Sasashima Live about 60 years ago and today

History of Sasashima Live

South of Nagoya Station, a large blank remained for a long time. The area called Sasashima Live is a place used for nearly a century as railway land handling freight, then reorganized into blocks after its role ended. If you switch the aerial photographs back through the older eras, you can see how wide that blank was.

The site of the first Nagoya Station

This land is lowland west of the Hori River, touching the northern end of the Nakagawa Canal. The measured elevations stay between 1.0 m and 2.0 m in the four directions around the location, and only the central measuring point stands apart at 5.7 m. Because the values in the four directions are uniformly low, it is a good idea to check, lot number by lot number, on the hazard map published by the City of Nagoya how the area is treated in rain and storm surges.

The reason this lowland was used is that both water and tracks reached it. In the late 1920s and early 1930s a canal was opened northward from the Port of Nagoya, and its northern end touched the south of the station grounds. As a place where cargo brought by ship could be handed to the railway, and cargo gathered by rail handed to ships, the south side of Nagoya Station was convenient. The waterway crossing the lower half of the photograph and the water surface that dead-ends in a square are that junction.

The railway reached this city in 1886, and the first Nagoya Station was placed in this area. After the passenger station moved north in 1937, the station grounds left behind kept working as a freight-only station. The station shifted one step north, and this became the trigger for a wide freight yard to grow to the south.

Tracks spreading in a fan

In the 1945-50 photograph, tracks open like a fan from Nagoya Station at the top of the frame toward the south. The bundled lines are widest a little left of center, and between them long, narrow buildings and black rows that look like freight cars line up. The surroundings are a town area of finely cut lots, and a waterway crosses the lower half diagonally. At the southern end of the station grounds the water surface dead-ends in a square, and from there it turns southwest and heads out of the frame. The spacing of the lines widens toward the south, and outside the bundle, open ground and small buildings like huts are scattered here and there. On the right a wide straight road passes, serving as a landmark in the town area.

If you switch to 1961-69, the bundle of tracks becomes thicker still. Countless lines extend south, and their southern end closes with a rounded outline. On the east side of the bundle many long, narrow roofs line up, and beyond them the dead-end water surface shows as a square. The waterway branches east at a right angle in the southeast and runs into another river course. The wide road running north-south east of the station grounds extends as if tracing the edge of the bundle. In one section in the northeast, a growth of trees is especially dark and catches the eye among the continuous fine roofs. The town area is more built up than in the photograph from shortly after the war, and hardly any open ground remains.

The 1974-78 photograph does not have a uniform color within it. The top leans to reddish brown and the right side to blue-green, and the difference in when they were taken shows as seams. The number of tracks and the rows of roofs have hardly changed from the previous era, and the yard is still at work. Warehouses with white roofs continue along the waterway, and small structures can be seen beside the waterway that branches east. Outside the bundle to the southwest, a section of bright bare ground with neither grass nor buildings visible spreads out.

In 1979-83, buildings with white roofs line up regularly in the middle of the bundle. The outline of the tracks is kept, but the density of the lines looks looser than in the previous era. On the east side of the waterway, tall buildings casting shadows appear, and you can read that the places handling cargo were being replaced.

Station grounds turned into vacant land

The 1987-90 photograph shows the largest drop when compared with the eras before and after it. The shape of the bundle remains as the color of the ground, yet the shining streaks of track have almost disappeared, and brown exposed ground spreads out. Only a few of the rows of long, narrow roofs are left. Operations as a freight station of Japanese National Railways ended in 1986, and this photograph shows the scene immediately after. On the east side of the frame, a tall structure extends east over the town area. A similar tall line also appears at the western edge, cutting off the row of buildings in the lower left of the frame.

The blank left after the yard disappeared was wide spare room created within walking distance of Nagoya Station. It was left as vacant land for a long time; in 2004 the Nishi-Nagoyako Line of Nagoya Rinkai Rapid Transit came through and Sasashima-raibu Station opened, and the district came to be known by the name of that station. In the 2010s, university buildings, a broadcaster's headquarters, and tall buildings housing shops and offices went up one after another.

The dead end of the canal and the blocks

In the photograph as of 2026, masses of large buildings line up inside the bundle. Their rooftop shapes all differ, with buildings long from north to south mixed with buildings that are nearly square. At the northern end a tall building stands, facing the high-rise cluster in front of Nagoya Station. Of the tracks, only a thin bundle heading out to the southwest remains, and most of the width of the fan has been replaced by buildings and roads. The water surface at the dead end of the canal remains almost as it was, and its square outline seems to float within the blocks. Only the water surface has not changed position.

A wide elevated road runs from the southwest toward the center, crossing the southern edge of the former station grounds diagonally. South of it, band-shaped sites and roads line up, and lots where the buildings remain without their orientation aligned can also be seen. On the north side, the group of tracks of Nagoya Station extends as thick as ever, so you can tell that only the southern half was replaced. That boundary is in the same place whichever era you switch to.

The official land prices (Chika Koji) also form peaks and troughs near this location. There is a measuring point on residential land in Fukagawa-cho 1-chome, about 600 m away. The records begin at 161,000 yen per square meter in 1983; the price rose to 347,000 yen in 1991 and then fell to 149,000 yen in 2005. In the 2026 publication it is 225,000 yen. If you compare only the start and the end, it is about 1.4 times, but the gap between the peaks and troughs along the way is far larger than that.

The remnants of the freight station survive in the thin bundle of tracks heading out to the southwest, the dead end of the canal, and the places where the lots of the town area bend unnaturally at the edge of the yard. If you look at the same place while switching eras, you can see clearly that the city reused one piece of land twice.