Seishin-Chuo about 60 years ago and today

History of Seishin-Chuo

If you cross the Rokko Mountains westward from central Kobe, a flat upland about 90 m high spreads toward the Akashi Plain. Seishin-chuo Station is in the midst of that upland, but not on its high side. The central measuring point is 88.9 m, and the four directions are all higher than this. The difference is especially large to the east, at 103 m, and to the north, at 101.4 m, while the south at 97.4 m and the west at 98.1 m differ by only 8 to 9 m. The values suggest that the center of the town was set not on a ridge but in a low spot made by leveling a valley line. The top of the upland is poor in water, land where irrigation ponds made by damming valleys have fed the fields, and the oldest aerial photograph still shows that landscape of water.

Kobe is a city squeezed between the sea to the south and the mountains to the north, and its room to extend flat land ran out early. In an era when large-scale development went on, cutting the mountains and using the earth to fill the sea and turn it into land for the port and factories, the upland on the side being cut was given the role of hosting a residential town. The name Seishin also directly expresses its position, west of Kobe. However, position was not the only reason the upland was chosen. Ridges and valleys alternate finely, but in exchange there is no large relief, so it was terrain from which a wide flat surface could be taken out by cutting and filling, and moreover the ridge lines unsuited to paddies remained as they were. If you advance through the eras of the aerial photographs in order from the oldest, you can read the process by which that flat surface was cut out little by little.

Irrigation ponds and valley fields

The 1961-69 photograph has not a single clue to a town area. Round ridges carrying mixed woods and narrow valleys branching in between them cover almost the whole frame. The valley floors are filled with narrow, long paddies, which step up in height one tier at a time as they go deeper into the valleys. Here and there, bright water surfaces shine as if blocking the valleys. These are irrigation ponds, and several can be counted, large and small together. The settlements keep to the upper left and lower right edges of the frame, and white roads trace the valley lines to link the settlements. In the lower right corner, that road widens and runs out diagonally, with rows of houses gathered in a cluster along it. This means there were almost no places where people lived inside the upland. Only the right third of this photograph shows dark and sunken, and across the boundary the tone of the same mixed woods changes. It is a seam where photographs taken under different conditions were joined.

Cut, filled and leveled

By the 1974-78 photograph, bright beige bare earth appears in the upper half of the frame. The tops of the ridges have been cut, the valleys filled with earth, and irregular bare ground eats into the forest. The bare ground is especially wide in the upper right and extends thinly from there toward the center. The development came in from the north and northeast. The lower half, on the other hand, is still untouched, and the dark forest and the valley paddies continue as they were. The area near the center, where the station is, is also forest and dark water surface in this era. The grid pattern of farmland in the upper left is cut off at the edge of the development, and earth washed out from the cut slopes spreads thinly over the valley floors.

In the 1979-83 photograph, that bare ground has grown into a huge flat surface crossing the frame diagonally. The color of the earth is not uniform, and white surfaces freshly cut mix with ocher surfaces compacted some time ago. Within the flat ground, lots are drawn with faint lines, and a wide road draws an arc and runs out to the northeast. This is the stage at which the shape of the streets was drawn on the earth first. In the northeast corner, buildings begin to line up on the lots, and a cluster of houses with fine roofs and a cluster of buildings with large roofs form separate zones. The remaining forest is scattered like islands, meeting the flat ground with intricate edges. From the center to the southwest, a separate narrow band of development extends, suggesting that a passage for a use different from the blocks was prepared. The fields in the upper left and the settlement in the lower left do not change position in the photograph, and the boundary with the development site is the boundary in the history of the land.

The blocks rise

The 1984-86 photograph looks like completely different land to the east and to the west. In the right half the residential area is complete, and the roofs of detached houses line up tightly along curving streets. Rows of apartment buildings all facing the same way, a site that looks like a school with a brown earth ground, and a dark water surface with square-cut edges are also mixed in there. In the upper right, buildings with large roofs line up in rows, and you can read that a zone for production was placed back to back with the residential area. In contrast, from the center to the west, only lot lines have been drawn on ground leveled flat, and there are almost no buildings. The area near the center, where the station will be, is still earth, and on the south side the traces of excavation are fresh. In the lower left of the frame, an existing settlement that the development did not reach keeps rows of houses of the old form, and the green water surface of a pond lies right beside it. The greatest highlight of this era is that a new town with orderly lots and an old settlement that has relied on the water of the valleys stand side by side in the same photograph. In 1987 the subway reached Seishin-Chuo, and a center was born in the town that had filled only in its eastern half.

An upland town with the station at its core

In the latest aerial photograph, mid-rise and high-rise buildings with large roofs gather in the center, and the blocks in front of the station can be made out. North of them a long, narrow flat strip extends in parallel, suggesting that it is a site for the railway. From the station to the southwest, the residential area continues to the edge of the frame, and its lots break at regular intervals. Masses of green and earth grounds, the sites of parks and schools, fill the breaks. The zone of production facilities in the northeast has grown denser than in 1984-86, and the roof colors have also changed. East of the station there is a section where a turf-colored ground and facilities with flat roofs gather, standing out as an open place within the residential area. The thick road cutting diagonally across the lower right of the frame also catches the eye. It is a straight line with no buildings attached along it, suggesting that it was put through later as a road for passing through. In the upper left, on the other hand, the grid of farmland remains, the paddies and irrigation ponds in the valley in the lower right are alive and well, and the edge of the development continues just as it was as the boundary of land use. The dark water surface that looked square in the 1984-86 photograph is in the same position in the latest photograph too.

The value records remain for a measuring point on residential land in Takenodai, about 1.1 km from the location. At the start in 2003 it was 144,000 yen per square meter; it fell to 135,000 yen in 2010-2013 and bottomed out there, then changed direction, and in 2026 it is 170,000 yen, the highest in the records up to the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji). The depth of the road cuttings and the way the ground connects, changing height from block to block, still show that this is a town made by cutting the upland. If you want to know where the valleys ran before the development, the quickest way is to follow the water surfaces and the rows of paddies in the photographs of the old eras. The City of Kobe's hazard map draws the assumptions for flooding and landslides block by block, so it is worth looking at it overlaid with the valley lines of the old eras.