Moriya about 60 years ago and today

History of Moriya

Moriya Station is the transfer station where the Tsukuba Express, opened in 2005, crosses the Kanto Railway Joso Line, which links Toride Station and Shimodate Station. In the center of the aerial photographs, the tracks of the Joso Line run almost straight from north to south, and in the old eras a small town appears in which only a long, narrow row of houses along the old highway clings beside them. In today's photograph, a thick gray band crosses diagonally from the middle of the left edge of the frame to the upper right, and the point where that band crosses the Joso Line is the station. The surroundings are filled with houses and roads as far as the eye can see, with only woods in the valleys remaining here and there.

The tip of the plateau and the site of a castle town

According to the City of Moriya's city planning materials, Moriya is at the tip of the Sashima Plateau, which branches off from the Joso Plateau, and is surrounded on three sides by three rivers, the Tone River, the Kinu River and the Kokai River. Its beginning as a town is said to be around 1590, when Toki Sadamasa entered as lord and a castle town was opened. In 1681 Moriya Castle was abandoned and the era of the castle town ended, but afterward the landing places continued to thrive as a relay point for river transport on the Tone River and the Kinu River. On land, the road heading from Moriya toward the City of Tsukubamirai was called the Choshi Kaido in the Edo period, and a row of pines planted by the Moriya Domain remains in the Matsunami-Aoba district to the north. The backbone of land transport shifted to the railway after the Joso Railway opened between Toride Station and Shimodate Station in November 1913. The city's materials record that, with this opening as the turning point, water transport on the Tone River declined.

Flat fields spread on top of the plateau, and its edges are carved by small rivers, with long, narrow valleys cutting in as they branch. In this land, such valleys are called yatsu. The terrain in which plateau and yatsu interlock appears clearly in every era of the photographs that follow.

A plateau of fields where the yatsu stretch their branches

Bright lots of fields and woods that appear dark take up most of the frame of the 1961-69 photograph. The woods stretch in shapes like tree branches along the slopes of the yatsu, cutting the flat surface of the plateau finely. The Joso Line runs almost in a straight line from the top edge of the frame to the bottom edge, and slightly above the center, rows of houses continue in a band along a road from the east side of the tracks toward the southeast. This corresponds to the townscape along the old highway. At the right edge of the frame long, narrow strip-shaped paddies line up, showing that the low land east of the plateau was used as paddies. In the upper left fields in square lots with long sides can be seen, and in the upper right corner a water surface peeks in. On top of the plateau, settlements surrounded by homestead woods are scattered here and there as black masses, and narrow roads link them, winding as they go.

The rows of houses around the station thicken in the 1974-78 photograph, and housing has spread west and north from the band along the highway. South of the station, in the lower middle, a corner appears where several buildings with long white roofs line up, and toward the bottom on the left a residential area of small houses of the same shape lined up in order has been made. In the middle of the top edge of the frame there is a large building with a greenish roof. At the left and right edges, the part from near the top to the middle height appears in a different, strongly yellow tone. According to the city's materials, Moriya Town was designated in the 1960s as part of the suburban development zone of the National Capital Region, and the change from a farming village to a residential town began. In the early 1970s, the plans of the Japan Housing Corporation for the Kita-Moriya danchi (public housing complex) and the Minami-Moriya danchi were decided one after another.

The era when the grid of development spreads

In the 1979-83 photograph there is no photograph in the band at the left edge, and it is missing in black. Toward the left of the frame many brown surfaces stripped of soil appear, and in the lower right corner a reddish-brown band runs diagonally. In the low land at the upper right, the paddies spread with their green lines aligned, standing out against the top of the plateau. By 1984-86, the area from the lower left of the frame to the lower middle is covered by a trunk road drawing a gentle arc and fine lot divisions laid out along it. There are still few buildings, and it is graded land where only the grid of roads was drawn first. In 1987-90, house roofs begin to line up on that grid, and it fills as a residential area from both sides of the arcing road. Northeast of the station, a band-shaped surface stripped of soil newly extends east. The fields and woods on top of the plateau were cut greatly during these four eras. In the same period, the section of the Joban Expressway between Yatabe and Kashiwa opened in 1981, and Shin-Moriya Station on the Joso Line opened in 1982. Double-tracking of the Joso Line also progressed section by section from 1982 to the following year.

The opening of the new line and land readjustment

The plan for the Joban New Line and the land readjustment project to arrange the area around the station as one were decided as city plans in 1994. Moriya took city status on its own in February 2002, and on August 24, 2005, the Tsukuba Express of the Metropolitan Intercity Railway Company opened. The land readjustment around the station completed its replotting disposition in 2010, and the replotting disposition was also carried out in the Matsunami-Aoba district to the north in 2016.

The diagonal band in today's photograph extends without a break from the left edge of the frame through the station to the upper right edge, and grids of streets fill its north and south. The Joso Line passes along the same line as in 1961-69 and crosses the band of the new line diagonally at the station. West of the station too, where woods and fields lay in the black-and-white eras, blocks arranged by land readjustment spread, and the long, narrow townscape along the old highway is buried among them and hard to make out. The area at the lower left that was being developed in 1984-86 has become a residential area with houses packed on both sides of the arcing trunk road, and a large building with a wide parking lot stands in the lower middle. In the corner south of the station where long white roofs lined up in the 1970s, a large white building stands. On the other hand, the woods on the slopes of the yatsu remain here and there in the same branching shapes as in 1961-69, and in the low land at the upper right strips of paddies still line up. Because the edge of the plateau and the lowland on the east side differ in how the land was formed, the City of Moriya's official hazard map is a clue to the assumptions for when water comes. In a residential area of Honcho, about 350 m from the station, the official land price (Chika Koji), up to the 2026 publication, was lowest at 59,000 yen per square meter in 2005, when the new line opened, and highest at 168,000 yen in 2026.