that later becomes the town, is still woods, fields and ponds. The golf course, the factory and the sports facility came onto the hills first, and the places to live have not come yet.

The era when the hills were cut

The 1979-83 photograph was taken in winter, and the woods are sunk in brown. The stepped bare ground that has appeared in the middle of the frame stands out among them. The slope of the hill has been cut like a staircase, and the bright color of the soil is exposed. Toward the top of the frame a straight line crosses from left to right and breaks off at the western end, entering the hill. The Toyota Line of Nagoya Railroad opened in 1979, and Miyoshigaoka Station was also built that year. The Toyota Line links Akaike Station and Umetsubo Station, connects with the Nagoya Municipal Subway Tsurumai Line at Akaike Station, and runs into central Nagoya without a change of trains. Transport reached the place before the town did. In the same photograph the factory to the south has widened its area further, and new bare ground from development has appeared on its east side as well. The rows of houses along the valley to the southwest have also deepened in color, and you can tell this was an era when the soil was moving in many places on the hills.

The most dramatic change comes in 1987-90. The whole center of the frame has become bright bare ground, and only thin lot lines are drawn on it in a grid. The buildings can still be counted, and houses have begun to stand only at the western edge of the bare ground. The contrast between the size of the developed area and the fact that nothing stands on it yet is the main highlight of the photograph of this era. The straight line running left to right across the top of the frame has clearly changed on the west side into a cut into the woods of the hill. This is how it looks after the work to drive the line through the hill was finished. Yet in the same photograph, the golf course to the northeast has exactly the same shape as ten years before. The other highlight of this era is that hills being cut and hills left uncut lie side by side.

A residential area that kept its woods

As of 2026, this area is a residential area finely packed with roofs. In today's aerial photograph, the extent of the bare ground of 1987-90 has been replaced almost as it is by rows of houses. It is interesting that near the center of the graded land a single clump of dark green woods has been left as a square. It is a wood surrounded by houses, showing that a part of the hill left uncut was built into the town as green space. To its south there is a bright trapezoidal open space, and to the north a rounded one, so places for exercise are set in the gaps of the residential area. The factory to the south now appears as rows of light-blue roofs, and the golf course to the northeast keeps the same shape of grass even when set beside the 1974-78 photograph.

The record of land values is relatively new. The measuring point placed in a residential area of Miyoshigaoka 2-chome is about 250 m from the location, and the record of official land prices (Chika Koji) began in 2013 at 121,000 yen per square meter. From there, the highest value in the record up to the 2026 publication is 164,000 yen in 2026. This means it is land whose value did not fall even as time passed after the town opened. Its position, from which both the urban area of Nagoya and the factories of Toyota can be reached, probably has an effect.

The town was made by cutting the hills, yet its name is still the hill. The terrain of the era when long, narrow paddies lined the valleys remains in the shape of today's roads as the undulation of ridges and valleys. If you switch the eras of the photographs in order from the oldest, you can see three colors, woods, bare ground and rows of houses, replace one another in the same place.